Why Do Psychologists Advise To Forgive Parents And Should It Be Done?

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Recently I had to take part in a discussion about forgiveness, about the need to forgive everyone, forgiveness promises some kind of blessing of higher liberation, otherwise it turns into a burden that you carry on you all your life.

This idea is popular not only in home-grown mutual help "forgive and let go", in Christianity, esotericism, where it is presented as a kind of state of enlightened mind, but, unfortunately, in psychology. In psychology, it is primarily parents who are offered to forgive, for what client meeting is complete without them? Even if a client comes to you with the topic of career guidance, they, mom and dad, are always looming outside the door. Including those who have not been present in life longer than conception.

How relationships with parents affect us

And how could it be otherwise, because the child-parent relationship is the groundwork for the whole future life. We receive not only genes from our parents, but also the environment in which we form. And parent-child relationships are always about power. Although it is not customary to talk about it. More about syusi-pusi and uchi-ways is accepted: "My baby, I give him all my love, all the best."

The child is dependent, which is understandable - until he has matured, he cannot take care of himself, make decisions and be responsible. And this natural addiction gives the adult a lot of power. How to dispose of it? Depends on how mature and adequate the adult is. It is not for nothing that there is so much cruelty and sadism in children's institutions of any type. There, like a magnet, pulls adults with an unfulfilled need for power. Unrealized in a healthy way.

In parenting, the same thing - there are many parents, but how many are able to pass this test of power, when there is so much of it, because the child's trust credit is issued without verification and collateral. Therefore, not everyone goes through the experience of power.

And here we also remember that all parents are grown-up children, whom they themselves could not love and torment. And in general - not gods. They are real people who make mistakes. And children are not given instructions on how to use it "How it should be and how it should be." Therefore, in a parent-child relationship there is always and will be a lot of things that you want to tell your psychologist about.

But dad, who did not buy a pony, and dad, who beat with a wet sheet tied at the end in a knot, are still different dramas, although both clients can cry and experience them in the psychologist's office in the same way.

Forgiving parents: is it worth it?

So why are many psychologists pushing this unhelpful and even unrealistic idea of forgiving parents? In my opinion, there are several reasons for this.

Statement # 1. Our parents treat us the way their parents treated them and give us what they have. If a little and not that - so it means that there was no other.

Yes, I fully agree with this. A mother beating her daughter is doing what her mother did to her. A mom who doesn't love and quits has an empty reservoir of love, there is nowhere to get a resource. This is true. But forgiveness does not follow at all! Resentment against parents in this case is like resentment against injustice in the world, inequality of starting conditions. But admitting this is scary even for many psychologists, because they are real people.

Admitting that you had parents who would be better off is like feeling lonely in a huge world. Or be present when someone is alone.

And the idea of forgiveness allows you to avoid this, because it gives hope that parents can be forgiven, which means that everything is not so bad and even, perhaps, will improve. I will forgive my sadistic mother, because her mother was also a sadist, we will hug, cry and fraternize. And the psychologist here, like an angel with wings, will be touched by the good that happened under his leadership. And it will support the picture of an ideal world in which evil, if it exists, is always punished, and good always wins.

This means that the client is split into a child and an adult in search of compensation, punishment, retribution for the sad experience that he has.

Statement # 2. The past cannot be changed. So what's the use of carrying grudges? Parents are already elderly people, they will never go to a psychologist, but you just went, worked on yourself and forgave - and, therefore, the past has no power over you.

It's true. About the fact that the past is unchanged and parents are unlikely to correct themselves, they realize, repent, ask for forgiveness.

But then again, where is the fact that they should be forgiven? Daddy, whom the pony didn’t buy - probably you can. Explaining to an adult himself, albeit with the help of a psychologist, why he did this. But dad, who beat him with a wet sheet, is unlikely.

And you can hardly forget this, even if you say to yourself a thousand times: "Dad, I forgive you." And for many, this is a clinch - I have not forgotten the offense, but you cannot change the past either - does it mean living with this offense?

Statement # 3. The social myth that parental love is such a bun that appears with the baby.

Especially motherly love. And the fact that it is unconditional. And a taboo on any attempt to say that things are different!

Until now, with all the freedom of self-expression in social networks, rare attempts by women to admit that there is no love for a child - or motherhood causes contradictory feelings in her - are met with stormy cries of "yazhmothers": "What kind of mother are you ?!"

And it ends with the shame of everyone who could only think: "But it's true." The psychologist can also fall into the trap of this shame. And so - "Mom loved, just did not know how to express feelings, forgive her for that" - and there is no need to meet with shame.

Statement # 4. The social idea of some kind of child's duty.

Your parents gave you life, and now you owe them something for it. At least forgive imperfection - at least, and as a maximum - love, respect, serve a glass of water.

Can not? And for your sake they could not sleep at night, deny themselves everything, change diapers, teach, feed, drink and make a wedding.

Life is, of course, a gift. In the sense that it gives you choices, and while you are alive, you can change something. When you're dead there is nothing to change. But this gift is given to everyone without his participation. Children are not asked to be born.

On the contrary, if you honestly ask yourself how did you become a parent and why, how many percent of the answers will be: "Accidentally flew in", "There should be children in the family", "I gave birth for myself", "The doctor said" give birth, otherwise everything will end badly”,“I don’t know”,“I wanted a child to share my love with”?

And also, the most unconscious motive of parenting is the continuation of oneself through a child, of one's immortality, if you will. So who is giving to whom? And if we consider children's gratitude from this position, then it can only sound: "Thank you for not being killed."

But “they didn't kill” is not much about love and a healthy childhood. And many parents are so fond of speculating on the idea of a child's debt that people believe, including psychologists, that they are also someone's children.

And from this position of child's debt, forgiveness looks so natural and even petty: forgive mom - are you sorry? She gave you life, she didn't sleep at night, and you …

What if you can't forgive?

So why are psychologists poking around in the past? And what if you don't forgive and don't let go, and live with resentment towards your parents and a desire to get compensation from the world for injustice?

I am close to the idea that you need to return to the past in order to review its events as an adult. And take yourself, small, unhappy and disliked, from there. And give yourself what you didn't give back then.

Because I believe: the only child with whom we can cope perfectly well is our own, inner one. And the psychologist is the person who helps to meet and build the relationship I am an adult and I am a child. If he is not an adherent of the Forgiveness sect.

And the main task of therapy is to teach the client to live comfortably with the starting conditions that he got. To change the emphasis from parental omnipotence (and after all, resentment and a thirst for compensation are just a continuation of the recognition of parental omnipotence), and hence the denial (non-notice) of one's own omnipotence.

Change the focus to: “I am an adult, I have grown up, I am the master of my life. And parents are just people, you can have good relations with them, you can have bad ones, or not at all. Because not all parenting actions can be understood, forgiven and released. And that's okay.

Author: Elena Shpundra