Is It Time To Stop Blaming Your Parents?

While I was in cognitive behavioral therapy to overcome the effects of childhood sexual abuse, my therapist urged me — more than once — to forgive my mother for the role she unwittingly played in making that abuse possible. She did not, even, ask me whether I blamed or resented my mother before applying what I perceived as incredible pressure to offer forgiveness. Encouraging me to take part in role-play scenarios where she would play my mother, she simply assumed that I would emotionally benefit from "letting go".

Forgiveness is, I found out over the course of being in therapy and talking with others about it, a concept that means many different things to many different people. To my very religious friend, for instance, it means nothing more than "I don't have a fervent wish for this person to burn in hell". To others, it may mean that you aren't just not angry any longer, but also willing to completely set aside whether caused the need to offer forgiveness in the first place and move on to having a full social relationship with the person.

For me, once my mother had made it clear that she did not know I was being sexually abused and apologized over some tears and beer, any traces of feelings of blame towards her disappeared. Was she responsible? Yes, certainly partly. Did she do the best she could at the time? Again yes. Did she mean for this to happen? No. So that was that, then. For the lingering effects that being sexually abused caused in me, I blame my rapist, not my mother.

READ Resentment vs. Forgiveness

Regardless of whether you are personally able to overcome feelings of blame towards your parents, even when there is indeed a direct correlation between your current problem and your parents' actions, wallowing in self-pity could conceivably lead you to prolonging your suffering.

Indeed, even where you can identify a clear link between your problems and your parents' actions, it can sometimes be very cathartic to assess your parents as they are now, not as they were when they were raising you. You can, in some cases, place the blame for certain events or outcomes directly on your parents, and still proceed to have a healthy and loving relationship with them.

Is it time to stop blaming your parents? Only you ultimately know the answer to that. The way forward, after introspection, is forward, though, and while your parents might have shaped your present, you can take charge of your future.