Frankl (1946, updated 2006) noted that some people do not develop wisdom after a traumatic experience, but instead become embittered, morally severe, and emotionally closed off from others. Bitterness develops when meaning collapses and there is no personal repair. Herman (2015) proposed that bitterness is usually a reaction to the domination and betrayal of abuse by others and provides a protective moral stance, but at the expense of internal repair and connection with other people. Later, Michael Linden (2003) termed this state as Posttraumatic Embitterment Disorder (PTED). It is a serious harmful life event that is perceived by the person as unjust and violating their core values, constituting a moral-emotional injury. The resulting anger and bitterness is a different emotional response compared to the threat and fear associated with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). With PTED the bitterness becomes corrosive because of a persistent cognitive-emotional fixation on the negative event. The bitterness feeds chronic rumination, continued feelings of grievance and unfairness, and impaired functioning. The person feels that they cannot fully live without the grievance being rectified. PTED may occur with depression but they are different: While depression is associated with helplessness and self-blame, PTED has an external target for the person’s anger. Bitterness preserves a person’s moral clarity by their insistence that they have been wronged and a refusal to normalise the offending behaviour. The person believes that this behaviour cannot be integrated because to accommodate what happened feels like a loss of dignity and requires a painful shift in their perception of reality. Bitterness is not a ‘wrong’ feeling and may be founded on an accurate perception of events. However, bitterness becomes corrosive over time. When bitterness is dominant, Frankl suggested that the theme of life then becomes the injury. It tethers the person to the past and reduces their capacity for openness to experiences in the present, which restricts their ability to create new meaning. There is less trust in people and less capacity for love, and this is instead replaced by cynicism. Furthermore, Linden believed that ruminating on the moral injury and a life directed toward unresolved protest was psychologically draining. McCullough (2001) suggested that bitterness sustains motivation for avoidance or revenge. Consequently, the person may often be stressed or in a state of increased vigilance when interacting with others. Over time, the bitterness reorganises the self around the moral injury so that the person’s life narrative is narrowed into a single theme. The bitterness maintains recognition of the moral wrong but, by doing so, keeps the wound alive. Bitterness is not a moral failure and can serve a purpose: It preserves self-worth in the short-term – the person believes that they are in the right – and it is protective and loyal to the harmed self, but in the long-term it will likely impair the development of a future-centred purpose and relations with other people (Baumeister, 1991). In such a circumstance, the bitterness can become a core component of the person’s identity.
Bitterness and forgiveness are two different ways of carrying an internal injury over time. Forgiveness is often misunderstood to mean behaving as if the hurt never happened, which is incorrect and potentially harmful in itself. Enright and Fitzgibbons (2000) proposed that forgiveness is not forgetting the past, minimising or excusing what has been done, reconciling with someone who has hurt you, or discarding boundaries or thoughts of justice. In the context of abuse, one way to think of it is that, if a person ‘turns the other cheek’, they are going somewhere else, not going back to the situation where they once were. Forgiveness is when a person recognises that they were harmed and that what happened matters, but that they do not want to go through their life bound to their injury. Forgiveness is to aid the injured person to heal and to regain their freedom; forgiveness is not to support or protect the perpetrator of the hurt. The development of bitterness is often automatic and not a choice. However, some choices may perpetuate bitterness, such as rumination, revenge fantasies, and the person merging the injury into their identity. These options may well occur unconsciously, but they serve to reinforce bitterness as an approach to life. In contrast, forgiveness can be a conscious choice that then substantially alters a person’s emotional reality. Choices that reduce bitterness over time include strengthening boundaries, processing grief, seeking appropriate justice, and rebuilding an identity outside of the injury. By increments these decisions change the motivations and meanings associated with the injury. Nevertheless, forgiveness is difficult and can feel like a leap into the unknown. Often, people fear letting the perpetrators ‘get away’ with their behaviour. However, forgiving does not erase the wrong of what happened, it instead means that the person no longer has to carry such an emotional burden. A person may feel they are not ready to forgive, or they may not want to, both of which are acceptable. It is for each person to consider. However, forgiveness is not normally a choice that produces an immediate result; it is usually more like a choice of direction or intent that may develop weight over time. Furthermore, forgiveness is not a simple act of will but also an act of capacity. Herman argued that, for a person to consider forgiveness, certain conditions must be present. It is a necessity that the person is not in fear of further harm, emotionally dysregulated, or overwhelmed by memories of the trauma. Instead, they have to feel safe so that their nervous system is calmed. In effect, the trauma must be in the past. It is not possible to forgive while the harm is ongoing or while the effects are still having a substantial impact. Worthington (2006) specified two kinds of forgiveness: Decisional forgiveness, which is choosing not to seek revenge, and emotional forgiveness, which is a reduction in anger, resentment, and bitterness. Emotional forgiveness is usually more difficult to achieve, as it may take a long while, perhaps many years, for emotions to dissipate. A person may choose to forgive long before they actually feel forgiving. So, there are physiological, psychological, and emotional constraints upon forgiving. Eventually, decisions about forgiveness are often less about the person who caused the harm but instead focus on whether the individual wants to stop organising their inner life around the injury and to seek a different way to relate to what happened.
One form of forgiveness that can be especially difficult to attain is self-forgiveness. Worthington considered that self-forgiveness often involves acceptance of responsibility, experiencing guilt or remorse, making amends if possible, releasing perpetual self-condemnation, and reintegrating the self to create a morally acceptable identity. Self-forgiveness is not denial, avoiding accountability, making excuses, ignoring consequences, or feeling entitled. Hall and Fincham (2005) proposed that self-forgiveness is hindered by shame, self-condemnation, and feelings of moral failure. This makes self-forgiveness conceptually different to forgiving others, as the offender and the judge are the same person. In this instance, it is not possible to move away from the offender as the person carries the offender within them. To achieve self-forgiveness, it is required that the person must hold both responsibility and self-compassion at the same time. The person has to integrate two conflicting representations of the self: The perception of the self who has done harm and also of the self who is still deserving of moral value. If a person minimises their responsibility, it becomes excusing or denial, but if their criticism or hostility towards the self is not reduced it then manifests as chronic self-condemnation. The processes of responsibility and self-compassion must occur together in parallel so as to achieve a balance. However, this integration may lead to a changed identity, as a person will likely want to reconsider who they are after their lapsed behaviour. Without self-forgiveness a client can become stuck, even if they have tried to make amends. They may perceive peace to represent a moral failure or to present a risk of the behaviour reoccurring. Thus. letting go of self-punishment can also feel like letting go of responsibility. Tangney, Boone, and Dearing, (2005) described people using punishment and self-condemnation to preserve their own moral standards. Shame can drive self-punishment at the expense of self-forgiveness, but it can serve to protect the person’s moral identity. However, this can then lead to the belief that punishment equates with morality. Similar to the forgiveness of others, self-forgiveness is not a process of deciding that the harmful event did not matter: Instead, it recognises that the event mattered but that the person is still allowed to live. After attempting repair by changing their behaviour, apologising, and making amends, a person’s identity is more than just their worst act. Herman suggested that, following trauma, a person may adopt responsibility for events that were not actually caused by their behaviour. Defining accurate responsibility is a different process to forgiveness and can involve confronting hindsight bias, learned helplessness, and learnt fear responses. However, all humans are fallible. Frankl proposed that healing does not involve erasing memories of the past but instead choosing one’s stance towards it. In this context a person may feel they have failed, were limited, or inadequate, but in time their circumstance may eventually allow them to look forward and try to live better.
References
Baumeister, R.F. (1991) Meanings of Life. New York: Guilford Press.
Enright, R.D. and Fitzgibbons, R.P. (2000) Helping Clients Forgive: An Empirical Guide for Resolving Anger and Restoring Hope. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Frankl, V.E. (2006) Man’s Search for Meaning. Revised and updated edn. Translated by I. Lasch. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Hall, J.H. and Fincham, F.D. (2005) ‘Self-forgiveness: The stepchild of forgiveness research’, Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 24(5), pp. 621–637.
Herman, J.L. (2015) Trauma and Recovery. New York: Basic Books.
Linden, M. (2003) Posttraumatic Embitterment Disorder. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 72(4), pp. 195–202.
McCullough, M.E. (2001) ‘Forgiveness: who does it and how do they do it?’, Current Directions in Psychological Science, 10(6), pp. 194–196.
Tangney, J.P., Boone, A.L. and Dearing, R.L. (2005) ‘Forgiving the self: Conceptual issues and empirical findings’, in Worthington, E.L. Jr. (ed.) Handbook of Forgiveness. New York: Routledge, pp. 143–158.
Worthington, E.L. Jr. (2006) Forgiveness and Reconciliation: Theory and Application. New York: Routledge.