When Forgiveness Isn't A Good Idea: A Psychologist Explains

"I know I need to forgive him, but I can’t." That’s a statement I hear from every woman who's been abused. And they’re shocked when I say, "Maybe you’ll forgive him. Maybe you won’t. The truth is, it doesn’t matter."

When you prioritize forgiving your narcissist, you get suckered back in. His potential is dangled in front of you, and suddenly you wonder if you're making the right choice—but a narcissist is incapable of real transformation. He or she cannot and will not change, so any changes are ephemeral.

As I tell my clients, self-love is the greatest narcissist repellent. You see, narcissists do not actually love themselves. Instead, they have to build a false mask in order to escape from how much they loathe themselves. When we are secure in who we are and can love ourselves deeply, narcissists have no way of wriggling into our lives and heart.

When I finally disclosed the abuse to my friends and doctor after years, I felt guilty. Was I hurting him that way? After all, he’d warned me repeatedly that if I told someone else, he’d get paranoid. And when I finally filed a police case, I battled with myself for months afterward. Was I getting him into trouble? It took me some time to come to accept that being a good person doesn’t mean exonerating a person’s crimes.

I remember my spiritual mentor Val telling me, "In the end, it all comes back to forgiving yourself." That was a knee-jerk moment that encapsulated everything I’d suspected. I needed to take care of myself first-and-foremost. And so I worked toward that. Today, I teach all of my clients that we need to forgive ourselves for being hoodwinked by the narcissist and staying in the relationship. We may berate ourselves for not recognizing the signs or listening to our guts.

For example, I often get letters from women saying, "I am an educated person, I’m a doctor/psychiatrist/lawyer who graduated summa cum laude, and I still feel so stupid for being fooled."

Do you remember the last time you fell sick after eating something? Chances are, you’ve become averse to that type of food. Our bodies pair the food with "danger" after an illness in order to protect ourselves from being hurt again. It’s instinctual. So even if you’ve healed from your trauma, and even if you’ve forgiven your abuser, it doesn’t mean you should forget.

Healing is, in part, being able to accept what happened. I know this is easier said than done, so allow yourself to feel the full extent of your grief, sadness, rage, and any other emotions we often malign as "negative."

I held on to the pain for far too long, thinking, "Why me? Why did I need this baptism of fire?" I soon realized that I didn’t need that poison in my life any longer. It wasn’t my cross to bear. So I resolved to set it down, burn it, and fertilize my metaphorical garden with its ashes. We accept by making sense of things. Because when our minds have closure, we have a sense of control, knowing that we did our best.

We understand why the narcissist did what they did and why that happened to us. We can also choose to understand that we took care of ourselves the best that we could and to commit to becoming the champions that our younger selves never had.

Perhaps forgiveness may come to you, and perhaps it won't. But I hope that you will, first and foremost, take care of yourself.