I Want To Forgive Him, But I Can’t!
Dear Don,
My father has returned to my life. I am having trouble with this, because over my entire lifetime, he flipped from being a mean drunk to a nice guy. Two years ago he did another round of recovery, and this time it seems to have stuck. Other family members report that he is not drinking. He seems to be keeping his agreements and genuinely making amends to everyone where he can. While this sounds all nice and great, I am still angry with him. He ruined all of our lives. What’s up with this man who was so mean all the time? As I write this my anger wells up in my chest and throat. I admit that somewhere deep down I feel love for him, but that went into hiding many years ago. My anger at my father keeps me from giving him a chance. I want to forgive him, but I can’t. What do I do?—-Pushing A Good Thing Away
Don: Focus on the hurt, not the anger.
First, understand the anger, then we will get to the root of the matter: the hurt. This anger, which you felt long ago, has developed into a defense to being vulnerable to your dad. This happens simply because you were hurt very badly. It hurt to be disappointed in your dad. It hurt to be embarrassed by your dad. It hurt to hear your mom and dad argue late at night through your bedroom walls. It hurt when you thought of going home and not knowing if things would be calm or full on “crazy-town”. You hurt, over and over again. When hurt goes on for a long time, it becomes too much to bear, and the mind transforms your hurt into the experience of anger. Anger walls off the more vulnerable feelings of being hurt. The hurt that you experienced creates your anger at your dad. Your anger allows you to bear the hurt, but a bigger problem is created—unforgiveness. The truth about anger, as Dr. Larry Nims, the creator of Be Set Free Fast accurately points out, is that “hurt creates the anger; anger creates the judgmental attitudes, and the judgmental attitude sets up the unforgiveness.” You are now experiencing the great tragedy of unforgiveness: being unable to be close to those you love, as well as being cut off from a fuller experience of your own self, because your heart has been shut down for a very long time. The person who is unable to forgive eventually suffers more than the one he is angry at. And, it will eventually find its way into other close relationships. Before you know it, you become defined by your close family, friends, and business associates as “the angry one”, and people will walk on eggshells around you to avoid your anger.
You are probably not the only family member who feels this way toward your dad. Others may be are covering up their feelings with the hope that everyone can reunite and move on. Your desire to move forward in spite your lack of results with this angry unforgiveness is so important to both you and those you love. You can take the lead in really moving on, and here’s how. Most likely you have glorified this anger in order to live with it by creating an idealized self-image. You may tell yourself: “I am tough and can handle the hard stuff.” Or, “Nobody messes with me.” Or, “I love to use my anger to fight the unjust things in life and get things done.” Or, “I am feisty, spirited, and hot blooded,” and so on. But when you are acting out your anger, others think: “What’s up with the woman who gets so angry all the time?” You are starting to be judged by others in a similar way you have judged your father. This is how it works. It may look a little different on the top, but under the hood, what you resist, persists. Anger is simply energy moving from here to there. Like the weather, all emotion just comes and goes in waves. If you need a meaning for it, anger simply means something important is off here and needs attending to. Other than that, anger is only trying to pass through your awareness. But, if you glorify your experience of anger, you are stuck managing a long, low-lying thunderstorm. So step one is to understand that you have constructed a defense from the painful hurt by glorifying your anger and building part of your idealized self- image around it. There is more to you than this! You are holding on to your anger out of a fear that if you let it go, you will be vulnerable to being hurt again. And, this is true. You will be vulnerable to being hurt again. But you will also be open to feeling warm and loving again, and laughing from your belly again, and feeling free to exercise choices you didn’t have when you felt this hurt as a child. As an adult, you are no longer trapped in that alcoholic crazy-town when you built your angry defenses. Those defenses worked for you then, but they are not working for you now.
Defenses are put together for protection from emotions and experiences that are too big for a child to handle. Whatever works is put into place. If you are feeling sad and it won’t go away, most likely you are resisting feeling angry at something or someone. Feel the anger, and it unlocks and frees you to be yourself again—quiet inside instead of full of noisy thoughts that drive high emotion. The other side of the coin is often the case when you feel angry and it won’t stop. You are defending against feeling sad and hurt. Feel that, step by step, and the whole stuck defense will weaken. If you ever need that defense, it will always be there for you. In the meantime, you can learn to deal with hurt in a new, more adult way. So, when there is anger and unforgiveness there is a resistance to feeling the hurt. Experience the hurt, just as it is, and the anger will slowly collapse. This will take the charge out of all the self-righteous defensive, judgmental attitudes, crusades, and false idealized pictures of yourself and release the deeper sadness and loss that have been hidden inside you for years. The result will be the experience of forgiveness that you are longing to feel, and you can be with your father as he is now, instead of defining your relationship by the past. You are able to respond, as each new moment presents itself, according to what is actually happening right here and now. If, in the present moment, he is stable, then you relate to him as he is. If, in the present moment, he is mean, you deal with that just as it is. You both get new chances and new choices every moment, none predetermined by the past. Forgiveness is the result of feeling the hurt fully, and anger, guilt, resentment, disappointment, and sadness about the past, exactly as it is, as it arises.
As your heart is opened once again, perhaps for the first time, you will feel more like your real self. You will start facing what is possible in each situation, just as it is without reacting with a long rant, inside or out, about the past. Now you can set good boundaries as needed with those you love and care about. You can experience the hurt and deal with it differently. When you are ready, therapy is very helpful in addressing your hurt and anger. Whether the therapy starts with the anger or not, it doesn’t matter. It matters that the hurt is addressed in that therapy as soon as you are willing. Only then, can you be free to be yourself in the presence of your father, no matter what he is or isn’t doing. And, no matter what he does or doesn’t do now, YOU are the winner, along with all those around you.
Now, let’s get to it! Don
Don Elium, MA MFT practices individual and couple counseling in his office in Walnut Creek, CA, San Francisco Bay Area He also works by PHONE as well as through VIDEOCAM—SKYPE with those in the United States and Internationally. Don is author, with his wife Jeanne,of four best selling books, including Raising a Family. Raising a Son, Raising a Daughter, and Raising a Teenager.
