The Agony of Forgiveness: Making Amends After Mental Illness

“As a single withered tree, if set aflame, causes a whole forest to burn, so does a rascal son destroy a whole family.”

—Chanakya, Pioneer Economist of India

I have destroyed the closest and most intimate relationships in my life. I have done this with actions while I was acutely symptomatic with my bipolar I disorder, while I engaged in active addiction, and while I was stone-cold sober.

To move into a recovery mode meant the reconstruction of most of my personal relationships.

I was not sure how to do this and, in an organization I used to arrest my addiction, I was introduced to the amends process. It was one component of a multivariable recovery program that involved individual and group identity negation during preliminary activities. Then, you were asked to go out into the world and take real-world actions.

I needed to find a way to reconnect on an emotional level with the people closest to me, and the first thing I had to do was acknowledge and attempt to rectify the hurtful actions of my past.

I started with my family.

The wounds each of them had were from years of my addiction, mental illness, anger, and self-pity. I had to take responsibility for all my acts, including the ones I did when I was completely delusional.

Even though I had done these things while biochemically removed from reality, I still had done them.

If someone burns your house down by mistake, it is an accident. But that accident can destroy your entire life.

My family worked with me. I made appointments with all of them and told them my intentions. I informed them I would tell them what I had done to them. I would ask them to be prepared to share whatever I failed to mention to make sure they felt validated. And lastly, I would ask them how to fix it.

This allows the freedom and space to create a new relationship in which both parties can feel safe and whole.

The process was arduous and bittersweet, but I had support and had been mentored by others who had performed this act of sacred contrition.

Although my family forgave me, hypocritically, I could not forgive my biological father’s acts while he was manic. When he tried to take my life while he was symptomatic, my life was altered forever. My identity was forged on that hate.

But as I received more and more forgiveness, I began to see my father differently. I started to see that Einar was a veteran with a mental illness and not a “monster.” I could see that he didn’t deserve the brutal end of his life. I could see that he deserved my compassion and empathy.

I needed to make amends to my father, and I did that with a conversation under the window at the VA psychiatric hospital I was restrained in for a 24-hour period.

My father had been dead a few years, and I just sat under a window and spoke to the sky.

As I began my oral catharsis, my entire body revolted. My muscles constricted as if I was being electrocuted, and my mouth went dry. I knew I had come too far to quit. I was in a sacred realm where lives can change, but you will not know how it will play out until you reach the other side of the act.

The last line of the Samuel Beckett book the The Unnamable says, “You must go on…I can’t go on…I’ll go on.”

I went on.

I asked my father for his forgiveness. I wept while acknowledging his life and pain, and at the very end I forgave him all his transgressions.

I was free.

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus believed Fire to be the basic material of the world. That as it burns and morphs, it emulates the constant flux and impermanence of the universe.

On that day, I burned through to the core of my being, a being that had hid from any real intimacy with the world since my youth. I was allowed to vulnerable in that moment of forgiveness with my father and to feel, for one fleeting moment, the safety a son can feel in his father’s arms.

How do work with your clients to rebuild their personal relationships?

Do you use some type of contrition process in the reconstruction of your clients’ lives?

Eric Arauz, MLER, is an international behavior health consumer advocate, trainer, and inspirational keynote speaker. He is a faculty member at the Rutgers-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School Department of Psychiatry, the Vice-Chairman of the current New Jersey Task Force on Opiate Addiction in citizens 18 to 25 years old, and a person with the lived experience of bipolar I disorder, PTSD, addiction, and suicidality. He is the SAMHSA 2012 "Voice Award" Fellow and the author of An American's Resurrection: My Pilgrimage from Child Abuse and Mental Illness to Salvation. 

The views expressed on this blog are solely those of the blog post author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Psych Congress Network or other Psych Congress Network authors.