Forgive Then Forget?

Excerpts from "Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves" by Drs. Stoop and Masteller.


From pages 185 -186:

[Following the discussion of the details of a woman named Myra, seeking to forgive her abusive father.]


“Now, Myra, I said, we’ve talked a lot about forgiving your father. I’ve told you how important forgiveness is. But listen to me: I do want you to forgive your father, but I do not want you to forget what he did. Forgiveness has nothing to do with forgetting. Do you understand? Forgiveness has nothing to do with forgetting.”

It is easy to become confused. The Bible says repeatedly that God is able to forgive and forget. For example God says “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more” (Jeremiah 21:34). But it never says that we are to do the same. We cannot. Only he can. One reason why God can forget is that there is nothing he needs to learn by remembering. There is often a lot of important information that we can learn by remembering, even though we may not want to remember.

I understood how Myra felt. I’ve felt the same way myself many times. Haven’t we all? We want to get rid of the pain of harmful things that have happened to us, and we think that the way to do that is by getting rid of the memory of those harmful things. If we can work ourselves around to believing that the hurtful incident never happened, then it can’t hurt us anymore.

Or can it? The fact is that very often the harmful effects of past injuries stay with us whether or not we consciously remember the injuries themselves. This is why we say that remembering, not forgetting, is the key to forgiveness. Only when we are clear on what has, in fact, happened to us can we deal with it effectively.

We may make connections between current difficulties and painful experiences from our past. The way a friend treats us today may trigger memories of the way our parents or siblings treated us years ago. These memories, in turn, may uncover connections to other past hurts. Many of the problems people bring into counseling stem from things in their past that they needed to remember clearly before they could deal with them.

Excerpt from
Dr. David Stoop & Dr. James Masteller's
"Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves:
Healing Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families"
Regal/Gospel Light, 1996 (Servant, 1991)

Asking God For Help With Forgiveness

A Christian perspective on forgiveness ~
From Dr. Stoop’s “Making Peace with your Father”


Pages 238 -239:


God knows our pain, our loss, our disappointments. He longs to heal our brokenness. He could do so instantly – but then we would not learn the lessons that are vital to our healing. For most of us, His promise to heal our broken hearts will be fulfilled over a period of time.

The writer of the letter to the Hebrews assures us that “this High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses...So let us come boldly to the throne of God and stay there to receive his mercy and to find grace to help us in our times of need” (Hebrews 4:15-16). We can stay there as long as we need to in order to experience the fullness of God’s healing grace.

As you work through the process of healing... invite your loving heavenly Father into the process with you. Allow him to heal your shame and guilt. Bathe each step you take in prayer. Ask God to empower you to follow through on each step and to endure the pain and hurt you experience. Ask him for the courage to risk making changes, both in your behavior and in your expectations. Ask him to give you the grace to forgive, so that you may be released from the bondage of the past.

Then ask him to give you the robe of honor, the ring of authority and the shoes of a beloved son or daughter. Let God show himself to you as the Father to the fatherless.

He has already made peace with you. He is waiting for you to come home.

Excerpt from
Dr. David Stoop in
"Making Peace With Your Father:
Understanding the Role Your Father
has Played in Your Life – Past to Present"
Regal, 2004 (originally Tyndale, 1992)

About Apologies that Aren't

Following some correspondence with Voddie Baucham, I posted this information about apologies on the Under Much Grace Blog. The information on apologies can be helpful when working through forgiveness, and I think this is a good place to start on the subject.

What exactly is an apology? The word originates from the Greek (and the Latin) word “apologia” which literally means a "plea" or “a speech in one’s own defense.” This straight definition more closely resembles the meaning of the word “apologetics” which we use to describe giving an account of one’s faith and the hope within us, with both meekness and patience. It also corresponds with the third possible definition that the Oxford Dictionary lists: “a justification or defense.” But in terms of asking for forgiveness (the process of repentance for causing an offense), what the Oxford describes as “a regretful acknowledgment of regret or failure” and how we most commonly use the word, using a defensive approach usually proves to be a poor one.

In terms of asking for forgiveness, using just the Oxford dictionary’s first description alone, an apology includes a few components – something that gives it meaning and substance.

• Failure
• Acknowledgment
• Regret

Both parties must acknowledge that the offending party committed an act that either failed to meet a certain standard or resulted in some undesirable outcome. The person offering a sincere apology must be specific about this action and the outcome, because the rest of the apology builds upon this foundation. That is why general, blanket apologies which do not make clear that the offending party understands what they’ve done lack substance. An apology teaches each party more about their own boundaries and the boundaries of others, hopefully effecting some lasting change for the better of both as a result of the learning process. If there is no identification of the specific failure, can there be any way to avoid repeating it in the future?

Many weak apologies avoid assignment of responsibility for failure, because it is a painful and disappointing process to do so. Our human nature tends to discourage an objective view of ourselves, complete with all of our faults. Taking responsibility for failures points out to us that we are flawed, inadequate, limited, and sometimes, powerless. And sometimes that acknowledgment of our responsibilities reveals the dishonor in our own hearts. Apologies become even more difficult when circumstances beyond one’s control contributed to the failure or offense, particularly when the person responsible for starting the chain of events never intended and could not foresee the end result of the negative outcome. When a person behaves responsibly and another suffers harm or offence as a result, the offending party comes face to face with the limitations of their humanity, and this can challenge beliefs such as the idea that “Life is fair,” or “I am a basically good person that is in control of my environment.”

All apologies must include some expression of regret. Regret poses an even more difficult aspect to measure, though it is also an essential element of a true and sincere apology. Sometimes apologies are offered with all the right components, but sometimes, the party offering them can only be making the effort for their own personal gain. If they experience negative consequences as a result of their actions themselves, if the offer of apology proves to be just a public show to promote a certain persona of themselves to others, or if the party has been compelled against their natural inclination to make amends by some outside influence, then the apology can be more offensive than the original act of offense for the one who "sees through" the ingenuous apology. These insincere apologies only draw attention to the lack of care, respect and consideration that the offending party holds for the offended. It only intensifies the injury.

As it is often difficult to measure regret, it is here where one’s actions often speak louder than our words when conveying an apology. Efforts of restitution speak powerfully to the offended on behalf of the one who committed the offense, as true regret includes a desire to restore the other party. An effort to make restitution serves to seal an apology and can become a measure of the apology’s essential element of regret. Timing and the manner in which one offers an apology also adds to the effectiveness. The person offering an apology must show contrition and contrition regarding the right elements, as apologies should never serve as license to commit the offense again. Without contrition, there is not impetus to avoid the act in the future.

Read the whole post HERE.

Ideas About How To Approach Peacemaking

A Christian perspective on forgiveness ~
From Dr. Stoop’s “Making Peace with your Father”


Facing the Truth

pages 189 - 232:


Step One:

• Identify the Symptoms

Step Two:

• Get the Facts

Step Three:

• Identify Family Secrets and Family Myths

Step Four:

• Speak the Unspoken

Step Five:

• Rewrite History

Step Six:

• Process the Losses

Step Seven:

• Wait

Step Eight:

• Forgive

Step Nine:

• Invite Others to Share Your Journey

Step Ten:

• Explore New Roles

Step Eleven:

• Redeem the Past

Excerpt from
Dr. David Stoop in
"Making Peace With Your Father:
Understanding the Role Your Father
has Played in Your Life – Past to Present"
Regal, 2004 (originally Tyndale, 1992)

Seeing Our Parents Realistically

A Christian perspective on forgiveness ~
From Dr. Stoop’s “Making Peace with your Father”


Page 169:






Think about your own mental image of your father.

If the picture you carry of him seems too good to be true, there is a good chance that it isn’t true. I am certainly not advocating that we set out to adopt a harshly negative view of our fathers – or of anyone else, for that matter.

It is entirely right for us to view our parents with charity and respect. But we also need to adopt a realistic view of our parents, acknowledging both their strengths and their weaknesses. Only when we see them as they truly are can we relate to them on a solid footing of reality. Only then are we free to grow up and become healthy adults ourselves.

Excerpt from
Dr. David Stoop in
"Making Peace With Your Father:
Understanding the Role Your Father
has Played in Your Life – Past to Present"
Regal, 2004 (originally Tyndale, 1992)

The All-Good Father

A Christian perspective on forgiveness ~
From Dr. Stoop’s “Making Peace with your Father”


Page 167 - 168:


Sherri’s father died when she was twelve. When I asked her what she remembered about him, she smiled and described a virtuous, heroic, utterly perfect human being. I pressed her for any less-than-perfect aspects he may have had, but the more I did, the more positive traits she recited. The tables were turned when we discussed her mother. Sherri had nothing good whatesoever to say about her.

What Sherri was doing is called “splitting.” It represents our tendency to make one person all-good and the other person all-bad. Little children do it all the time; it’s a natural part of the process of emotional development. When adults practice splitting, however, it can cause trouble.

In her strong attachment to the too-good father, Sherri was setting herself up for some serious problems. To preserve her image of her father, she had to explain away his shortcomings as inadequacies in someone else. First it was her mother: Dad was all-good; Mom was all-bad. Eventually Sherri attached this badness to herself as well. Her idealized view of her father was the driving force behind a perfectionism that enslaved her.

Sherri’s unrealistic view of her father also led her to adopt a good husband, but Sherri had come to see him as hopelessly inadequate. She resented his weakness and believed there was almost nothing that she could do better than he could. She laughed at the very thought of comparing Walt to her father.

Without realizing it, Sherri had cast her marriage in the same mold as she had her parents – seeing one person as the repository of all that is good, and the other as the embodiment of all that is bad. No matter what issues we discussed, her inevitable refrain was that Walt had to “fix himself” before they could hope to have a successful marriage. Until Sherri becomes comfortable with the untidiness of human reality – that all fo us have both good and bad qualities, bot that all fo us are unique and valuable just the same – she will be imprisoned by her distorted view of life.

Excerpt from
Dr. David Stoop in
"Making Peace With Your Father:
Understanding the Role Your Father
has Played in Your Life – Past to Present"
Regal, 2004 (originally Tyndale, 1992)

So Easy to Blame

Christians weighing in on Botkin Syndrome:
Excerpts from"Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves"
by Drs. Stoop and Masteller.




From pages 246 - 250:


Sometimes we blame others as cover-up for fear, fear of punishment, embarrassment, responsibility, and the like. Self-protection is a strong drive in all of us.

At the most basic level, our tendency to blame others probably stems from our fundamental conviction that we ourselves are blameless. Isn’t that right? We might never come out and say it, but deep in our heart we know that we are just, honorable, and upright. When things go wrong, it must be someone else’s fault. Surely it couldn’t be ours ...

Face it: we want to blame. When we have been hurt – or think we have – something in us wants to place the blame somewhere (usually on someone else). But the more we blame, the farther we walk down the dangerous path of bitterness. The path never leads us to health and happiness, only to deeper distress...

Do you see where this leads? Eventually we get all the way back to Eve – who, as we have seen, shirked her own responsibility as well. In other words, the blame game leads nowhere. All it does is prove that we are all flawed, imperfect people living in a flawed, imperfect world where “stuff happens.” So why bother playing it at all? Why not get off the path of bitterness and get on the path of forgiveness?

Excerpt from
Dr. David Stoop & Dr. James Masteller's
"Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves:
Healing Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families"
Regal/Gospel Light, 1996 (Servant, 1991)

You've Forgiven When....

“You will know that forgiveness has begun when you recall those who hurt you and feel the power to wish them well.”

~ Lewis B. Smedes
in “Forgive and Forget”

Avoiding Superficial Forgiveness

Excerpts from "Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves" by Drs. Stoop and Masteller.


From page 220:

There is nothing wrong with needing time to work through the process of forgiveness...

In his book, "Caring Enough to Confront," David Augsberger says, “Forgiveness is a journey of many steps.” That little sentence sums up much of what we have been saying. As much as we might like forgiveness to be quick and easy, it is a process. It is a journey, which can take many steps. The first step – choosing to forgive, choosing not to hang on to the emotional IOU – is important and should not be overlooked. But the other steps are important, too, and we should not pass over them.

We can learn a great deal from forgiveness. Being hurt by someone only teaches us to protect ourselves and to mistrust others. Forgiveness, however, presents us with a choice as to how to respond. We can brush off what has happened by extending superficial forgiveness, ending up bitter and resentful. Or we can choose the path of true forgiveness, and learn lessons along the way that will shape our lives for the better.

If we are going to take God’s principles seriously, we will see that forgiveness isn’t optional. It is essential. What is optional is whether we choose the quick and easy path of superficial forgiveness, or the harder but more rewarding path of genuine forgiveness.

Excerpt from
Dr. David Stoop & Dr. James Masteller's
"Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves:
Healing Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families"
Regal/Gospel Light, 1996 (Servant, 1991)

.

Six Steps of Forgiveness

Excerpts from "Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves" by Drs. Stoop and Masteller.


From page 179:



The Six Steps of Forgiveness

1. Recognize the injury.

2. Identify the emotions involved.

3. Express your hurt and anger.

4. Set boundaries to protect yourself.

5. Cancel the debt.

6. Consider the possibility of reconciliation.

Excerpt from
Dr. David Stoop & Dr. James Masteller's
"Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves:
Healing Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families"
Regal/Gospel Light, 1996 (Servant, 1991)

.

“HONOR THY FATHER....”

Excerpts from "Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves" by Drs. Stoop and Masteller.


From pages 298 - 299:

All of recognize that there is no such thing as a perfect parent. All of us are descended from imperfect parents, and grew up in imperfect families. But to acknowledge this as an intellectual proposition is one thing. To actually admit that our parents have failed us is, for some of us, a very hard thing to do.

It may even seem like a wrong thing to do. Doesn’t the Bible teach that we are supposed to honor our father and mother? (Exodus 20:12). Indeed we are. But what does it mean to honor our parents? Does it mean we should never acknowledge their weaknesses, limitations, and mistakes? Does it mean we should never acknowledge the pain they may have caused us? I don’t think so.

The original Hebrew word used in the passage literally means “assign weight to.” It is as though someone told us something and we replied, “I want to carefully weigh what you’ve said.” If we consider their words and decide that they are important, we are, in a sense “assigning weight” to them. Thus to “honor” our parents means to assign weight – value, importance, significance – to them.

When that original Hebrew word was translated into Greek for the New Testament, the Greek word had to do with “giving glory to” the thing being honored. Both the Greek and the Hebrew carried the sense of honoring people because of the position they held, not necessarily because of intrinsic value.

One way to understand this is to imagine that you are in a banquet hall. Part way through the banquet, your city mayor walks in. Now, let’s suppose that you are not particularly fond of this mayor. You didn’t vote for him in the last election, and you think he has made some bad decisions. Even so, when he walks into the room, you stand up with everyone else to greet him.

Why? Because he is the mayor, and honoring him is the appropriate thing to do. You assign a certain value, or “weight” to him because of the position he holds. This does not mean you now have to start liking him, or even respecting him, as a person. It does not mean you have to start pretending that you agree with everything he has done as mayor. The honor is accorded to the position he holds, not so much to the individual.

In the same way, we can honor our parents – accord them an appropriate degree of “weight” – because of the position they hold in our lives as parents. Similar to our example with the mayor, the fact that we honor them does not mean we have to pretend that they have never done anything wrong or hurtful to us.

It is healthy, not dishonoring, to acknowledge that our parents failed us, hurt us, damaged us in some way – especially if we are doing so for the sake of forgiving them. We do neither our parents nor ourselves any honor by denying reality, eliminating the possibility of forgiveness, and locking ourselves into dysfunctional patterns of thinking and acting.

Excerpt from
Dr. David Stoop & Dr. James Masteller's
"Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves:
Healing Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families"
Regal/Gospel Light, 1996 (Servant, 1991)

Exploring Enmeshment and Family Issues with Dr. David Stoop

Photo of David & Jan Stoop 

Excerpts from "Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves" by Drs. Stoop and Masteller.

-->

From the book Introduction by Dr. Paul Meier:

More and more the family is being seen as it really is – the primary influence in our lives that no only builds us and shapes us, but also sets in motion the disorders that limit and frustrate us as adults. The child who was physically or emotionally abused, for example, usually becomes an adult who will also tend to abuse his or her own children, or else will marry someone who does. All too many of us find ourselves behaving like our parents I ways that we vowed we would never repeat, even though we don't have to follow that pattern.

I remember the pain of a young man whose wife had left him for another man. As he talked to me about it, he mentioned in passing that she was at the same age as her mother was when her mother left her father for another man. I asked him about what he had just said. He didn't answer. He just sat there shaking his head, tears filling his eyes. Finally he said, “I can't understand it. She talked often of the pain her mother had caused by leaving. She was still angry at her mother for it. Now she's gone and done the same thing? Why?”

There is no simple answer to the pain of these patterns. Usually, these problems serve a function within the extended family that is beyond our awareness. That is why we get stuck in behaving in ways we swore we never would...

As a physician and psychiatrist, I can attestt to the vast medical and physiological consequences that take place when we don't get our home in order. Dr. C. Everett Koop, our former U.S. Surgeon General, has told me personally that about 80 percent of all the medical illness seen in a doctor's office are either caused by emotional stress, or will be significantly worsened by stressors.

On going, unresolved family issues, along with other stressors cause ACTFRF (adrenocorticotrophic hormone releasing factor) to be released from the hypothalamus, causing ACTH to be released from the pituitary gland. This causes stress hormones to flow out of the adrenal glands, causing decreased lymphocytes (white blood cells), decreased antibodies, and increased vulnerability to all kinds of infectious diseases, including viral-induced cancers.

The physical, emotional, and spiritual aspects of a human being are all intricately intertwined. Repressed injuries that we experienced in our families can cause migraine headaches, ulcers, colitis, muscle aches, and other disorders. But we often forget that they can also be the indirect cause of bronchitis, pneumonia, strokes, cardiovascular disease, mental illness, and death. Taking the effort to analyze and understand the dynamics of our families of origin will help us to take control of our lives, and to move in new and healthier directions. Unless forgiveness is a part of the equation, our analysis and understanding will leave us still caught in the family dysfunction.

I have known Dr. Stoop for many years, both as a colleague and as a personal friend. There is no one I trust more to guide me personally into an understanding of my family and its issues. His gifted abilities and experiences, as well as his extensive psychological and theological training, have all contributed to this important book. All too often the process of forgiveness is either left out or distorted. I'm thrilled that Dr. Stoop and Dr. Masteller have restored it to its central role in the process of our healing.

Paul D. Meier, M.D.

Excerpt from
Dr. David Stoop & Dr. James Masteller's
"Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves:
Healing Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families"
Regal/Gospel Light, 1996 (Servant, 1991)

-->

Five Wrong Ways of Coping With Our Disappointments

Excerpts from "Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves" by Drs. Stoop and Masteller.

From pages 292 - 293:


Wrong Ways to Forgive



1. We deny that any injury ever occurred.

We often talk to people who are unable to remember anything about their early years. In many cases, this is a strong indication of childhood trauma. Without consciously realizing it, we substitute an idealized picture for the unpleasant reality.

We have a strong instinct to protect our parents (and often, other authority figures as well). We believe it is wrong to be angry with them, or to have any feelings toward them other than total love and devotion.

Some people honestly believe that if they are angry with their parents, something bad will happen to them. A woman named Shirley said to me, “I don’t expect to live to old age.” When I asked her why, she pointed to the biblical commandment about honoring parents, “That it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on earth.”

“I gave my parents a lot of trouble,” she said, “so I guess I’ll have to pay the consequences.” I had to point out to her that this is an exhortation given to an entire people, and has to do with societal welfare – not with punishment visited upon individuals.


2. We make excuses for our parents.

We say things like, Well, yes, my dad beat me a lot. But my folks were having financial troubles at the time.” Or, “My parents never showed me affection – I don’t remember them ever even hugging me. But they were doing the best they could under the circumstances.”


3. We put the blame on ourselves.

“I had a lot of bad times growing up. But I deserved everything I got. If I had been more thoughtful (or more helpful, or more obedient, or whatever), my parents wouldn’t have had to treat me the way they did.”


4. We grant superficial forgiveness.

“Whatever they did to me, I forgive them.” Or, “Sure, they made mistakes, just like everybody else. I don’t hold anything against them.”


5. We attack those who suggest that we need to forgive.

“How could you even think such a thing.”



The traumatic memories of growing up in a dysfunctional family are not easy to live with. Before forgiveness can happen, however, we need to acknowledge and accept as much of the pain as we can. We need to feel the hurt, just as we felt it in childhood, in order to let it go. When we had progressed to the place where we can see our parents objectively, we can being the forgiving process. Along the way, we will also see more clearly the ways we have failed. Then we must also begin the process of forgiving ourselves.

Excerpt from
Dr. David Stoop & Dr. James Masteller's
"Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves:
Healing Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families"
Regal/Gospel Light, 1996 (Servant, 1991)

Why Should I Bother: Why Can’t I Keep My View of an Idealized Family?

Excerpts from "Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves" by Drs. Stoop and Masteller.


From pages 294 -295:


We also learn that some of our long-protected illusions about ourselves and others must change. Childhood expectations and idealizations of the way people should behave may wind up influencing us long into adulthood with harmful results.

For example, it is a common childhood expectation that all families are happy: mom cheerfully takes care of the kids’ every need; dad goes off to work each morning with a smile on his face, and returns each night for dinner; the family schedules all kinds of outings for the weekends; everyone is happy and fulfilled all the time. That picture of “normal” family life is reinforced in dozens of ways in the storybooks we read in school, in the shows we watched on television, and so on.

As we grow older, we recognize that this rosy picture is an idealization, not the norm. We recognize that few – if any – families really look or act this way. We recognize that our own family does not look or act this way.

Or do we? In some cases, it is more accurate to say that part of us recognizes and accepts the unreality of this picture. But another part of us lings to it desperately, still believing it is to be true, and ever more conscious of the ways in which our own situation falls short.


Stoop quotes from Lewis Smedes’ “Forgive and Forget: Healing the Hurts We Don’t Deserve":


“...we want our parents to be sheer light, with no darkness at all; and we feel a little foul if we allow shadows to darken our memory. We don’t want them to need forgiving; because if we forgive them, we must have found fault with them first, maybe even hated them.”


In working through the process of forgiveness, we need to figure out how our own expectations may have set the stage for our being hurt. Part of maturity is accepting responsibility for our own outlook on life and relationships. If others have hurt us by failing to live up to our expectations, then one of the things we need to do is examine whether those expectations may have been inappropriate and unrealistic.

If so, forgiveness for us will need to involve repentance (a fundamental change of our own minds and hearts about what we should rightly expect from others) as well as our working through our pain. The pain of unmet expectations is still very real, and still needs to be dealt with, even if those expectations were unrealistic.

Excerpt from
Dr. David Stoop & Dr. James Masteller's
"Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves:
Healing Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families"
Regal/Gospel Light, 1996 (Servant, 1991)

Adult Children Learn to Assume the Blame

Excerpts from "Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves" by Drs. Stoop and Masteller.


From pages 246 - 247:

We regularly see an interesting phenomenon occur among adults who were abused as children. Thy experience an overwhelming need to cast blame somewhere. Because of the dynamics of childhood – where adults are bigger and more powerful, and therefore perceived as “always right” – abuse victims invariably place the blames on themselves.

But they soon start accepting the fact that they were only children, innocent, unable to either chose or prevent the things that were happening to them. “For the first time I realized that I wasn’t to blame for all the problems that existed in the world,” one woman said. “I felt I had to blame someone. I couldn’t blame the adults, because after all, they were adults. So the only one left to blame was me.”

Once this realization hits, they often start blaming others with a vengeance. Some are simply programmed to blame others for everything. One man named Jerry, remembers growing up in a family where everything was regarded as someone else’s fault. He can remember times when they hoped for a sunny day and it rained. His father would say, “Even God is against us today.” Jerry grew up very confused about the matter of responsiblity. If he himself didn’t bring about the wrong, then he had to point an accusing finger at someone else.

A more mature understanding of the world tells us that sometimes things just don’t work out the way we hoped. There are disappointments, unexpected developments, changes in plans, that are no one’s fault in particular... Being able to accept this reality, without always having to point the finger of blame, is an important component of personal maturity and emotional health.

Excerpt from
Dr. David Stoop & Dr. James Masteller's
"Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves:
Healing Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families"
Regal/Gospel Light, 1996 (Servant, 1991)

. .

Denial, Forgiving and Forgetting

Excerpts from "Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves" by Drs. Stoop and Masteller


About Denial

From page 29:

Lydia’s parents sat silently through her presentation. [A woman confronts her parents about having been abused by them when she was a child.] When she finished, they stoically denied everything – both of them They were quite calm and matter-of-fact about it. The only emotion they showed was irritation that Lydia had accused them of “such terrible things” in front of a stranger.

From pages 203 - 204:

The power lies in the fact that we forgive even as we remember...

Forgiveness begins with remembering and accepting what has happened in the past. Acceptance is an act of integration. It is a movement towards wholeness. It is how we incorporate the past into the present, and build for the future.

A word of warning. Once we accept that “it happened,” we begin a process that will not be without its share of pain. It hurts to get in touch with how deeply we were hurt as children, to realize how those who should have loved us and protected us actually caused us harm. But as an old saying puts it, “You have to feel in order to heal.”...

Adult children of dysfunctional families often pass through the classic stages of grief: anger, denial, despair, and so on. We mourn over who we might have been, over what we didn’t get out of childhood, what we didn’t get from our parents. We may feel cheated, and stripped of self-worth. But it is important that we let ourselves feel these emotions, work our way through them, and then move on past them. Mourning is therapeutic. It is healing. It is letting go of our bitterness, canceling the emotional IOUs we are holding, so that those who hurt us no longer dominate our lives as they once did.

We can never change what has happened to us in the past. But we can change the way we respond to it in the here and now. That is the point of remembering: we remember so that we can accept and forgive. “Forgetting” is not the answer. It’s just another dead-end street. We feel regret over what happened and we wish it hadn’t happened. But it did. Now we can accept it, and let it go.

Excerpt from
Dr. David Stoop & Dr. James Masteller's
"Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves:
Healing Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families"
Regal/Gospel Light, 1996 (Servant, 1991)

Recognizing Anger: Essential for Forgiveness?

Excerpts from "Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves" by Drs. Stoop and Masteller.

From pages 223 - 225:

Would you agree or disagree with the following statements?

• Without anger, most forgiveness is superficial.
• Genuine forgiveness almost always includes anger.

Long experience helping people deal with dysfunctional family issues lead us to agree with those statements. However, many people are bothered by them. They tend to have a certain amount of mistrust concerning anger, and are especially uncomfortable connecting it with something like forgiveness. But the fact that anger and forgiveness tend to be intimately connected. In most cases, we cannot really forgive until we have dealt with our anger. To put it another way, working through anger is often a crucial step in the process of forgiveness.

A lot of confusing ideas circulate about anger. Many of us were brought up to believe that all anger is wrong, even sinful. But anger is a fact of life. It happens to us. We experience it. What do we do then? Many of us play word games with it. We say we are “a little irritated,” or “out of sorts,” or “a bit upset.” We go to great lengths to avoid coming right out and saying, “I’m just plain mad.”

But the fact is, we often are just plain mad – and there is not necessarily anything wrong with that. The emotion of anger, in and of itself, is not wrong. Let me say again, to make sure you get it: the emotion of anger, in and of itself, is not wrong. It just is. It is part of the “standard equipment” that comes with being a human being. It is what we do with our anger that makes it either right or wrong, good or bad, healthy or unhealthy.

We can use our anger wrongly, or express it in unhealthy ways. A simple example is when we “fly off the handle” at someone we love without good cause. Unhealthy anger separates us from people we love and want to be with.

But we can also use our anger for healthy purposes. For example, anger can energize us to overcome some challenge or obstacle. Who among us has not had the experience of “getting good and mad” at some stubborn problem, and finding that the energy produced by the anger gets us over the hump?

Anger can also alert us to the need to set boundaries, or limits, with other people. It is one of the ways we protect ourselves.

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Lewis B. Smeades in “Forgive and Forget: Healing the Hurts We Don’t Deserve”:

Healthy anger drives us to do something to change what makes us angry; anger can energize us to make things better. Hate does not want to change things for the better: it wants to make things worse. (pg. 21)

Excerpt from
Dr. David Stoop & Dr. James Masteller's
"Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves:
Healing Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families"
Regal/Gospel Light, 1996 (Servant, 1991)

Intergenerational Enmeshment

Excerpts from "Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves" by Drs. Stoop and Masteller.


From pages 120 - 121:


The main thing we saw was a problem with intergenerational boundaries in both families of origin. In each case, the children had become entangled in the parents’ problems: both Pete and Amy found themselves fused with their mothers in an attempt to survive the negative aspects of life with their fathers. As a result, each of them found themselves locked into the patterns they had learned growing up; it was almost impossible for either of them to break away and develop any other style of marriage or family life...

[Following a discussion of real-life examples of a married couple (“Pete” and “Amy”)]

Pete and Amy learned some common lessons from their families of origin. Both of them learned, for example, that Mother is the source of nurture and that Father, as the material provider, is allowed to be emotionally distant most of the time and openly domineering when on the scene. Both also learned very clearly the rule, “We don’t talk about our problems.”

They also learned some lessons that turned out to be contradictory. For example, Pete learned from his upbringing that a marriage and a family could function with very little shared time. Amy, on the other hand, learned from her family that no mater how bad the problems got, you still got together, did things as a family, and acted as if everything was just fine.


From Paul Meier and Frank Minirth in “Free to Forgive: Daily Devotions for Adult Children of Abuse”:

About 85 percent of us end up marrying someone very similar in personality dynamics to our parent of the opposite sex... We continue what we got used to in childhood. (June 21 devotional)

Excerpt from
Dr. David Stoop & Dr. James Masteller's
"Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves:
Healing Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families"
Regal/Gospel Light, 1996 (Servant, 1991)

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