Forgiveness

I had a very tricky but interesting therapy session today around the concept of therapy. I was brought up in a house where amongst all the disfunction, upsets and disputes were never settled. People did stuff and it was ignored or created conflict but was never resolved.
I have continued that into adult life, unable to forgive other people for their mistakes. I got better and moving past it ie just knowing things weren't being resolved but burying it.
My T made a mistake this week. She forgot that we were meeting this week and tried to organise a phonecall, which is our usual pattern. A couple of weeks ago she hadn't read the diary entries i had sent her for. Both errors were minor and sorted quickly but i find it really triggering when she makes these sorts of errors and find it totally impossible to move past it. Therapy being therapy, i don't get to just have a fit over it and then bury it, so today was all about forgiveness and moving on in a better way.
It was like a class for beginners! A skill that i have completely missed out on practicing or having had modelled as a child.
So, 2 hours of discussion on forgiveness, repairing ruptures in relationships and making relationships stronger. Knackered now but food for thought - anyone else struggle with this?

I get it. In my FOO every stranger was a new best friend. Until they said or did something minor, that is, and then the relationship was effectively over. But they never told the other person that; they just ghosted. I grew up knowing no other way. I knew that some other people regularly managed to repair relationships, but I had no idea how and saw no reason to try. Long term friends of the family were very charming and very accommodating. Lovely, right? Not exactly.

I guess I think about it as acceptance more than forgiveness. It's very hard for me to accept that my T can be a good person, but not perfect. There is a big pull toward all or nothing thinking, and when the T has done something inadvertently that hurts us, it's been difficult to move past it. How can I trust him or want to be connected if he can do things that hurt us? (With us, it's the littles who feel hurt, and the protector who steps in and says, "Why the f*ck do we want to keep doing this to ourselves??")

What has helped me has been my T's consistent willingness to apologize for any part in causing me upset or distress. For me it's hard to stay angry at someone who is truly sorry for upsetting me and really wants to understand the meaning to me of whatever he did that upset me. The littles forgive him right away--I guess that part is forgiveness, but it's not a healthy forgiveness, because they're desperate to stay connected to him no matter how hurt we are and even if we haven't talked about what happened. The protector will stay angry until we're sure the T really understands why we're upset; they want him to own his part of whatever happened and to know that he'll try to avoid having that happen again, and exactly how he plans to do that.

I've posted about a lot of the ruptures and disconnections in my relationship with the T and how we've repaired them--it's gotten a little smoother over time. But the idea of me forgiving him has never come up. He just cares that I'm upset, and wants to understand why, and to help me feel less upset, if possible. It's the same approach he takes to anything that is upsetting me--the only difference is that he's sorry if he played a part in it.

I have ruminating thoughts on errors past. My T is teaching me to scramble the images or blur them so that helps.

we used to feel like theGang, like it had to be black or white.
our T said this is a child-like world view and we should grow up and realize that people are more complex than that.

in our teens we were introduced to the concepts of mercy (not getting what you deserve) and grace (getting what you don't deserve) from outside our family system. looking back I think it helped us. it introduced a new level to our interactions, like, that it isn't always justice, but that doesn't mean it is bad. there is a realm of interaction that leaves room for imperfections.
I don't know how to explain it, so I will leave it at that.

birdsong87 wrote:we used to feel like theGang, like it had to be black or white.
our T said this is a child-like world view and we should grow up and realize that people are more complex than that.

I hope your T said it more nicely than that!

It's only younger parts in us that have the all or nothing outlook--but they have a lot of influence on the whole system, and got much stronger as a result of that previous therapy. One big improvement that we've made is that when the littles are upset/hurt and the protector is saying "f*ck this guy, let's never go back," we have an older part who will act as an intermediary and let the T know what's going on.

birdsong87 wrote:there is a realm of interaction that leaves room for imperfections.

I really like that way of describing it!

he said it only slightly more nicely, like shock therapy, but it really helped L with her family problems.
he sometimes said that kind of stuff, that left you speechless for a moment because he hit home hard. it is one of his gifts, to confront stuff with incredible precision. we kind of love him for that. he can also be super gentle, so its ok.

I think that it helps to get a perspective on mistakes that ... like makes them not so bad. like chances for growth. cause really we all grow by failing and then trying something else. so everyone should be allowed to fail. how else would they grow and learn new stuff? same in relationships. they actually grow on both sides when we do the mistake, repair, learning cycle. so forgiveness kind of means that I allow the other person to get up and try again. and not hold them in the place down there where they fell.we will feel better when they get up and do better

That's all really interesting - and nice to know I am not the only one.
The idea of forgiveness was mine - I harbour grudge after grudge and what I know I struggle with is being disappointed in someone and being able to get healthily over the little, day to day stuff.
It must be lovely to accept that someone made a mistake, you got cross and upset, you talked it out, the other person was properly sorry and we all feel better.
Since this conversation with her yesterday, I think I might be less grrrrrrr about it and a bit more realistic about it not being a terrible error. In the words of one of your Ts perhaps I've grown up a bit!

For me holding a grudge goes together with estrangement, as is the custom in my FOO: Never say a word to the other person, never give them any hint they have violated your boundary or hurt you in any way, and wait for them to somehow figure out what they have done and work to repair it entirely on their own initiative.

Now as an adult, much older and a little wiser, I am still wondering how anyone can be expected to know what is wrong, or even that there is anything wrong, when the injured party maintains this wall of silence around all the hurts. And this idea of obligatory forgiveness feels like just more of the same: not just keep silent, but somehow magically erase the hurt. Isn't that exactly how we came to live with DID in the first place?

Thank you for this thread, Jolly jo; it has focused my attention on something important I need to do.