Narcissists will take advantage of your caring heart, your kind soul, and exploit that. Weaponizing your forgiving nature to “forgive their abusive behavior”, just so they can turn around and continue to do harmful things again with no change. It’s an attempt to make you feel guilty if you don’t.
They will make claims that “you need to forgive and move on”, when they really mean, you need to forget about what I did to you. You need to let it go and stop talking about it. Using toxic positivity to invalidate your emotions and avoid addressing serious issues. Sweeping their behavior under the rug to not be acknowledged and to avoid accountability.
This is a gaslighting tactic to make you feel guilty for choosing not to forgive them. They may even use religion or philosophical quotes to excuse their abusive behavior and weaponize your forgiveness and compassion, or say that you are a bad person for not forgiving.
Ex. The narcissists says that you need to show compassion to those who harm you. When they can’t even take their own advice. They say things like this because again, they want you to just forget about everything they did, let it go, and move on. This is gaslighting and an attempt to escape accountability. How is someone going to tell someone else, who they directly harmed, to show compassion when they themselves have never shown compassion to others or has ever taken accountability? Narcissists are hypocritical.
My Thoughts on Forgiveness:
Forgiveness is a personal choice and it looks different for everyone. While I do encourage others to forgive, there’s a common misconception regarding forgiveness. It is not really about the other person, per se, it is about you. Choosing to let go of the pain (if you can), resentment, and anger towards someone who hurt you. No longer allowing it to stew inside of you and destroy you. “I forgive you not to excuse your behavior, but because I’m choosing to let the pain go”, and set your boundaries accordingly.
I agree with this viewpoint, but also have conflicting thoughts on it. I do believe, to some extent, that holding onto such pain for prolonged periods of time can do us more harm than good, but I don’t believe that someone has to forgive if they don’t want to, or that not forgiving has any negative effect on their healing journey or who they are. Some may say, “you need to forgive so you can feel better”, and I don’t necessarily agree with that.
Healing is not linear, and you’re going to feel angry quite a lot, especially considering what you went through, but process your anger or pain in a productive and healthy manner for yourself as well as for others. For me, that looks pouring into myself, self care, therapy, talking about it, creating my blog to help educate others, to speak up and share my story. This is my healing journey and how I process my feelings in a productive and healthy way that can help others instead of harming others.
Why should you forgive someone who has intentionally hijacked your soul, mind, body, and spirit and shows no remorse for their actions? Who has never apologized or ever been held accountable for the harm they caused? Who doesn’t change? Who blames you for everything? Who has caused life long physical and emotional trauma or depression? How do you even begin to forgive when you’ve been hijacked like this?
There are some people who can’t escape narcissistic relationships either, whether that’s family members or relationships where they are in daily contact with and can’t leave or it’s not safe to do so. Forcing or weaponizing forgiveness when the perpetrators are continuing to harm with no change, forgiveness can tend to look different.
There are some people in my life who have harmed me in unimaginable ways, caused me severe depression and trauma, and literally gave me PTSD who I will never forgive, but I don’t let that anger or pain destroy me. I transform it into something useful and productive.
No one asks to be abused. No one asks to be lead on, lied to, lied on, preyed upon, psychologically, spiritually, and emotionally attacked and abused and is now dealing with life long trauma. On top of all of that, is being gaslit by a narcissist in an attempt to make you feel guilty for choosing to not forgive. For being unable to let go of the pain they caused that you are still healing from and they are showing no signs of changing.
Instead of focusing on forgiving the narcissist, focus instead on self-forgiveness.
Self – Forgiveness
- Forgive yourself for not knowing any better.
- Forgive yourself for inevitably falling into their traps of manipulation and gaslighting.
- Forgive yourself for the mistakes you made.
- Forgive yourself for not leaving sooner.
- Validate your experience, emotions, and feelings and that your reactions to abnormal situations and abusive behavior was normal.
Pour into yourself and take care of your mental health. Your feelings are valid, whether that’s anger, confusion, or you are still in pain. It’s ok. You are a human with human emotions and you didn’t deserve what happened to you. You deserve love, kindness, happiness, and to be treated nicely and fairly. You did not know any better, but now you do and that’s all that matters. Use the knowledge you’ve gained on NPD as well as your own experiences to protect yourself and set stronger boundaries. Do not feel obligated to forgive someone who doesn’t change and tries to weaponize forgiveness against you. That is your own personal choice and decision.
This is an open discussion, so feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments! What does forgiveness look like for you?
Great resources I highly recommend
“Focus on FORGIVING yourself, NOT the narcissist” by Dr. Ramani
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfXXeytuQTA
“Toxic Forgiveness in Narcissistic Abuse” by Hannah Alderete MA, LMHC
Whispering The Unspoken 
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