Three Steps of Forgiveness

To end the cycle of abuse, it's crucial for victims to complete a three step process of forgiveness. Understanding the Truth behind forgiveness ensures victims don’t become perpetrators, as a trauma response, or continue to be victimized by the transgressor. 

3 STEPS OF FORGIVENESS

• Validation 
• Cancellation
• Empathy 

​It's All About You

Forgiveness is for you, comes from you and is your responsibility to yourself. In other words it's all about you! To forgive, one must first become aware of and acknowledge the offense that's been committed and how it has devalued you. This process is called validation and without it, there is nothing to forgive.

One cannot cancel a debt they don’t know exists, which is why validation is the first step toward forgiveness. Everyone is different and whether it takes moments or years to validate your loss, it is essential time not be a factor in the equation.

You Were Wronged

Cancellation of debt is the next step in your journey towards forgiveness. It is acceptance that you are giving up your right to collect that which was legitimately yours and was wrongfully taken from you but can never be returned. It's accepting there is always some level of debt incurred by an aggressor that can never be repaid. As an example, even if the thief returns all the money they stole from you, the emotional trauma of the theft can never be repaid. Cancellation is acceptance that this portion of the debt is lost forever.

Cancellation of a debt does not need to be communicated to the offender because forgiveness is for your benefit not theirs. Also it's important to know forgiveness does not automatically generate reconciliation between the victim and the perpetrator. Reconciliation is an obligation only the wrongdoer can pursue and is never the victim's responsibility too seek or accept. 

Empathy Empowers You

Empathy is the last step on your journey to forgiveness and it is the ability to sense and understand the emotions of another by imagining what the other person might be thinking or feeling. When applied to forgiveness of a perpetrator, the victim experiences deeply the inherent injustice of forgiveness because they are expected to feel empathetic emotions for the person who didn’t show any regard for them. If one is to look at empathy as compassion for the human condition, which we all suffer from, then it begins to seem plausible to obtain. Empathy is what releases a victim from the mental grip the perpetrator’s unjust actions hold over them.

Be careful to not confuse empathy with sympathy. Sympathy is feeling sorry for the culprit and is equated with pity. In the Greek, ‘sym’ means together and ‘pathos’ refers to feeling sorry or sad for. Another way of viewing it is that sympathy is becoming one with the trespasser in an emotionally sorrowful way. Whereas empathy, in its basic form, is the action of understanding. Differentiating between the two is ultra-important because one entangles you with the perpetrator and the other frees you from them!

Remember forgiveness is for your benefit and is an issue of the heart, which means nothing needs to be communicated to the offender. Having empathy does not excuse the perpetrator for their behavior and it is not victim blaming. Empathy empowers you to move fully through forgiveness so you can live from a point of healing and peace instead of trauma.

​Embrace Struggle!

by Bonnie Penner