Beyond "I Forgive You"
Finding a Path to Acceptance and Understanding
Dear Kathy,
My parents are religious, and their religion includes a belief in forgiveness. They were offended when I told them I didn’t like some of the things they did raising me and some ways they treat me now. They felt I insulted them or even blamed them unfairly. First, they were hurt and went low contact. Then they missed me—I missed them, too! Then they told me they forgave me and wanted to be close again.
First of all, I don’t think sharing my experience should require them to forgive me. But what made things worse is that after they “forgave” me, when I asked them to at least talk about current behavior, they got mad. They insisted they had forgiven me and told me I should just let go of my complaints about them. I thought they knew what forgiveness was, but they clearly don’t. As soon as I bring up anything unresolved, they are as offended as the first time. The forgiveness hasn’t given them any more bandwidth to understand what I’m trying to tell them. Now, I have gone low contact. Could you explain something about the way “forgiveness” works to help me understand what is happening?
Frustrated, Still Blamed, and Discouraged
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Dear Frustrated, Still Blamed, and Discouraged,
You’re caught in a painful loop where attempts at reconciling keep failing. Your experience highlights the crucial difference between transactional forgiveness (a quick fix to end discomfort) and transformative forgiveness (a difficult, internal process). This conflict comes from depth of emotional capacity and strength in vulnerability.
I’m going to share a view of forgiveness that requires looking inward. While many spiritual traditions include deep self-reflection, the approach I’m proposing shifts the focus from the external act (a declaration of forgiveness or reliance on an outside power) to the internal psychological work. The goal is to discover why and where you are triggered by what’s being said about you, then finding avenues for your own personal repair to help you better understand.
What Can Limit Forgiveness
When criticism or feedback comes, it often feels like a direct attack on a person’s core identity. In the case of your parents, their identity as “good parents” was questioned, hooking into their own uncomfortable feelings of having come up short.
When their desire for closeness returned, they offered “forgiveness,” but it didn’t hold. Their declaration of forgiveness was real for them at that moment, but it didn’t plumb the personal depth needed to have lasting power. This wasn’t malicious; it was an act of emotional limitation—an attempt to bridge the distance without the necessary internal tools. True forgiveness must be a bridge built on understanding, not a shield to block communication. This insight could help you better understand why their gesture failed to resolve anything.
The Work Blocked by Shame: A Universal Barrier
Effective forgiveness is something all parties would need to work toward from a position of vulnerability and requires deep introspection. The work toward effective forgiveness is twofold for anyone in a relationship. It requires us to cultivate depth, or introspective understanding, as well as to build bandwidth, or emotional capacity. Developing this ability to look within allows us to live in that uncomfortable internal place where self-understanding can sometimes reside.
When you delivered your criticism, they experienced an uncomfortable internal reaction. As Pema Chödrön explains: “The other person is just the mailman; they’re only delivering the letter. The message is the deep, familiar feeling of being wounded. If we can pause and look at it in this way, we realize this is an old story.”
Their fast, defensive response (”Let it go!”) tells us that they got stuck at the surface pain, which is often blocked by shame. As Dr. Becky Kennedy explains: “Guilt says, ‘I did something bad.’ Shame says, ‘I AM bad.’”
When a defensive person’s inner voice says, “I am a bad parent” (or spouse, or friend), their reaction is a quick survival response. They hoped offering forgiveness would relieve them, and you, of all the pain, but it failed to heal the internal wound that Chödrön describes. Their ruptured forgiveness could have been the result of low emotional bandwidth—trouble tolerating distress or complex emotional information. The capacity for listening or self-reflection requires deep internal work that they may not currently have in their tool kit.
Acceptance and Internal Forgiveness
For you, the difficult task is accepting that your parents may not currently be able to process your request for understanding. This would be true in any conflict where, despite their best efforts, people walk away without resolution. In circumstances where the other cannot understand or possibly accept what you would like to communicate, your options come from areas that are more under your own control:
Own Your Healing: Your parents’ difficulty tolerating you speaking with them your concerns triggers the familiar wound of feeling unheard. Your healing will come from you recognizing this pattern, validating that old hurt yourself, and drawing on your own strengths and support system to heal.
Find a Level of Acceptance: This doesn’t mean excusing the others’ behavior, but viewing their actions as an expression of their emotional ceiling rather than a deliberate, personalized dismissal. Their inability to engage is a sign of their own pain and limitation. Acceptance, for you comes from seeing this reality, which allows you to define the safest territory for yourself within the relationship.
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So, Dear Frustrated. Still Blamed and Discouraged,
Thank you for writing to me and telling me about the challenges in your family. Forgiveness is a complicated act. I wrote this particular column with the goal of clarifying where the power of forgiveness lies, to explain where you and your parents might have gotten stuck, and what might help provide more understanding in the future.
I would love to hear from you again in a while, to hear how things are going.
Best,
Kathy
Please send emails to me with your questions about estrangement to ksinsheimermft@gmail.com
This is column #8
