Should You Forgive Your Parents?
158. Should You Forgive Your Parents?
You had a difficult childhood or a complicated relationship with your parents, and you’re struggling to turn the page. You’ve been told more than once that forgiveness is what frees you from your past, but you still have too much resentment to forgive. You’d like to be at peace with your past without validating or accepting what was done. In this episode I’m going to talk to you about the 4 steps in the process of making peace with your past, and about my own personal journey through this process. In episode 25 I explain how working on the relationship with your parents can help you in your love life.
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My personal journey with forgiveness
I think it’s important that I share my personal journey with you, because without it you might wonder who is this woman giving lessons on forgiveness maybe she never went through anything difficult, so it’s easy for her to forgive.
Let me give you the example of my relationship with my father. When I was little, my father was very quick-tempered, he tended to put me down, and I was afraid of him. There was a lot of conflict with my mother, and for a long time my father was the “bad parent” to me.
I can say that I transformed the relationship with my father: for the first 30 years of my life I had a difficult and conflictual relationship with him — we didn’t even speak to each other for a few years — and for the last 15 years I’ve had a beautiful relationship with him, because I was able to make peace inside my heart and start a new relationship with him. Not a surface-level forgiveness, but real peace in my heart. Now that he has been gone for a year and a half, I’m glad I took that step, because I have no regrets about my relationship with my father.
I went through the 4 phases that I’m going to describe to you in this episode:
- Acknowledging my suffering. For a very long time I excused my parents’ actions because of their own difficult past, and I found it very hard to admit that they hadn’t done everything right. I remember one day in therapy my therapist told me I hadn’t had an easy childhood. At first I thought, “Here we go, she’s putting me in the role of the poor victim when it wasn’t really that bad,” and as I moved further along in my process, I allowed myself to recognize that no, some of what happened wasn’t okay, even if it was my parents, and even if they themselves had had a difficult past. That didn’t minimize in any way what I myself had been through.
- Grieving the ideal parent. I then went through a phase of anger, telling myself that I hadn’t chosen to live through this and that it was also impacting my life, the way I relate to others, my confidence and my self-esteem. I also had to grieve the parents I would never have, the limitations they had — I saw them as they really were, with their strengths and their weaknesses. I also realized that not all the fault lay with my father, and that he wasn’t only the “bad parent” (I talk about this in episode 156).
- Healing my suffering. I then focused first on working on the impact of my past in my life. The more that impact shrank, the less resentment and anger I felt toward my parents.
- Forgiving or making peace. Once I had moved past that impact, I had the space to truly understand why my father had acted the way he did. I had the space to allow repair on my side — meaning yes, my father didn’t behave well, yes I understand why he did what he did, and I decide I no longer want to carry the weight of my past into my present and into my future. By making this repair and coming back to my father on new terms, I was able to have a beautiful relationship with him, and I believe that repaired a great deal inside me.
4 steps to make peace with your past
1. Acknowledging your suffering
I’ve noticed with my clients (and with myself too) that the more difficult someone’s past was, the more they tended to minimize what happened, sometimes even idealizing their parents. It’s a natural survival mechanism that allows you to keep going.
And yet fully acknowledging what happened is essential in order to free yourself from it.
To acknowledge is to accept and see all the pain, all the harm, that this past inflicted on you, and to fully become aware of the consequences it has had in your life, by giving responsibility back to the other person, where it belongs. This step is especially important if you suffered physical or psychological violence from a parent, because that parent failed in their role of protecting you.
Recognizing that what they did was not normal allows you to readjust your inner judge, the one that defines what is normal or not, so that you no longer accept abusive situations later in your life.
As long as that readjustment of your inner judge hasn’t happened, you may tend to put yourself into similar situations of violence, or into situations of abuse or disrespect.
2. Faire le deuil du parent idéal
C’est souvent une phase de colère ou un sentiment d’injustice de voir que ce que tu as vécu avec tes parents t’impacte encore maintenant. C’est aussi faire le deuil de ce que tu ne recevras jamais et d’avoir des parents imparfaits qui ont eu ou ont encore des manquements envers toi. Cette phase arrive naturellement plus tu vas comprendre et reconnaitre ta souffrance dans l’étape1.
3. Panser ta souffrance :
Travailler sur l’impact que cela a sur toi
L’étape c’est de travailler sur l’impact que cela a encore sur toi, panser ce qui a été blessé. Tu ne peux pas changer l’impact de ce que tu as vécu mais tu peux changer l’impact que cela a sur toi.
En termes de système nerveux, cela prend tout son sens que l’empreinte de la situation est encore là dans ton corps, tes automatismes de réactions qui impactent ta vie sont encore activés donc tant que tout cela est là et que ces mécanismes ne sont pas dépassés, c’est comme si tu souffres encore de l’impact de la relation avec tes parents dans ta vie. Ce travail de déprogrammation des automatismes du système nerveux, y compris les empreintes parentales, passe souvent par le corps autant que par la tête. C’est ce que je fais avec l’option Journée Passé, une journée de Déprogrammation Somatique : un travail psycho-corporel pour déprogrammer ces automatismes etreprogrammer de nouveaux reflexes relationnels, en option dans le programme S’ouvrir a l’amour.
Cela me parait difficile d’être en paix ou de pardonner tant que tu ressens l’impact que cela a dans ta vie.
4.Pardonner ou faire la paix
Pardonner ce n’est pas accepter ce qui a été fait, c’est de décider de ne plus vouloir porter le poids de ton passé, dans ton présent et dans ton futur.
Pour décider si pardonner te serait utile demande-toi “ Qu’est-ce que j’ai à gagner si je pardonne ou répare cette relation ?”
Et de le faire égoïstement pour toi si tu cela t’apporte quelquechose.
Si tu souhaites pardonner 3 pistes de réflexions peuvent t’aider pour y arriver :
- Comprendre pourquoi ton parent a agi comme cela. Si cela est possible car il n’y a pas toujours d’explications logiques. Tu peux te demander ce qu’il a vécu dans son enfance, pourquoi agit-il comme cela selon toi.
- Renouer avec ton pouvoir intérieur en prenant conscience que tu n’es plus dans cette position de victime et que tu peux prendre un autre rôle dans tes relations futures.
- Voir en quoi cette expérience t’a permis d’être la personne que tu es avec les nouvelles ressources que tu as développé face à cette épreuve.
Si tu décides de ne pas faire ce travail de réparation en vrai avec ton parent, tu as un outil magnifique pour faire ce travail pour toi c’est le dialogue parent-enfant IMAGO.
Le dernier avantage de faire la paix c’est d’expérimenter la réparation et de voir que des blessures mêmes profondes peuvent se réparer.
Going further
Si tu as envie d’approfondir le sujet et d’identifier tes propres schémas amoureux tu as mon livre S’ouvrir à l’amour disponible dans toutes les librairies.
S'ouvrir à l'Amour
Le livre qui va te permettre d'identifier tes schémas amoureux et te permettre d'apprendre les clefs pour construire une relation saine
Going further
And if you’d like to work on your love patterns through the body and transform your love life, there’s the Opening up to Love program.
Sandy Kaufmann
is a somatic therapist and coach, based in Switzerland. She is the author of two books published by Éditions Eyrolles and has accompanied more than 600 people. She is the creator of the Somatic Deprogramming method and hosts the podcast “S’ouvrir à l’amour”, ranked in the French top 50 in the relationships category.
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