Christmas has just gone past and so the season for being merry, the family gatherings and the forgiving time. What is FORGIVE? and why or how can we forgive on what basis or assumptions? furthermore, can forgive be an act of self-redemption? or it feels more like an uncomplicated way out to try to FORGET instead?
Trauma experiences do make us question, they raise questions about security and trust: Why me? Should I feel wrong about this? Was it my fault? The loss of trust, loss of faith in other it is a world of constant changes, threatening changes at times holding an overshadowing truth. For many trauma survivors, their expectations of reality have changed forever.
The expectation of forgiveness is embedded in one cultural background, to be able to "move on" to set aside their suffering reaching within their inner compassion to forgive its depicted as both moving and profound. For most survivor of trauma is almost unachievable, the pain and the shame accompanied by the stigma that trauma carries within itself it leads to personal failure. "What's wrong with me"? "Why cannot I move on"?
The rush to cut off unwanted feelings, painful memories, to sweep under the carpet loss and suffering, it will be forgotten too. Attempts hurrying towards the forgiveness to short cut the process of trauma is a tool of avoidance, its the reason for why the pain has consciously gone only to sidestep mourning, anger, hurtful feeling and self-exploration.
Therapy can help to appreciate those complexity, to find those lost parts of ourselves, to listen to those mixed feelings trauma has embedded within it. Forgiveness is a process, an important personal emotional experience, can only you decide how to access, it to process at your own pace when and how to reach a closure.
