Perfect Pairings Aren’t Always Perfect
The world is filled with iconic pairings. Abbott and Costello. Holmes and Watson. Batman and Robin. Pinky and The Brain. Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. Peanut butter and jelly. These pairs just seem to belong together.
Here’s one more: Forgiving and forgetting. You have probably been advised to “forgive and forget” at one time or another. And it does seem like a quality pairing. After all, if you forgive someone and put their behavior firmly in the past, it is sometimes possible to move forward in a positive direction. And sometimes we all need someone to forgive and forget on our behalf.
But just as Robin the Boy Wonder sometimes fights crime without his bat-obsessed mentor and peanut butter sometimes stands on its own or pairs up with a banana, forgiving and forgetting can—and sometimes should—be separate activities. That can be especially true for a person in recovery from a substance use disorder.
Let’s look at a couple of cases when it might be better to forgive and remember rather than to forgive and forget.
Forgive Yourself While Remembering How Far You Have Come
While regaining your sobriety can—indeed, should—be a time of celebration, many people find themselves feeling a lot of guilt and sadness around the time lost and the damage done while they were under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
While that is an understandable feeling, one of the best things you can do to support your ongoing sobriety is to forgive yourself for past mistakes. That process can take time, and it is often a good idea to work through your difficult feelings with the help of a mental health professional. The effort is well worth it because forgiving yourself permits you to focus on the present moment and on building a positive, sober future for yourself.
But that does not necessarily mean you should forget all the challenges you faced when you were using drugs or alcohol. Remembering the situations or emotions that led to your initial substance use can help you avoid or manage those things in the future. And remembering how hard you worked to get sober is also an important motivator as you work to maintain that sobriety over time.
Forgiving yourself is a wonderful thing—but it does not mean you should forget the past entirely.
Forgive Others While Remembering Who Does Not Support Your Sobriety
There may be people in your life who you believe—perhaps rightly—contributed to the choices you made that led to your substance use disorder. Maybe you blame an overbearing parent or a partner who belittled you. Maybe you blame the person who first gave you drugs and encouraged you to try them. Or maybe you blame someone you think could have helped you early on but who chose not to be judgmental instead.
Again, those feelings of anger and resentment may well be justified—even as you come to grips with the fact that you bear significant responsibility, too. Still, finding a way to forgive those who have hurt you or failed to help you can be freeing and an important way to firm up the foundations of your sobriety. As with the process of forgiving yourself, you may time and professional support to work toward forgiving those with whom you are angry.
But forgiving these individuals does not mean you should forget how their behavior may have contributed to your issues with drugs or alcohol. Now that you are in recovery, it is essential that you fill your life with people who support you and build you up rather than tear you down. And, of course, you simply cannot hang out with people who provided you with drugs or alcohol, even if you considered them friends at the time.
Forgiving others is a wonderful thing—but it does not mean you should forget the past entirely.
Don’t Forget That French Creek is Always Here to Help
When you are struggling with a substance use disorder, it can seem like you are all alone. As drugs or alcohol damage your physical health, your mental health, your relationships, and more, it can feel as though the whole world is caving in around you and there is nothing you can do to stop it. Fortunately, that is not the case.
At French Creek Recovery Center—located in Meadville, Pennsylvania—we are dedicated to helping individuals regain and maintain their sobriety so that they can regain control of their lives. We provide personalized treatment plans because we recognize that no two individuals have identical needs. We will see you through medically supervised detoxification and then provide strategies and resources for maintaining your sobriety (as well as treatment for co-occurring mental health disorders) during our rehabilitation program. We continue to support you via our aftercare programs designed to help you start your recovery journey with confidence.
When you are ready to transform your life for the better, we are ready to help.