Why Can’t I Just Forgive My Parents?

It’s a question I hear often in therapy: “Why can’t I just forgive my parents?” Many adults feel stuck between the pressure to forgive and the reality of the pain they still carry. Forgiveness is often described as a milestone in healing, but when it comes to parents, the process is far more complicated.

Why Forgiveness Is Complicated with Parents

As adults, we may look back on our parents with mixed emotions: gratitude, love, and loyalty alongside anger, grief, or resentment. When those we depended on for safety and care caused harm, the conflict runs deep. We may wonder: How can I honour the love I feel while also acknowledging the pain?

In a recent conversation with one of my long-time mentors on this topic, he pointed me to the work of Alice Miller, who, in For Your Own Good (1983), wrote about how cultural and familial traditions often silence children’s suffering in the name of obedience or loyalty. Many of her readers resonate with her message: that denying or minimizing pain in order to protect parents’ image leads to disconnection from our authentic selves. In this context, forgiveness can sometimes feel like another form of silencing — as if saying, “It wasn’t so bad” or “I shouldn’t feel this way.”

The Pressure to Forgive: Cultural and Religious Influences

For many, this pressure is magnified by cultural or religious teachings. In Christian traditions, the Fourth Commandment (“Honour your father and mother”) is often interpreted as an obligation to obey and absolve parents regardless of their behaviour. While intended to preserve family bonds, this commandment has sometimes been used to discourage adult children from naming harm or holding parents accountable. As a result, forgiveness can become less an act of healing and more a duty that suppresses authentic feelings.

Emotion-Focused Therapy: Making Space for All Feelings

In Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT), forgiveness is never forced. Instead, therapy creates space for the full range of emotions toward parents: the sadness of what was missing, the anger at what was harmful, and even the longing for connection that may remain.

EFT views emotions as guides to unmet needs. Anger may signal the need for protection or justice. Sadness may reveal a longing for care. Fear may highlight the need for safety. Rather than bypassing these feelings with premature forgiveness, EFT helps clients process them and eventually transform them into more adaptive emotions, such as assertive anger, grief that brings release, or self-compassion.

Beyond Forgiveness: Integration and Acceptance

Therapy is not always about achieving forgiveness. More often, the work is about integrating the hurt parts of ourselves that carry childhood pain and allowing them to be seen, validated, and cared for. Sometimes what emerges is acceptance — not condoning harmful behaviour, but acknowledging what happened and making peace with our own emotional truth.

In this sense, the goal of therapy is less about forgiving others and more about freeing ourselves. By processing shame, grief, and anger, we loosen the grip of the past and make room for a more authentic, compassionate relationship with ourselves.

Honouring Your Own Process

If you have ever wondered why you can’t just forgive your parents, know that you are not alone. Forgiveness is not a requirement for healing. What matters most is your ability to acknowledge your pain, integrate your experiences, and move forward in a way that feels authentic and self-directed.

As Alice Miller argued, freedom comes from breaking cycles of denial and facing our pain with honesty. In EFT, this means attending to emotions, not bypassing them. From this foundation, whatever unfolds — boundaries, distance, compassion, or forgiveness — will be real and lasting.

References

Greenberg, L. S., & Goldman, R. N. (2019). Emotion-focused therapy: Coaching clients to work through their feelings (2nd ed.). American Psychological Association.

Miller, A. (1983). For your own good: Hidden cruelty in child-rearing and the roots of violence. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Tangney, J. P., Worthington, E. L., & Witvliet, C. V. O. (2005). Forgiveness in perspective: Theory, research, and practice. American Psychological Association.