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Tuesday, March 25, 2014

24 - The Expectation of Forgiveness

©Miriam A. Mason

[You are hereby forewarned.  RANT ahead.  And yes, I get to be angry if I need to be.]

I find myself being upset and frustrated with the implication of forgiveness somehow being the ultimate goal of anybody who was abused.  People say it's "important to forgive" for all kinds of reasons:
  1. Forgiveness means "letting go."
  2. Forgiveness is for you, not the other person
  3. Forgiveness is the end result of "healing"
  4. Forgive and forget is healthy
  5. Forgiving makes everyone else feel comfortable (not spoken, but certainly true in action)
  6. Forgiveness brings "closure"
  7. Forgiveness is "Godly"
  8. etc. etc. etc, blah, blah, blah, spew spew spew...
I would argue against this generalized assumption that to forgive is somehow better than to not forgive.  Or to forgive and NOT forget is better than to do neither.
"In my family, the very act of unforgiveness is an extortion of my soul," declares Sandy Katz, a psychotherapist. "It endorses what they did, which was to deny the truth and pressure me to sacrifice myself. For me not to forgive my brother at my parents' behest is my self-affirmation."
Sandy's parents had looked the other way when her violent bully of an older brother thrust a screwdriver up her rectum--even when he set her on fire. 

"Afterward they didn't leave tools or matches lying around, but they never acknowledged what he did to me. He continued to behave this way and they continued to insist that I submit; my mother would say, 'He's just trying to get close to you because he doesn't know how to be friends.' She'd confuse me by saying it was all out of love, and I had no recourse."

~ From "Must You Forgive? Sometimes it's Healthier Not to Forgive," by Jeanne Shafer, June, 2012

To me, forgiveness and all its apparent "reasons" are but excuses to be an apologist for really bad behavior of people who should know so much better.  Forgiving and forgetting is one of the biggest reasons abuse keeps on happening, and we keep finding excuses to allow it to continue.  Forgiving allows us to stop dealing with the problem of the abuser in our society and what continues to produce so many of them.  It makes denial very easy and has an extremely unhealthy subtext in a majority of the cases.

Forgiveness means we don't have to talk about uncomfortable things any more. Are we really that cowardly as a culture?  Apparently so.


Source: https://www.facebook.com/

To me personally, some things are not forgivable, these are my judgments on my terms, not on yours or anybody else's.  Sexual abuse from an adult to a child.  This is not ever forgivable, and should not be forgivable.  The onus should NEVER be on the victim to come to a place of forgiveness.  Ever.  An adult manipulating a child in order to fulfill his own needs, this is unforgivable.  It should not be forgiven.  One adult excusing, being an apologist, ignoring, or denying another adult's abuse of a child, this cannot and should NEVER be forgiven.  That adult is as guilty as the abuser himself.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/emergingfrombroken/photos_stream

The Bottom Line
Forgiveness has to be earned and it’s totally OK not to forgive someone.
There is no ‘should’ – you can choose to forgive or not, whoever is concerned.
There is such a thing as unforgiveable.
Pretending there isn’t is doing ourselves a disservice.
~From "Why Forgiveness is Overrated," by Hannah, Becoming Who You Are, June 2010

I can accept that my abusers were human beings who were fallible and imperfect.  I can accept that my abusers were too stupid and emotionally stunted to really be aware of the damage they did.  I can accept that they made mistakes.  I will never forgive them for those mistakes.  Because what they did was a choice on their part.  A bad horrible choice.  They need to own it.  They never did, therefore, they will never for one second be entitled to any real forgiveness.  They lived and died cowards.

'From what I have gleaned over 56 years of life – and a little less than half of them on radio – it is one of the most overused concepts in dealing with so-called “wrongdoers” or folks who perpetrate outright evil. It depowers the innocent and empowers the not-so-innocent. The basic premise of “forgiveness” is always explained by a listener as a means of “letting go” of the pain and rage so that one can have a serene life. Well, my friends, I have a real problem playing with fire just because it makes one “feel better."
[...]
'She’d spent so many years trying to follow the mantra that you should forgive and will attain peace. To do that she had to deny the reality of the truth, of the damage to her, of the loss of her childhood, of the work she was still doing to recover and survive as a normal person with a life she could enjoy and make meaningful.' ~ "Don't Be So Quick To Forgive," WNT Commentary, 10/14/2003
Forgiving abusers lets them off the hook (and makes everyone else feel comfortable).  Forgetting makes it even more possible for people just like them to justify abusing again ("oh look, she forgave them, so we must be okay, and we can just go on doing it again").

This promotes continued abuse.

No way, José.

Abusers don't need apologists, excusers and acceptance for victimizing another human being.  This also is backwards in our culture.  Forgiveness puts the onus on the person who was attacked, on the innocent, to do all the hard work of owning their pain and then on top of that, forgiving the person who has done ZERO work to change their abuser issues.  Why?


That's just more rape culture for you.  Let's make all the work go onto the victim and then let's push them to forgive the sick fucks who abuse and who do nothing to change it, so our culture can feel nice and comfy, like everything is fine.

It is not fine.
"But before you can forgive somebody, there has to be an acknowledgement of transgression. They have to be able to say to you, you know what? I really screwed up. I did a terrible thing, and I'm so sorry. I don't even know how I can repair it. I mean, at least that's a starting point. But to ask somebody who is the victim of abuse to simply give a carte blanche forgiveness, is a psychologically meaningless and potentially, really harmful task to set them."
~Dr. Richard Friedman, From "Forgiveness Isn't All It's  Cracked Up To Be," interview by Michel Martin, 2013

And, no.  I do not.  I do not forgive.  I will not.  And I am mentally healthier, stronger and more powerful that I do not forgive, or find excuses to permit such terrible behavior, especially so that people around me can feel comfortable.  I was subjected to inhuman treatment but I have forgiven them, so all is well.  No, forgiveness just makes us sicker in many cases.



I am powerful in that I remember and I do not forgive the abuse.  For me, forgiveness means playing right back into my abusers' hands.  There were NO excuses for it.  I speak it out.  I tell the truth of what happened to me.  There is no need to forgive what my family has done (or continues to try to do).  When they own their abuses (hahahaa, that's funny), I'll consider forgiveness then.  But not one nanosecond before they take ownership for their sick and abusive behaviors.


Without demanding that abusers take ownership of their abuses, the abusers just keep on abusing, because all the emphasis for the "work" that must be done post-abuse is on the abused.

What about the next person who the abuser fucks up?  They have to do all the work of owning their pain and then they're also supposed to forgive the sick fuck who abused them, all the while, the abuser never owns one thing he or she did?

To forgive abuse is to excuse it on some level.  There is no need to forgive abuse.

I have a friend who has suffered the most horrific kinds of abuses as a child from the two people she was supposed to be able to trust the most.  She has recently discussed it with close friends.  I have noticed among some of those friends that they are saying to her "you have every right not to forgive or forget."  

WHAT?!?

Whose right what?  

Lack of forgiveness has to be a "right?"  

You know what that really means?  It means, "I have judged what happened to you and have decided that you have a right to feel angry and not forgive."  

Excuse me, but remove yourself from the picture, please, you were NOT there. 



"You have every right not to forgive" is a lovely play on language and logic that people who say it in this way have apparently no clue they are actually saying.  They are adding *their* judgment, *their* assessment on top of the person who has already been victimized.  Saying such things only adds to the victim's burden; it adds in a judgment they don't need to hear.  Adding your own judgment to the mix in an abusee's mind complicates and puts YOUR footprints over their efforts to recover, over their thoughts.  

'Automatic forgiveness, false forgiveness and forgiveness lite, and their counterpart pseudo-contrition, are currently fashionable, and are often mistaken for the real thing. A form of marital counseling its founders have labelled “Forgiveness Therapy” starts with a full (detailed!) confession by the adulterous spouse and immediate assurances of absolution by the cuckolded one.'
~ "Sometimes It's Perfectly OK Not To Forgive," by
Jeanne Safer, PhD, The Punch, Australia

Witnessing does NOT equal judgment.  And stating that they have rights to not forgive is judgment NOT validation.  That's a profound error.  You are there to witness for the abused, to validate the abused, not to add your judgment about whether or not they should forgive their abuser. 

Insult to injury.  Wake up and smell the shit, people.  That is not cool.  Take great care in how you say things to someone who has been badly abused.  Many times they are so in the middle of it, they can't tell that you are throwing in your judgment, but you are NOT in the middle of it, and you should be able to tell you are throwing in your judgment about forgiveness.  Keep the forgiveness word (f-word) to yourselves, eh?  If that's YOUR thing, keep it that way.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/emergingfrombroken/photos_stream

There is something *profoundly* anti-victim and pro-abuser about the very phrasing of that terminology and language usage.  As I said, and will say again and again, until it sinks in somewhere, the impetus becomes even more on the victim to not merely struggle through the effort to heal themselves, but then they are also expected to eventually forgive the person who made them go through it all.  As though that is the end result every single time.

Bullshit.  Bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/emergingfrombroken/photos_stream

No.  Nobody should HAVE to have a "right" not to forgive. And nobody gets to tell the victim 1) HOW they should feel and 2) what rights YOU think they have to feel or don't have to feel.

Two of the most twisted language examples are this one, and the one that says "I don't blame you for x, y, z."  Another addition of one's judgments into another's perceptions.  These are expressions we should be very aware of and mindful about not employing.



Adding the words and concepts of "blame" and "the right to not forgive" sound weak and mealy mouthed and not authentic and real to me.  That's not empathy, that's sympathy.  These words add in extraneous judgments to an already difficult or impossible situation.  Take yourself OUT of the equation and think about the abuser NOT in relation to your set of parameters.  Open up to what's there, don't add more of your psychological garbage on top of it.  It really isn't that hard to keep your judgments out of it.  Work a little to do that.  The abused are worth it a thousand fold.

Dear world, I puke forgiveness up upon you, so that you may see it for what it really is, more times than not, painful verbal barf - primarily an excuse to let abusers off the hook and put even more responsibility on the abused.

And.

Dear abusers, I will not forgive you.  When you own what you did; when you speak it out loud and take *full* responsibility for doing or allowing it.  When you admit it in front of everybody and you accept all the consequences that come with owning responsibility for harming another person.  Then we'll discuss the possibility of forgiveness.  Until then, you can get bent.  I'm not helping continue your grand self-illusion so that you can abuse again and again.

And, I really wish people would stop using the phrase "you have every right not to x, y and z" for it is a loaded, unthinking, judgmental statement, regardless of any good underlying intentions, and from those who weren't even there.  

You, as a witness for the abused, don't get to make those judgments.  They've never been yours to make.  They belong to the abused and no one else.  



Examine what you say to people, really look at it, before opening your mouth.  When validation and witnessing means including the word "forgive," (whether affirmatively or negatively) you are out of line.  Use of that word implies expectation of that word, and all the twisted implications that go along with it. Forgiveness should only be brought up by the abused person themselves, should they choose to, and they should never be pushed by anyone to forgive their abuser.   Ever

When you look up on the internet "how forgiveness hurts" you find nothing but articles on how to forgive.  There is something wrong with this picture.

And something is wrong with the implied underlying meaning of "to forgive."  Forgiveness is earned.  If it's not you suffering the abuse, drop the forgiveness concept.  You are only adding insult to injury over the long term.

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Monday, March 10, 2014

23 - How Much Is Enough?

©Miriam A. Mason

I find myself asking that a lot these days.  I was talking with a close friend who also suffered from terrible abuse as a child and she asked this question as well. When she said it, it just rang bells. Neither of us knew an answer.  But at least we shared the feeling.  Because it just isn't feeling like whatever it is, talking, reading, processing, writing, sharing, pushing oneself out of the comfort zone, is ever going to finally be enough to put this thing down.

But how do you put down your life?  Your past experiences?  How do you release them into the ether in order to set yourself completely free? Is there such a thing as completely free?
 
Source: The Organic Sister

I have noticed many people fill their minds with "good" and "positive" things, try to notice all the goodness in the world and I find I truly enjoy that at times, too.  But there are times when the pain is too great, and I'm unable to fill myself with good things.  The angry hurt child inside is still feeling out of control and very upset.

I don't think she wants revenge, but I do think she is wanting me to keep speaking the Truth, her Truth.  Her Story.  My Story.  I don't think she's ready yet to let it go.  It is part of the fabric of her life, woven into her experiences and she wears those threads even though they hurt her still.  How can one wear the threads of their experiences and not feel them keenly any more?  Can they be shed at all?


What can I do that is more than I am already doing to help this child, who got pounded by the waves of an ocean of narcissism she was powerless to prevent?

Sometimes, I feel we fill ourselves with the beautiful things so we don't have to look at and examine the pain.  And deep inside I feel upset and angry and minimized when the pain is ignored, or supposed to be suppressed so everybody else can feel comfortable.  I was never comfortable as a child, my comfort was not a variable in the equation.  Why ever should everybody else's comfort be more important than my own? 

Source: Emerging From Broken
Pain feels like part of the tapestry of the whole being and to be honest and authentic and vulnerable, the pain must be worn along with the joy.  That feels more authentic to me.  Or... is that my father's-I'm-a-suffering-poet speaking?  I don't think so.  I think that to deny either side of ourselves is an error -- my father denied his joy, and coveted his pain.  To covet only the joy and not speak of the pain feels equally unbalanced to me.  To love ourselves in our pain is at least as important as it is to love ourselves in our joy.  And it is much much harder.



And then there is the question of validation.  How much validation will be needed to fill a cup that feels it will continually find ways to spill itself over, knock itself down, or run out from neglect?



How much will be enough?  And from whom?  I'd prefer to be able to look to myself for validation, but it is not how my brain has been trained to function.


Source: https://www.facebook.com/pages/After-Narcissistic-Abuse-There-is-Light-Life-Love/114835348601442

So, I need to start validating myself as much as possible, and then some little part of my brain says, "but oh, Miriam, watch out, because that can be narcissistic, when you have TOO much faith in yourself."  And that little voice, that bit of self doubt, is two sided, it is.  One side is convinced the voice keeps me mindful and reminds me that I'm neither more important or more deserving of respect than those smaller and weaker than myself.  The other part of it pokes at me like my father would, saying, "don't be too sure of yourself, beware hubris, watch out for too much self-assurance, it's a bad thing."

I want to scream when these inner voices start having these conversations in my head without my permission; and tell them all to just shut the hell up for once.  Let me listen to my heart.  What does my heart say to me?

It says be kind, especially to those who are weaker than you are (see, dad, I could figure this out without having to constantly second guess myself, fancy that you old fart).  It says remember, and honor all of you, including the angry little girl who sits in the corner of my brain feeling bad so much of the time.  It says love her.  Love her as much as you love your own children.  She is as deserving as they are.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/pages/After-Narcissistic-Abuse-There-is-Light-Life-Love/114835348601442
So, the voice telling me not to be too self-assured, that's the bullshit one.  That's the father voice, the one that makes me second guess myself all the time.  The one that assumed I would be too stupid on my own to figure out how to treat people properly if I was self-assured.  (Pardon the French, but fuck off, Dad's voice.)




There are people who genuinely believe it is noble to suffer in silence, not to speak about their physical and/or mental issues.  This is what my dad did.  It didn't help him at all.  I don't buy into that position even a little bit.  Silence in my life only further deepened the wounds I felt, and made worse my experiences of growing up.  Because a person speaks out about their illness or their personal experiences, this is not ignoble.  Quite the contrary.  It is very noble and courageous and scary and demands of others to discard their discomfort and look at real life.  Whether or not they are able to do that is a reflection of them, fully.  There will always be those who suffer in silence.  I am no longer one of them.  I will try very hard to no longer feel that bit of self-doubt around speaking Truths and being authentic just to make someone else feel more comfortable. 

Source: https://www.facebook.com/pages/After-Narcissistic-Abuse-There-is-Light-Life-Love/114835348601442

Some people even define anger as an un-useful emotion.  In my mind, there are no un-useful emotions.  If we deny some part of our emotional selves, it will come out of us in other ways.  We will act out in ways we cannot explain.  Anger truly is a cover for fear.  Fear is a lot more scary to feel.  To admit to feeling.  But it is almost always the deeper emotional force behind anger.  Once you realize that, then anger can be a sign to seek out what is making you afraid.  This is empowering, and it means you are listening to your authentic inner self, rather than holding up a flimsy and unrealistic image for the world to be agog about ("I never feel anger" is untruthful at best from any human being).

There are no un-useful emotions.  Only un-useful ways in which to cope with them.  And, to me, anyway, defining something as un-useful is another sign of some sort of denial and dysfunction.

Yes, when we focus on joy, we can experience more joy!  There is no denying this and that is a lovely and wonderful thing, but when we deny the full range of our human emotions, we are denying a part of our authentic selves. And to heal, one must stop the denial.


Source: https://www.facebook.com/pages/After-Narcissistic-Abuse-There-is-Light-Life-Love/114835348601442

My friends (and some intuitive strangers) know that they can tell me the really awful stuff that happened to them and I will be okay with them and with what they tell me.  I think maybe we need some more people who can hear and validate the awful stuff in this world.

 So... maybe I *am* making progress here.  Even if I can't see it directly, or don't feel it in more than tiny shifts.  I'm actually feeling here and now that I have valid and important observations.  And that feels pretty damn good.




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