“How ironic that it was the act of not forgiving that finally freed me to forgive,” writes Nancy Richards a survivor of child abuse, who eventually forgave her mother.[i]
While researching for my book, You Don’t Need to Forgive, I discovered that there are many reasons why people struggle to forgive their offenders. One of the most common obstacles I encountered occurs when people feel pressure to forgive.
Pressure doesn’t generate forgiveness.
Have you ever tried to force yourself to do something only to realize that the pressure you placed on yourself made it harder to accomplish? If you couldn’t do it despite all that pressure, did you then judge yourself? Pressuring yourself to forgive when you are unable to do so can trigger shame and may actually sabotage your ability to forgive. Those who pressure themselves to forgive often find it difficult to achieve genuine forgiveness.
Have others pressured you to forgive? People tend to pressure others to forgive due to a variety of intentions, some are well-intentioned while others are malicious. Regardless of the intention, pressuring others to forgive rarely produces genuine forgiveness.
What if, instead of forcing yourself or allowing others to pressure you to forgive your offenders, you start by welcoming the experience of unforgiveness and see what unfolds from there? You might be surprised by what occurs.
Embracing Unforgiveness.
“I start with unforgiveness and move to forgiveness, not the other way around,” says psychologist Rosenna Bakari. “Once you have the space to move deeper into healing and you’re able to understand and experience your pain, you may forgive, or you may not. You’ll find out once you get there.”[ii]
Unforgiveness is a state in which you have not forgiven your offender. When you experience unforgiveness, you can be unable, unwilling, or uninterested in forgiving, or perhaps all of the above. Embracing unforgiveness can actually help you to forgive if that’s what you need. It might sound contradictory, but forgiveness is more likely to happen naturally if you don’t brute force it. We often forget that unforgiveness is a valuable part of the forgiveness process and can be the first step toward forgiveness. Seeing it this way is far more valuable than writing it off as a destructive experience that we must overcome quickly.
Unforgiveness can be a long process that has many stages. Therefore, unforgiveness can be a starting point, an ending point, or a stop along the way; forgiving is a time-consuming process. You will likely spend most of your journey in a state of unforgiveness. If forgiveness occurs, it usually happens in the later stages. Therefore, it doesn’t make sense to devote time and energy to force forgiveness in the initial or middle stages of your journey. It’s more realistic to welcome unforgiveness for as long as it needs to be a part of your process.[iii]
Here are some methods to embrace unforgiveness:
- Let go of the pressure to forgive. Accept that pressuring or forcing forgiveness (originating from yourself or others) will not help you to forgive. If anything, it will hinder your process.
- Feel your emotions. Allow yourself to experience all of your emotions (including anger) associated with your offender and the offense. Emotional processing is a vital part of the forgiveness process. Sometimes people try to forgive so they can avoid feeling uncomfortable anger, debilitating fear, or devastating grief. However, you cannot truly relinquish your emotions without first experiencing them, and you cannot truly forgive before you engage in active emotional processing.
- Identify obstacles to forgiving. What’s in your way of forgiving? Common obstacles are experiencing shame, low self-worth, not feeling safe, a lack of emotional processing, and not needing to forgive at all. Try addressing your obstacles before focusing on forgiveness.
You decide if you need to forgive.
There is only one person who can decide if you need to forgive. That person is not a psychologist who specializes in forgiveness research. It’s not a social media influencer with a large following. It isn’t a friend or family member. It’s not your therapist or psychiatrist. It’s you. You decide. No one else has the authority to make these decisions for you. You decide if you need to forgive your offender or not. If you need or want to forgive your offender, start with unforgiveness.
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[i][i] Nancy Richards, Mother, I Don’t Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative for Healing (elf-pub., 2017), 124.
[ii] Rosenna Bakari (psychologist), in discussion with the author, June 2022.
[iii] Gregory, A. You Don’t Need to Forgive: Trauma Recovery on Your Own Terms. Minneapolis: Broadleaf Books; 2025, 183.