Ep 104: How to Forgive Someone Who Hurt You — Without Losing Yourself
By Charlotte Cummings | Feel Better Podcast
Forgiveness gets talked about like it’s a moral badge or a spiritual lightning bolt—something that lands on “better people.” I don’t buy that. In my experience as a counsellor, forgiveness is not a moment of enlightenment. It’s a mental and emotional process. It takes thought, feeling, validation, and often, a plan.
Many of us carry deep hurt: from a person, a family, a workplace, an institution. The emotions that follow—anger, grief, even rage—are human. And while forgiveness can bring lightness, it’s optional. You don’t owe it to anyone. If you want to move toward it for your own sake, this guide will help you do that in grounded, practical ways.
Start Here: You’re in Charge
Forgiveness is your decision, and only yours. You’re not a better person if you forgive, and you’re not a worse person if you don’t. For some people, taking ownership looks like setting no contact or low contact boundaries first. Paradoxically, I’ve seen time apart create the safety someone needed to eventually choose forgiveness—because they reclaimed control of the relationship terms.
Consider: What would help me know this choice is truly mine? (Boundaries, time, support, space?)
You Need Validation (Even If It Doesn’t Come From “Them”)
A crucial step is having your harm witnessed and validated—by someone capable of holding it: a therapist, a trusted friend, a peer who “gets it,” or a respected person in your community. Often the people we most want acknowledgment from are unable or unwilling to offer it. That doesn’t mean you can’t get it. Don’t keep knocking on the same closed door—find a door that opens.
The Most Powerful Exercise: Write Your Objections to Forgiving
Grab a page and list every reason you’d refuse to forgive. This isn’t negative—it’s clarifying. Your objections reveal unmet needs and the actions that might move you forward (if you want to move).
Common objections (and what they point to):
“If I forgive, they get away with it.”
→ You need accountability. Options: a formal complaint, mediated acknowledgement, restorative justice, or a clear statement of wrongdoing from someone with authority.“If I forgive, it will happen to others.”
→ You need prevention. Options: reporting patterns, supporting policy change, sharing your story in safe spaces, advocacy.“I’m tired of being the bigger person.”
→ You need validation from a bigger person again—someone senior, respected, or neutral who says, “What happened was not okay.”
When you understand your objections, you can design next steps that honour them.
Make a Plan (and Give It a Purpose)
If you chose to pursue forgiveness, what would the steps look like? Consider:
Who will hear and validate me?
What gives me a sense of accountability or prevention?
What boundaries protect me now?
What rituals or practices support my processing (journaling, therapy, letter-writing you don’t send, a closing ritual)?
What timelines feel humane?
Keep the purpose centred on you: your energy, your relationships, your future. Forgiveness may incidentally benefit others—but your why needs to be self-honouring.
What Forgiveness Isn’t (Read This Twice)
Not forgetting. Your body and mind remember. Forgiveness can soften the charge, but it won’t erase memory.
Not excusing or condoning. You can name harm as wrong and still choose peace for yourself.
Not the same as reconciliation. You can forgive and not resume contact. Think of forgiveness as clearing the table, not resetting it.
Not pretending it didn’t matter. You don’t have to sweep anything under the rug to move toward freedom.
Not a moral test. You’re not “less spiritual” if you can’t or don’t want to forgive.
Not a one-and-done destination. It often comes in waves. You may climb, circle back, and climb again. That’s normal.
A Helpful Reframe: Returning the Harm
I like to think of forgiveness as returning the harm to the person or system that created it. You stop carrying what was never yours to hold. It may still exist. It may still brush up against your life. But it no longer defines you, directs you, or drains you first.
Forgiveness, done this way, helps you find choice again—redirecting your energy to the people and purposes that matter.
Who to Have Around You
People who understand grey areas, not just black-and-white takes.
Someone “senior” enough (formally or informally) to offer credible validation.
A therapist or coach who helps you map objections, design steps, and hold boundaries.
A Gentle Recap
Forgiveness is optional and yours to choose.
Get validation (don’t keep seeking it from the unwilling).
List your objections—they reveal the actions you need.
Make a plan and keep your purpose centred on you.
Remember what forgiveness isn’t.
Expect waves, not a single finish line.
Above all, offer yourself compassion. Life is complex. Your pace is valid.
If parts of this don’t fit your situation, leave them here. If you’re carrying something heavy, I’m sending you strength and softness for the road ahead. You deserve lightness and freedom.
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Hello and welcome to the Feel Better podcast. I'm Charlotte the counsellor and I've been a counsellor for the last 20 years. This is the space where I show up and share with you the stories, strategies and ideas that I've gleaned over my time helping people to navigate the things that keep them from feeling their best.
Whether that's to do with your own wellbeing, parenting or relationships, I'm here to help you feel better. Thanks for joining me. Welcome to today's episode where I'm going to be sharing my views on the topic of forgiveness.
Now I'm going to be really clear from the outset that key to my perspective when it comes to forgiveness is that we need to see this more as a mental and emotional process than something that magically happens, than a moment that arrives out of nowhere without particular effort or as something that is somewhat of a spiritual phenomenon where we are a better person if we can manage to magic up some forgiveness. I'm not sure that those views serve us particularly well so I come back to this idea that forgiveness is something that requires mental and emotional work and processing and I want today to share my views and thoughts on this topic. I think so often in our lives things happen that are hurtful, that are unfair, that cause us to feel really sad and angry and sometimes so hurt that we end up feeling a sense of rage within us that how could that person do that to me? How could that institution do that to me? How could that group of people treat me in this particular way? And it stirs in us this real feeling of injustice that that was unfair, that we can feel really harmed by what happened over a period of time and that can build in us this sense of anger towards other people or places or groups where we harbour within us this sense of unforgiveness towards them.
Now I actually really hate that term because it's bandied around in particular circles in a way that is unhelpful but what I'm wanting to really kind of get to here is the idea that how we feel when we're not forgiving another person is often quite yuck for us. It's an emotional state that has with it a heaviness, a sense of burden in our own lives and for a lot of people they want to move through these feelings but they just don't know how. And so often we get messages around how we should forgive and no advice on what that process might look like, what steps we might take, what questions we want to consider along the road in that journey.
Now so often we get the message that we should forgive, whether that comes from a church environment or whether that comes from a spiritual tradition or even some eastern religions or that comes from the lunchroom at work and Karen's views on what it is that you need to do next. We are so often told that we should forgive and so seldom told how to do this process. Now having been a counsellor for 20 years this is a topic that has come up a lot.
People come to me to share some deeply hurtful things that have happened in their lives. They might be historic or they might be current issues and how they move through these feelings to a place of greater lightness where they can say I've let some of this go. I feel like I'm able to be free from this situation more than I was.
I don't feel the sense of attachment and anger towards this person anymore. That is often the goal that we have in therapeutic conversations. So today I want to give you some insights on some of the things I work with my clients on when it comes to forgiveness in the hope that you might be able to apply a little of this wisdom in your own situation too.
Let me be clear here, I don't hold a view that you are a better person if you can forgive. You're not spiritually more enlightened or a better moral person than the next person if you can get over a particular situation. A lot of these emotions are human and where we've been hurt it is okay to feel anger and sadness and if forgiveness is not something that you find within your life that is okay.
But also what I recognize is that for a lot of people they want to reach a different emotional state when it comes to how they feel about something that happened. So let's dive into some of what can be helpful when it comes to moving towards forgiveness. The first thing that I think is so important is that you take full ownership of this decision for yourself.
That it is in fact entirely optional whether you forgive what happened to you, whether you forgive the people that perpetrated whatever it is that played out. You don't owe them anything, you don't have to forgive them, you are not a better person if you forgive them and this decision is yours and yours alone. Other people's own journeys and stories do little to help people in their own processing.
You need to know that forgiving is a choice that is entirely with you. Now I want to tell a story here about a client that I worked with where what we did was moved to a point of no contact with a parent that they had a really difficult relationship with. Now something really significant happened over the 18 months or so that they had no contact with that parent.
The choice to move out of relationship with them actually gave them the freedom that they needed to forgive their parent for some of the things that had happened in the past. The period of time of that estrangement allowed them to reset. It said to the parent, you don't have an automatic right to relationship with me.
It told the person that they were actually in control of this relationship, of how much access their parent had to them and their life and the family that they had built. So from the accompaniment that I've given to people through their own journey of moving towards a place of forgiveness, the sense of having ownership of the decision and it being a decision that is yours and yours alone and that you have power and control over seems really important. So if forgiveness is something that you're wanting to move towards, perhaps you can think about what could I do to really get to a place where I know that this is my own decision and where I'm protecting myself in the sense that this is my decision to make and I don't owe anyone anything here.
The other thing I see as really key in helping people move towards a place of forgiveness is having a sense of the harm being validated. Now one of the tricks here is that so often the people that we want to acknowledge and validate our experiences aren't in fact the people that we get that validation from. But it is so important to seek out that validation.
We want to make sure that your story has been heard, that someone has been able to be a witness to the pain and the difficulty and the impact in your own life. I think this is where we see the importance of processing as part of the journey towards forgiveness. Whether that's with a friend, whether that's sharing with someone who gets it because they've been in a similar situation or whether that's talking to a professional, having someone really witness what it is that has happened to you is important in that journey.
Now one of my greatest hacks and something that I do with all of my clients where they're wanting to move towards that place of forgiveness is I get them to write a list of their objections to offering forgiveness to that person, those people or that institution. I get them to write down what are all the reasons why you wouldn't forgive this person, why you wouldn't forgive that group of people, why you wouldn't forgive that place for what it did to you. Now this is really important because it helps us understand the objections and the barriers that we have towards moving in the direction of forgiveness.
I'm going to give you an example here. For some people they might say something like, I cannot forgive them because I do not want them to get away with it. Now that says to us that there's an important element here of the person being held to account of there being some sense of justice, of you being heard in this and there being an acknowledgement from the person that they have done something that was wrong.
So you can see here if we understand the objection, we can understand the kinds of actions that need to be taken to put things right and to hopefully move you towards that state of forgiveness. Another objection that I hear is I can't forgive them because then it will happen to others. Now that tells us that you want to do something around protecting other people from this kind of harm, either from the same person or group of people or place, or maybe you want to do something broader about this particular kind of issue, about whatever it is that you have experienced.
Hearing yourself say that your barrier to forgiveness is not wanting this to happen to other people can tell you more about what it is that you need to do. And if I was working with you as your counsellor, I would be diving into what is it that you could do that would help make sure that this doesn't happen to other people. Another thing people often say is I don't want to do that because they should be the one who's the bigger person.
I don't want to be the bigger person here. Sometimes that can tell us that you do need a bigger person again to validate what it is that has happened to you. And that can be where having a therapist, someone in a position of power, someone who's got some kind of ultimate accountability, a more senior person within the family saying that wasn't okay, can be the way that we move through that objection.
But you see what I'm talking about here. Listing out the reasons that you wouldn't forgive this person, the reasons that you are holding on to this, the reasons that you can't find that place of forgiveness when it comes to that group or that place or whatever it is, helps you understand what actions might you need to take or have an opportunity to take to move yourself towards forgiveness. There's an opportunity there to meet those needs.
Some of you will know that a big part of my work is around responding to people who've experienced significant harm through institutions that perpetrated abuse against them. Now this is some really deep, sometimes dark, often very heavy work. But one of the roles that I have is to connect with people and understand what is it that would be meaningful to them? What do they want to see happen here? And so, so often they want it to be said that what happened to them was wrong and they want to do something that helps assure them that what happened to them isn't going to happen to others.
Now in my work with clients, I've heard many different kinds of objections when it comes to the things that hold them back from moving towards forgiveness. These can be really nuanced, but they can also be really common, like those big objections I've talked about here of wanting the harm to be validated and wanting to know that it isn't going to happen to others. Whatever your way forward is here, this is an opportunity to listen to your own needs, to reflect on those needs, and to be able to plan some pragmatic actions that might help you to meet those objections in a way that then paves a path forward that allows, perhaps, for forgiveness to come.
I hope you are really hearing here that perspective that I hold, that forgiveness is not something that magically arrives. It is not some sort of mythical, spiritual state that just happens without planning, without purpose, without intention, without first understanding what it is that we need. Now I don't want to make forgiveness more complicated than it is, but in my experience walking through these issues with people, what I see time and time again is that we really need to get into the nitty gritty of what's going on in their minds.
What are the objections? What are the things that they could do? What is it that is holding them back? You can see, therefore, why I hold this view that it is not some ultimate spiritual state that people reach. This is about our mental and emotional health journey, how we feel about these issues, how we think about whatever it is that has gone on. If we can approach forgiveness as a mental and emotional process, not a magical, spiritual one, then that often allows us more of a chance to move towards offering forgiveness if we determine that we want to.
Now dropping out of understanding these objections is have a plan. If you were to consider, okay, I am going to arrive at this place of forgiveness. What are the steps that I would take along the journey to get there? What is it that I imagine I might need to do or process or feel my way through or think? What is it that I can do that's going to move me towards that potential state? So I really encourage you to write a bit of a plan, and I sometimes do this with clients, sketching this out together to understand what are the steps and actions that you could take here.
And the other thing I observe is really important is having a purpose, and that purpose being all about you, being quite selfish when it comes to that purpose. The chances are that forgiveness is going to help set the other person free in some way, that that may or may not potentially change your relationship with them, or something might move and shift when it comes to that other person. If you are practically going to offer them forgiveness in some kind of stated manner, then of course that is going to have an impact on their life.
But first and foremost, you need to think about the impact on you. What are the benefits for you in finding this place of forgiveness? This needs to be first and foremost all about you, all about your own journey, all about your own life, all about your own relationships, and energy, and goals, and you. Forgiveness is not something that you owe people.
It's not something that they can demand of you. We need to think somewhat selfishly about how finding this place of forgiveness benefits us. Now what I want to talk about in this next section is some of the things that forgiveness does and doesn't mean.
Because so often when I'm working with clients, I really need to clarify this. This is an important starting point and kind of ground of our conversation. Now so often when I'm working with clients, I need to cover some basics around what forgiveness is and what forgiveness isn't.
And usually there is at least one or two things in this that really resonate with people, that help challenge their thinking, that challenges how they perceive this matter of forgiveness. So one of the key things is that forgiveness is not forgetting. It is almost impossible to forget harmful things that have happened to us.
You might have heard of the book, The Body Keeps the Score. And we know that within us, we have a sense that our difficult experiences are always held by our bodies, are always held in our subconscious. And hopefully they're not going to be things that you think about all the time into your future.
But forgiveness is not the same as forgetting. And I want to suggest that if something really harmful has happened, it's actually really unlikely that forgiveness is going to lead to you forgetting about those difficult memories. Sure, forgiveness can help you feel different about those memories some of the time.
But it may still be that things come up and they are painful. Forgiveness also doesn't mean excusing harmful behavior. So when we find forgiveness towards another person or people, we are not excusing that behavior.
We are not saying that that was okay. Forgiveness is about us. It is about our journey.
It's about the place that this harmful thing has in our own lives and how we are responding to that. So no, forgiveness absolutely is not excusing or condoning harmful behavior. And forgiveness is not always reconciling or resuming contact with the person that has harmed us.
This is actually mind-blowing for a lot of clients that I work with who think that forgiveness definitely means I'm restoring relationship with that person. They have actually two different issues. And when it comes to thinking about forgiveness, the starting place is actually thinking about this not changing your relationship with that person.
The change in relationship and contact is an entirely different issue and something quite separate. Forgiveness clears the table, but it doesn't set it again. So no, forgiveness doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to enter into relationship with that person or those people again.
It also doesn't mean pretending that it didn't matter and that it didn't happen. It's not sweeping it under the carpet. It's not never talking about it again.
It's not leaving it unacknowledged. It's not not letting it be known within a family or a group of people or sharing about it with your friends. It's not moving on in a way that you've swept it under the rug and pretended that it's never happened.
That is not something that you have to do if you're wanting to move towards this place of forgiveness. It also doesn't make you less spiritual or less of a good human being if you don't do it. There is no moral attachment to forgiveness, much as you have possibly been told this from every which direction in your life, that this really matters because you will be a bigger and better person because of it, or you will be some kind of more enlightened being if you find your way to forgiveness.
I definitely think that forgiveness can have tremendous benefits in our lives, and it is what I want for people. It is something I definitely want to help people to have if they can. I definitely think that forgiveness is a good thing.
I want to help people have forgiveness. If it is something that they desire, but I do not think people are any less of a human being or that they are better than anyone else, and there is actually just no moral judgment here on this issue for me. Yep, your life might be better if you do forgive, but you're not a worse person if that's not something that is on the cards.
I think we need to return to making forgiveness something that is a bit more morally neutral. You are not a more enlightened, better, bigger person if you forgive. Though forgiveness might lead to many benefits in your life, we need to accept that sometimes that isn't possible, and that doesn't make you any less of a human being.
Life is complicated. So much of it is lived in the gray area, and we can't be black and white when we approach an issue like this. Forgiveness is also not a destination.
It is not something that happens and is then done. It sometimes comes in waves. It is sometimes cyclical, something that we need to return back around to over time.
It might be something that we can find more of at certain times in our life and then that moves further away from us in other times. So I think sometimes it can be helpful to think about pursuing more forgiveness or there being more of a presence of forgiveness or you feeling able to make different decisions, feeling a little bit freer when it comes to the issue and when it comes to how you feel about whatever has happened. But the complexity of our human lives means that it is not often a destination, a point that is arrived at that is never returned to, that is not something that you're going to continually have to journey through to some extent.
So I hope you're hearing through today's episode some of my views around what I think forgiveness is. It is very deliberate. It can be more of a planned process than something that just happens.
It is also possible to find forgiveness without pursuing any kind of reconciliation and it is entirely for your healing and not something that you are doing for them. It's allowed to be a process. It's allowed to be slow.
It's allowed to be like ascending a mountain where you are walking up in a certain direction but there is an element of feeling like you are going around and around in order to find that point that you are trying to reach. And then sometimes you're going to drop back down again and need to do some of the work over again to reach the place that you want to be at. Now that place, when I talk about the word place, I'm really meaning there a feeling state, a feeling of having the kind of relationship with this issue, with this historic thing that has happened, that is as you want it to be, that you're able to hold this in a manner that works for you to move forward with your own life.
Now I think some of the things that are really helpful when it comes to pursuing forgiveness are to find people who get it. Find people who've not necessarily experienced the exact same thing as you but people who get the complexity of these kinds of issues. Those people who know about the grey areas, that don't necessarily see everything as black and white, who are going to listen to you, who are going to validate you, who are going to journey with you as you progress in the direction that you want to go.
And the other way I really like to think about forgiveness is that this is about returning the harm to the person who perpetrated it. This is about putting back to them whatever it is that happened and allowing your life to move forward, not as if this never happened, but to move forward in a way where you're not as affected by what it is that occurred, where you're not letting the harm define the rest of your life. Yes, it may still have an impact.
Yes, it may still have a presence, but it's not going to be the defining feature. It's not going to be something that takes over, that feels too intense within your life. One of the things I love about helping people move towards forgiveness is that it enables them to find choice again.
It allows them to be in charge of their own story. It allows them to move forward with their life, pouring the energy into themselves, the people who matter to them, the relationships that matter to them, the goals and priorities and adventures and things that they're wanting to achieve. It helps people to move forward in their own direction, leaving behind them the things that need to be left behind.
Now, I really just want to let you know as we conclude this episode that I'm thinking of you, that I get it when it comes to this issue, that there can be things that happen in our lives that are profoundly damaging, that are really difficult to move through. This is a lived experience for me again, and something that I really get. And I know that if you're listening to this episode, you're likely sitting with your own story, or perhaps you're even listening to this thinking about someone else and some of the intensity of what they've experienced.
Now, I know with any episode like this, I can only provide general comments, and I can't speak well into any of the nuances of different kinds of situations. So I really want to add a caveat here, that if there is anything that you have heard through today's episode that isn't a fit for you and your personal situation, let it stay here. The chances are that if you and I had a conversation, it might not be something that is very fitting for your particular situation.
So these words of advice today are really general. Please keep that in mind. And I really just want this moment of expressing compassion towards you.
If there is something that you have experienced in your life that has been hard, that has been really damaging, that has stayed with you in a way that has been really intense and harmful, I get it. And I see you, and I know how common this experience is. I so often wish that I could get people together who have experienced the same kind of issue, so that you could see how common it is.
But there are many people who are holding something that was not ever theirs to carry, and who desperately want to find a place of lightness with that, who want to be able to move forward with their own lives, and who definitely need some help in working out how to get from where they are to the kind of state that they want. So just to recap some of the things we've talked about today. We've talked about the importance of taking full ownership of this decision, of remembering this is not something that you owe anyone, and that this is your decision, and your decision alone to make.
We've talked about the importance of the harm being validated, and being open to that coming from directions that you might not necessarily want. So often I see people staying stuck in that state where they go, I want this person to hear me. I want my family to understand.
And it may well be that that understanding is better offered from some other direction. Don't set yourself up to fail there, but do remember how important it is that other people bear witness to what it is that you've experienced. If it's helpful, write out your list of objections.
Why wouldn't you offer forgiveness? And that can allow you to have some real insights into what it is that is holding you where you are. Next, have a plan and a sense of what it is that you could do, and have a really clear sense of purpose. Why is it that you are doing this? What is it that is good for you in your life? And remember those things that forgiveness isn't.
It isn't sweeping things under the carpet. It isn't excusing their behavior. It isn't leaving this as something that doesn't continue to have some impact on your life.
It also isn't necessarily reconciling with the person. It is so often cyclical. It comes in waves.
It is like ascending a mountain where we're trying to find the state that we want to exist in. But we might be circling around to get there, and we might circle back down at other points. And remember, there is no judgment here.
I know for some people that is going to be one of the most important things that they can hear from this episode today. That you're not a better person if you forgive. You're not a bigger person if you forgive.
You're not a better human being or a more spiritual one if you can find this place of forgiveness. Forgiveness is complicated. It is a very individual journey.
It can be really complex, and we need to offer ourselves understanding when it comes to this issue. Do the things that you can do, but give yourself the freedom and the flexibility as well to know that this is something that you do not have to pursue that can stay where it is if you determine that that is what you want to do. I hope some of what has been shared today is helpful.
I hope you can leave the parts that aren't, and I wish you all the very best from my heart to yours. Whatever your situation is, I hope that you can find the lightness and the freedom that you deserve. Thanks for joining me today on the Feel Better Podcast.
I'm super proud of you for spending this time prioritizing your well-being and hopefully learning a few things to help you navigate the tough stuff in life. I'd love to stay connected. Come and find me on Instagram at Charlotte the Counselor, on Facebook, Charlotte Cummings Counseling, or head over to my website, charlottecummings.nz, where there's heaps of free resources waiting for you.
Thanks for hanging out with me today, and I look forward to seeing you next time.
