The Myth of Forgiveness: Why Healing Doesn't Always Require Letting Go

"I know I should forgive them, but I can't."

It's a sentence therapists hear surprisingly often.

Sometimes it's a woman trying to come to terms with an emotionally neglectful parent. Sometimes it's a man struggling after a painful betrayal. Sometimes it's someone carrying the wounds of bullying, abuse, abandonment, or years of criticism.

Alongside their pain is often another burden: the belief that they are somehow healing incorrectly because they haven't forgiven.

After all, we're surrounded by messages that tell us forgiveness is the ultimate sign of emotional maturity. Movies celebrate it. Spiritual teachings encourage it. Friends recommend it. Social media quotes insist that forgiveness is the key to peace.

But what if forgiveness is more complicated than that?

What if healing is not measured by how quickly you forgive?

The Cultural Pressure to Forgive

Many of us grow up with messages such as:

• "Forgive and forget."

• "Holding on to anger only hurts you."

• "You need to forgive to move on."

• "Be the bigger person."

While these ideas are often well-intentioned, they can create a second layer of suffering.

A person who has already been hurt now feels guilty for still feeling hurt.

A survivor of betrayal begins to wonder whether their lingering anger means they are bitter or emotionally unhealthy.

Someone grieving a painful childhood feels pressured to skip over their sadness and go straight to forgiveness.

In therapy, this often sounds like:

"I know I shouldn't still be angry."

But perhaps the question isn't why you're still angry.

Perhaps the question is whether your anger still has something important to say.

What Forgiveness Is Not

One of the biggest misunderstandings about forgiveness is that people confuse it with several other concepts.

Forgiveness does not necessarily mean:

• Forgetting what happened

• Excusing harmful behaviour

• Reconciliation

• Trusting someone again

• Removing consequences

• Pretending the hurt wasn't significant

A person can forgive a parent and still maintain firm boundaries.

A spouse can forgive infidelity and still choose to leave the marriage.

A survivor can forgive an abuser and still seek justice.

Forgiveness and reconciliation are not the same thing.

Forgiveness and trust are not the same thing.

Forgiveness and access are definitely not the same thing.

Understanding these distinctions often brings immense relief. It allows people to stop seeing forgiveness as an obligation to welcome harmful people back into their lives.

Why Therapists Often Focus on Something Else First

Many people arrive in therapy wanting to forgive.

Yet experienced therapists often focus on something else before forgiveness ever enters the conversation.

They focus on safety.

They focus on grief.

They focus on anger.

They focus on boundaries.

This is because emotions we often label as "negative" can serve important psychological functions.

Anger, for example, frequently protects dignity. It tells us that something unfair happened. It signals that a boundary was crossed. It reminds us that we deserved better.

When people rush toward forgiveness before fully processing their hurt, forgiveness can become a form of avoidance rather than healing. They may be trying to escape pain rather than understand it. In these situations, forgiveness becomes a shortcut around grief rather than a destination reached through it.

What Actually Heals?

Research and clinical experience suggest that healing is rarely the result of a single decision. Instead, healing often emerges through several interconnected processes.

Understanding

Healing begins when we make sense of our experiences.

Rather than asking, "Why did this happen to me?" we begin exploring, "How has this affected me?"

Grieving

Many wounds involve loss. The loss of trust. The loss of innocence. The loss of the parent we wished we had. The loss of the future we imagined. Grief honours these losses instead of denying them.

Reclaiming Agency

Pain often leaves people feeling powerless. Healing involves moving from a story of helplessness toward a story of authorship. The past may have shaped us, but it does not have to define us.

Self-Compassion

Many people direct more anger toward themselves than toward those who hurt them.

Healing often involves releasing self-blame and treating ourselves with the kindness we would offer a friend.

Boundaries

Healthy healing includes deciding what access people will have to us going forward.

Boundaries are not punishment. They are self-respect in action. Notice that none of these processes require forgiveness. And yet all of them can foster profound healing.

A Different Way to Think About Forgiveness

Perhaps forgiveness is not saying:

"What happened was okay."

Perhaps forgiveness is saying:

"What happened was not okay, but I refuse to let it determine the rest of my life."

In this sense, forgiveness becomes less about the person who caused the harm and more about the relationship we choose to have with our own future. For some people, this kind of forgiveness emerges naturally over time. For others, it never fully arrives.

Both experiences are valid. Both people can heal.

The Real Goal

The goal of therapy is not to force forgiveness.

The goal is freedom. Freedom from carrying someone else's actions as a lifelong burden.

Freedom from shame. Freedom from self-blame. Freedom to build a meaningful life that is larger than what happened to us. Forgiveness may be one pathway toward that freedom. But it is not the only pathway. Healing is not measured by how quickly you forgive. It is measured by how fully you reclaim your life.

References - 

Worthington, E. L. (2005). Handbook of Forgiveness.

Enright, R. D. & Fitzgibbons, R. P. (2015). Forgiveness Therapy.

Herman, J. (1992). Trauma and Recovery.

McNulty, J. K. (2011). "The Dark Side of Forgiveness" (important because it shows forgiveness is not universally beneficial in all contexts).

Disclaimer: This blog post is meant for awareness/entertainment purposes only. It is not medical advice and one must refrain from self-diagnosing. It is in no way a substitute for therapy with a mental health professional and it is not meant to be clinical. To consult with a psychotherapist on our team, you can contact us on fettle.counselling@gmail.com.