“I can’t forgive him. I’ve tried for years, but I just can’t,” said Craig, referring to his father, who neglected him throughout his childhood. “I know it’s because I’m a bad person. Good people forgive, and bad people don’t.”
Craig struggled with deep-seated shame stemming from child abuse. His father’s lack of attention, love, and ability to meet his basic needs taught Craig that he lacked value. As an adult, Craig developed the belief that he was a bad person despite having little evidence to support this perception.
While researching for my book, You Don’t Need to Forgive, I discovered that in trauma recovery, shame is not defined by the emotions of embarrassment or feeling ashamed but by a much more detrimental experience. Shame researcher Brené Brown defines shame as “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging—something we’ve experienced, done, or failed to do makes us unworthy of connection.”[i] Shame is not guilt, an emotion associated with our actions or inactions; it is an emotion connected to our perceptions of ourselves. Shame serves no purpose, is always detrimental, and is perpetuating in trauma recovery.
Shame is common in trauma recovery.
I wish I could say that it’s rare for trauma survivors to experience shame. Sadly, shame is a common emotion for survivors to feel, especially those who’ve experienced complex or developmental trauma. As a trauma psychotherapist, I’ve heard many survivors admit to having these beliefs (to name a few):
- I’m bad
- I’m not good enough
- I’m worthless
- I’m unlovable
- I’m weak
- I’m broken
One of the most damaging aspects of shame is its self-perpetuating nature. Trauma survivors are more likely to act in ways that support their shame than ways that challenge it. For example, Craig believed that he was a bad person. As a result, he sabotaged his relationships in which people treated him with respect and love, providing him with evidence that he is not bad person. Being exposed to evidence that contracted his shame was too overwhelming, so he ended these relationships, and created more evidence that he was bad. Thus, Craig’s shame perpetuated more shame and he became caught in a never-ending shame cycle.
Forgiveness requires self-worth.
“Good people forgive, and bad people don’t,” said Craig, who believed he was bad. Even though Craig tried everything to forgive his father, he could not, because his low self-worth made it impossible to forgive.
Shame erodes self-worth, which is a prerequisite for genuine forgiveness. Forgiveness researcher Nathaniel Wade and colleagues note, “Within the definition of forgiveness is the implicit idea that people possess at least a moderate degree of self-respect, self-esteem, or perhaps, ego strength to be able to forgive.”[ii] Trauma survivors need to have some level of self-worth to forgive their offenders. Without self-worth, survivors may be unable to forgive, even if they desperately want to and do everything they can to try to forgive. One precondition of forgiveness is that one must be able to take on another person’s perspective: the offender. This requires a foundation (self-worth) to stand upon. If a survivor believes that they have value and someone wrongs them, they are able to consider the offender’s experience. If a survivor doesn’t believe that they have value, it might be impossible for them to consider the experience of their offender, as they are blocked by shame. [iii]
Address shame before pursuing forgiveness.
If survivors want to forgive their offenders but can’t bring themselves to do so, they may be experiencing shame. If they are, it’s best to address their shame before they pursue forgiveness. Survivor Nancy Richards says it best, “We have all heard ‘You must forgive to heal.’ It is my experience that you must heal to forgive.”[iv] Once self-worth is restored, survivors may find that they are better able to forgive their offenders or that they might not need to forgive at all.[v]
Embrace elective forgiveness.
When trauma survivors are forced, pressured, or encouraged to forgive their offenders, and they cannot forgive due to shame, the typical response is to feel greater shame. “Everywhere I turned, I heard the same words: ‘You have to forgive,’” writes Richards. “They came from my family, my counselors, and the religious community alike. I saw myself as a complete and utter failure. As though my self-esteem wasn’t low enough from years of abuse, try as I might, I couldn’t even get forgiving right!”[vi] If a trauma survivor is told that they need to forgive, but they can’t, the most intuitive explanation will be that there is something wrong with them. This only exacerbates shame, moving forgiveness further out of reach.
Forgiveness should never be forced, pressured, encouraged, or recommended for trauma survivors in recovery. In contrast, forgiveness should never be discouraged, shunned, or sabotaged. Forgiveness should always be viewed as an elective component of trauma recovery. Elective forgiveness gives trauma survivors the agency to explore, discover, embrace, ignore, oppose, or withhold forgiveness throughout their recovery. Elective forgiveness is also less likely to perpetrate shame because if survivors cannot forgive or do not wish to forgive.
They have not failed and have done nothing wrong.
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[i] Brené Brown, “Shame vs. Guilt,” Brené Brown (blog), January 15, 2013, https://brenebrown.
com/articles/2013/01/15/shame-v-guilt/.
[ii] Nathaniel G. Wade et al., “Helping Clients Heal: Does Forgiveness Make a Difference?”
Professional Psychology: Research and Practice 36, no. 6 (December 2005): 634.
[iii] Gregory, A. You Don’t Need to Forgive: Trauma Recovery on Your Own Terms. Minneapolis: Broadleaf Books; 2025, 105.
[iv] Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don’t Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative for Healing (self-pub., 2017), xii.
[v] Gregory, A. You Don’t Need to Forgive: Trauma Recovery on Your Own Terms. Minneapolis: Broadleaf Books; 2025, 111.
[vi] Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don’t Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative for Healing (self-pub., 2017), 70.