Reasons Why Safety Precedes Forgiveness for Survivors of Abuse

• Forgiveness Without Safety Harms Survivors
• Feeling Safe Enough
• Reflections for Survivors and Clinicians

When your offender(s) can’t harm you now or in the future, you are safe. Can you forgive them? Like with all aspects of trauma recovery, the answer is not a simple yes or no. Safety isn’t just about the reality of you being safe, but how safe you feel. You might be safe but not feel safe. This is a common experience, as trauma hinders the ability to assess one’s safety accurately. Trauma tells us that we are not safe even when we are. Feeling is just as crucial in trauma recovery as being because these two experiences are often indistinguishable; for us, not feeling safe feels the same as actually not being safe.

After World War II ended, forgiveness advocates might have said to Wiesenthal, “You’re safe now. You’ve survived. The Nazis cannot harm you. You should now be able to forgive.” Yet if Wiesenthal experienced trauma and did not feel safe for years after he was liberated, that would have been impossible. Survivors must both be and feel safe before they can genuinely forgive.

Forgiveness Without Safety Harms Survivors

“He’s a monster. He beat me and locked me in my room for days,” Charlie shared during an Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meeting. “I can’t think about him without feeling angry.” Charlie began using alcohol at age 10 to cope with their stepfather’s emotional and physical abuse. By age 20, they were hospitalized for alcohol poisoning twice and had been arrested for disorderly conduct, as well as for driving under the influence—multiple times. At age 22, Charlie got sober, embraced their identity as nonbinary, and began attending AA meetings daily. AA helped Charlie to understand their trauma and use of alcohol as a coping mechanism, but the forgiveness advocates associated with AA nearly destroyed their recovery.

“You need to forgive him,” was the message from Charlie’s AA group members. “If you don’t forgive, you’ll relapse, and if you relapse, you’ll die,” said Charlie’s AA sponsor.

The AA group and the sponsor encouraged Charlie to forgive their stepfather by spending time with him. It did not matter to them that the stepfather continued to emotionally abuse Charlie; he often called them “a freak,” “a drunk,” and “a cunt.” The group encouraged Charlie to ignore these harmful words and approach him with compassion and empathy. Charlie followed this advice and spent more time with their stepfather, expressing compassion and empathy in the hopes that this would ignite forgiveness, which they were told would help them recover from trauma and addiction.

Instead, this exposure invited further trauma as their stepfather continued to abuse them emotionally and physically, resulting in Charlie needing to be hospitalized with a broken leg and ribs after their stepfather pushed them down a flight of stairs. The AA group’s recommendation to forgive caused Charlie to place themself in unsafe situations, which led to retraumatization. As a result, Charlie stopped attending AA meetings, ended communication with their sponsor, and relapsed days later.  

Attempting to forgive without safety threatened Charlie’s survival. Some survivors have even been killed due to pressure to forgive their offender(s), which made them feel as if they needed to continue to participate in unsafe relationships. Psychologist Mona Gustafson Affinito writes, “Workers in the field of domestic abuse, for example, are familiar with victims returning to their abusers because they have been advised to ‘forgive’ the perpetrator. Physical and emotional injury, child abuse, and death of both victims and abusers have resulted.” Those who advocate for forgiveness should be aware that their recommendations might contribute to the deaths of survivors who are not safe. “How many battered women, for example, have returned to their batterers for more (and perhaps fatal) abuse because some counselor advised them to keep trying to save the marriage out of love and forgiveness?” asked philosopher Jeffrie G. Murphy. “I do not know what the answer to this question is, but I am worried that the boosters for universal forgiveness may not give ample thought to such issues.” Unfortunately, however, many laypeople and clinicians pressure, encourage, or recommend forgiveness to survivors without considering their safety.

Regarding the risks of forgiving when one is not safe, practitioners of forgiveness therapy say that it’s not forgiveness that’s the problem, it’s reconciliation. They argue that reconciliation is to blame when forgiveness occurs without safety. “The argument seems to imply that forgiving is a way for the offender to keep a sinister control over the forgiver. If forgiving led automatically to reconciliation, then the argument would have weight,” write Enright and Fitzgibbons. They clarify their reframe with an example: “Suppose Alice forgives a husband who continues his pattern of abuse. Is she not now open to even deeper abuse? If she misunderstands forgiveness and confuses it with reconciliation, then, yes, she is open to further and dangerous abuse.”

Many confuse forgiveness with reconciliation. People rarely know or communicate the distinction between these two concepts, and this mistake can cause harm. Practitioners of forgiveness therapy must be aware that though forgiveness is not reconciliation, forgiveness can lead to reconciliation, which may jeopardize a survivor’s safety. Therefore, all clinicians must provide survivors with psychoeducation regarding the difference between forgiveness and reconciliation and consistently assess the safety of survivors pursuing forgiveness. But at the end of the day, a debate over semantics doesn’t hold much weight when a recommendation to forgive could lead to a survivor’s death. When forgiveness is dangerous, it should not be a part of recovery.

Of course, forgiveness without safety does not always lead to death. However, it can still harm in other ways. Forgiveness can encourage repeat offenses rather than deter them, giving the offender(s) the opportunity and incentive to continue their abusive behavior. Psychologist James K. McNulty conducted a study that found that the tendency to forgive correlated with continued psychological and physical aggression in marriage. He found that spouses who were more forgiving experienced greater psychological and physical aggression in their marriages over the first four years when compared to less forgiving spouses, who reported declines in psychological and physical aggression. McNulty expressed concern about how forgiveness can negatively impact relationships, writing that “the tendency to express forgiveness may lead offenders to feel free to offend again by removing unwanted consequences for their behavior (e.g., anger, criticism, rejection, loneliness) that would otherwise discourage reoffending.” Consequences are needed in relationships, but forgiveness can insulate offenders from the consequences of their actions, causing them to reoffend. During the first month of Charlie’s trauma therapy with me, they told me about their experience with their AA group and how their insistence on forgiveness had harmed them by encouraging them to reengage in an unsafe relationship with their stepfather. This prompted me to suggest, “What if you choose a new group that could better meet your needs?”

“I can do that?” Charlie asked, surprised. “Why not?” I responded. “Your old AA group was no longer helpful. Why not see if another community could be more beneficial to you at this stage in your recovery?”

Charlie hit the ground running, and within two weeks, they found a new AA group and a new sponsor who considered safety, not forgiveness, the top priority. This group asked Charlie questions such as “What do you need to stay sober?” “What works for you?” and “Do you want to forgive him?” Charlie felt accepted by this group, and as a result, they continued participating in AA, which became vital to their recovery. Months later, Charlie decided to estrange themself from their stepfather, which their AA sponsor, the group, and I supported, as Charlie reported that this estrangement was what they needed to feel safe. One year later, they received their one-year AA sobriety coin and have since continued to make considerable gains in their trauma recovery.

You need to be and feel safe before you can forgive. If you are currently not safe, you cannot focus on forgiveness. You may be safe but do not feel safe, so forgiveness is currently out of reach for you as well. You may have never felt safe, and the experience of thriving feels foreign. However, it is entirely possible for you to both be and feel safe. The human brain prioritizes survival, but once this priority is met by reestablishing safety, the brain can refocus on thriving (recovery and possibly forgiveness).

Feeling Safe Enough

People often assume that certain types of traumatic experiences (physical or sexual abuse, combat exposure) are more impactful than others (financial, emotional, or spiritual abuse, abandonment, or neglect). Yet, studies indicate that children who experience emotional abuse and neglect develop the same or worse mental health issues as children who experience physical and sexual abuse. Therefore, we cannot assume that one type of traumatic event will have a more or less significant impact on a survivor than another. What’s more, response to trauma is highly dependent on the individual.

[edtiquote:we cannot assume that one type of traumatic event will have a more or less significant impact on a survivor than another]I’ve worked with siblings who were close in age and lived in the same home throughout their childhoods, with the same abusive parents. These siblings never have the same experiences or the same trauma responses. They are always different. Comparing your traumatic experience with another’s doesn’t make sense; if trauma were a competition, every survivor would be a winner. All traumatic experiences are significant and valid, and so all types of safety are essential.

If you are currently safe but don’t feel safe, you can begin to establish a sense of safety by accepting that all forms of felt safety are necessary. For instance, physical safety is not more or less essential than emotional safety. They are equally important. In the case of the former, you may need to feel that you are not in physical danger, and that the offender(s) or things that cause you harm cannot reach you. For the latter, the feeling of emotional safety might come when you are in an environment in which you can be honest about your emotions without feeling manipulated or invalidated. There is not one form of felt safety that should receive more or less attention or be taken more or less seriously. Every type of safety is essential in your recovery, especially since survivors often report lacking many different forms of safety. It’s common for survivors to report feeling physically, sexually, emotionally, financially, and relationally unsafe.

Financial safety is a common theme in trauma recovery, which may be surprising. However, when you take a moment to think about it, it makes a lot of sense that this is so important. In most societies, financial security creates and sustains many other types of safety. Those with financial security can use their resources to support and promote their physical, sexual, spiritual, and emotional safety. Those without financial security are often the most vulnerable to experiencing trauma, less likely to be able to escape their offender(s), and less likely to receive treatment. In addition, those who do not feel financially safe often feel unsafe in other ways. For example, some survivors living in the United States do not feel physically safe because they cannot afford medical treatment if they become ill or experience an accident.  

Some clinicians believe that you will never feel safe until you are fully engaged in the recovery process. In this view, it is impossible to reestablish safety at the beginning of recovery. Instead, these clinicians promote intense emotional processing interventions, such as forgiveness, before you feel safe or are able to tolerate processing, believing that safety will be reestablished along the way. This line of thinking only makes sense if one believes in the existence of perfect safety, a sense of security that never wavers during the pursuit of recovery. It assumes that once safety is achieved, it never goes away, and thus, the intense recovery process can continue uninterrupted. As nice as this would be, it’s not how recovery from trauma works.

Some days you might feel safer than others, and the circumstances of your life can change to bring you closer to or further away from the unsafe situations or relationships you seek to avoid. There is always the possibility of a step back in recovery, and that’s okay. It’s a normal part of recovery. No one feels safe all the time, not even people who haven’t suffered trauma. Safety cannot be a byproduct of recovery, something that happens once you start working. It must be the enduring foundation, and to lay such groundwork, the clinician must work with the survivor to establish safety before anything else. The truth is that recovery comes with safety, not the other way around. Perfect safety is unobtainable, but feeling safe enough is possible.

Events and experiences can and will threaten your safety. If you’ve ever had a pet, you’ve probably seen this play out. For instance, imagine your cat is asleep on your lap. Suddenly, the cat jumps up, looks at the corner of the room, and freezes. The cat’s hackles are raised, as if static electricity has made their fur stand up. The cat is in survival mode; they heard something that caused them to feel unsafe. Then, after a few moments, the cat lays back down on your lap and falls asleep. The cat has reestablished a sense of safety and now feels safe enough to refocus on thriving (napping in the open).

All organisms have moments of feeling safe (focused on thriving) and moments of feeling unsafe (focused on survival). They go back and forth, course-correcting as they go. The goal for survivors is not to reestablish perfect safety; that is impossible, and they never had it in the first place (none of us do). The goal is to reestablish actual safety and a felt sense of safety, which promotes your survival and makes you feel safe enough to focus on thriving. As you progress in recovery, your clinicians hope to see you become more resilient as your sense of safety increases.

Reflections for Survivors and Clinicians

Reflections for Survivors

Survivors who question the importance of their safety can ask themselves the following:   

• Am I safe? If not, can I prioritize reestablishing safety?
• Am I feeling unsafe? If so, can I prioritize reestablishing safety?
• Do I feel physically, emotionally, sexually, relationally, spiritually, or financially unsafe? Do I feel any other type of unsafety?
• Do I know what I need to support my actual safety and feelings of safety? If so, can I communicate these needs to my clinicians and those in my support system?
• Can I prioritize my need to feel safe enough over my participation in intense emotional processing interventions such as forgiveness?  

Reflections for Clinicians

Clinicians working with survivors can ask themselves the following:  

• Do I believe my client’s safety is vital in their ability to progress in recovery?
• Have I assessed my client for all forms of safety (physical, emotional, sexual, relational, spiritual, financial, etc.)? Am I continuing to assess their safety at all stages of their recovery?
• Does my client always feel unsafe, or are these feelings triggered by something or someone?
• Am I helping my client reestablish both actual and feelings of safety?
• Am I prioritizing my client’s sense of feeling safe enough before introducing processed-based interventions such as forgiveness?  

* Reprinted with permission from You Don't Need to Forgive by Amanda Ann Gregory copyright © 2024 Broadleaf Books 

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