Healing the Deepest Wounds and Breaking Free from Shame, Guilt, and Self-Sabotage
“Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” — Ephesians 4:32
Forgiveness is simple in theory, difficult in practice, and nearly impossible when the wound goes soul-deep. When trust has been betrayed, innocence has been stolen, or when pain has embedded itself into memory and body, we ask ourselves—what does it mean to forgive? Why do I have to forgive?
When understand that, our suffering and the way that we handle the pain felt it’s not the same as the pain of those who hold on to grudges, bitterness, and fertilize the root of unforgiving—We learn why forgiving the unforgivable it’s necessary.
Forgiving what feels unforgivable, is not a passive act. It also does not a deny the harm, nor a dismisses justice. It is a spiritual and psychological process that releases us from the grip of our past, and removes the power from the offender. It no longer defines who we are by how we feel but what we choose to do.
Before healing can begin, clarity is essential.
Forgiveness is not:
Forgetting, erasing or denying the wrong and pain that it has caused. It’s not approving of or excusing someone’s wrong behavior or actions. It’s not minimizing the pain you’ve experienced not reopening yourself to more harm.
Forgiveness is:
An internal process of letting go. Choosing not to let the offender—or the event—have power over your life. Releasing the internal burden of bitterness, shame, and the need for revenge. Making space for healing and peace within your own soul.
Biblically speaking, forgiveness is central and centered in Jesus. Jesus taught His followers to forgive “seventy times seven” (Matthew 18:22), another way of saying, as often as necessary. This commandment is a recognition that harboring resentment corrodes the human spirit. As psychology now confirms, the refusal to forgive often becomes a prison we build for ourselves.
The Psychology of Pain and Memory
The human mind doesn’t merely remember trauma—it stores it and it keeps the score. Psychologist Bessel van dear Kolk explains in The Body Keeps the Score that traumatic memories are often encoded not as coherent stories but as sensory fragments and emotional imprints. This is why certain smells, places, or sounds can trigger overwhelming responses without warning.
When someone has deeply wronged you—especially in cases of abuse, betrayal, or abandonment the body interprets that event as an ongoing threat. Without intervention, your nervous system may remain stuck in a pattern of hypervigilance, avoidance, or emotional shutdown.
I’ve been there, I’ve lived it, I’ve felt it, I know what the pain of traumatic events, emotional abuse, betrayal, and abandonment feels like and what it does to the body.
We don’t seek to bypass this reality and make it easier on the offender. Even if that offender or person you can’t forgive is yourself. It is about reprocessing that trauma—through spiritual, emotional, and sometimes clinical support—so it no longer controls you.
Betrayal Trauma Collapses Trust
Some wounds feel existential because they were inflicted by those we trusted most: a parent, spouse, teacher, best friend, or a spiritual leader. This form of betrayal trauma does more than break the heart; it breaks the architecture of safety in the brain.
People who experience betrayal trauma often: Struggle with self-blame and confusion. Battle cycles of self-hatred or intrusive thoughts of guilt and anger. Developing patterns of mistrust in all relationships. They disconnect from God, feeling spiritually abandoned and seek the nervous system to protect the persons numbs the pain away.
In Psalm 55, David writes, “If an enemy were insulting me, I could endure it… but it is you, a man like myself, my companion, my close friend.” The pain of betrayal is personal, and scripture does not dismiss it. Instead, it gives language to it and remind us that even those who made history in the Bible and were appointed as kings felt the disappointing pain of betrayal.
Healing from this kind of trauma requires time and intention. It demands honesty with ourselves, and admitting the pain, and it is required to seek professional help. Forgiveness becomes a spiritual act and a form of personal liberation.
Shame, Guilt, and Self-Sabotage are The Aftershock
Many people carry shame as a side dish to their pain. Guilt is the silent belief that the wound was somehow our fault, or that our worth is now diminished because of it. Especially when abuse or manipulation was involved, if we’re not careful the lie of shame can become deeply embedded in the soul.
Here’s how shame and guilt often play out:
Guilt: “I did something bad.” Shame: “I am bad.” Self-sabotage: you reject good things because you no longer believe you deserve them.
These emotional patterns are common in people who haven’t yet processed their trauma. Spiritually, they often result in silence: prayer becomes difficult, scripture doesn’t feel related, and their worship life feels empty. You begin to suspect that God is distant, disappointed in you—or worse, you live disappointed in yourself.
God’s voice, throughout scripture, never echoes shame and always frees us from guilt. From Genesis to Revelation, His posture toward the broken is always the same He calls us to come and be healed. God says you are mine.
There’s a Spiritual Mandate and Invitation to Forgive
Theologically, forgiveness is not just a suggestion; it is woven into the gospel itself. The Lord’s Prayer, spoken by millions daily, includes the line: “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.” (Matthew 6:12)
Have we forgiven those who have hurt us?
Jesus never said this would be easy. In fact, His own crucifixion was surrounded by betrayal: Judas sold Him, Peter denied Him, His friends fled. And yet, hanging from the cross, He said, “Father, forgive them.” (Luke 23:34)
This isn’t a denial of justice, this is a demonstration of divine mercy. Jesus models that forgiveness is not the erasure of pain but the transcendence of it. It’s not the absence of consequence—it’s the refusal to let evil write the final word.
Forgiveness is a form of spiritual warfare. Forgiveness is how we break cycles. It is how we choose freedom over bitterness, and redemption over revenge.
A Pathway Toward Forgiveness
Your body will know when it’s not to let it go. God can help you do that. You don’t need to carry the burden of unforgiveness. We cannot expect for forgiveness to happen all at once right after we think “I forgive”. Forgiveness is an often a process, that unfolds gradually and requires both grace and grit.
Here are some guideposts for the journey:
1. Name the Wound Honestly
Forgiveness begins with truth. Identify the harm clearly: what was done, who did it, and how it has affected you. How does the memory of it make you feel? Remember that denial only delays healing.
2. Separate the Event from Your Identity
You are not what happened to you or what they deliberately chose to do to harm you. You are not the worst moment of your past. You are deeply loved, and worthy of wholeness. This truth must be internalized before forgiveness can be extended outward but it’s even more crucial for us to be able to forgive ourselves.
3. Invite God into the Process
Bring your pain to God in raw, honest prayers. Cry stump, and shout if you have to. The Psalms are full of lament and protests, we have biblical permission to grieve, rage, and question. Healing begins with full spiritual disclosure and grieving is necessary.
4. Seek Professional or Pastoral Help if Needed
Therapists, counselors, and trained pastors in trauma recovery can help you process your pain in safe structured ways. Healing does not require silence.
5. Make the Choice to Release
This step may come later, after months or even years of processing. When you are ready, forgiveness means choosing to cut lose the hold that the person who hurt you as in your heart. It’s choosing to evict what keeps beating up the soul. It does not require contact, reconciliation, or restored trust. It simply means: “You no longer have power over me.” Just because we say I forgive doesn’t mean we’re not allowed to talk about it ever again. It meant we can talk about it without anger, shame, guilt, or deep sorrow and pain.
6. Recognize When You Have Released the Pain
There comes a quiet and unannounced moment when you realize the pain no longer owns you. You might not even notice it until someone else names what should hurt… and then you’re able to look within and realize “no it doesn’t”.
Recently, my aunt said to me, “That must have changed your love for (she names the person), that’s must have changed the way you feel, it must have really broken you—and it’s gotta hurt you so badly?”
I asked, “What do you mean?”
She replied, “When you found out he was with someone else. When he rejected you and chose her over you. Yet, you were still willing to work things out. You must be devastated.”
I nodded politely, unsure how to respond in the moment. But as I walked away, I realized that I didn’t feel active pain for that particular past betrayal. I can think about it without bitterness, without self-pitying or without shame. I know it was wrong, and I admit I KNOW it wounded me. But that particular wound doesn’t bleed anymore.
That’s how healing often works—not with fireworks, but with peace. Pain becomes a memory and rage becomes understanding. As forgiveness becomes freedom.
True forgiveness means remembering memories with wisdom. Giving ourselves the opportunity to learn from the pain.
Today, there are new wounds to tend to. I can admit today I have new wounds caused by pain, silence, abandonment, betrayal, and abuse to tent to. But yesterday’s no longer define me. You don’t have to bleed forever. There’s redemption and grace.
Real-Life Redemption
Consider Corrie ten Boom, a Dutch Christian who survived the Holocaust. After the war, she met one of the guards from the concentration camp where her sister had died. He asked her for forgiveness.
Corrie hesitated. Her hand froze. Everything in her resisted. But in that moment, she prayed for the strength to forgive. And when she extended her hand, she later said, she felt a surge of healing she could not explain.
Forgiveness didn’t erase her suffering. But it marked the beginning of freedom.
Please Remember What Forgiveness Makes Possible: Forgiving the unforgivable and that’s one of the most courageous, counter-cultural, and Christlike choices a person can make.
– Forgiveness sets a boundary to protect your soul and spirit from future consequences. Forgiveness was never meant to free the person who wronged you, forgiveness exists so that you can apply it and set yourself free.
– It doesn’t mean justice won’t come. It doesn’t mean that what happened should be acceptable as “okay”. Forgiveness mean the past no longer dictates your future.
– When we forgive: We reclaim the narrative of our lives and interrupt the cycle of shame and self-sabotage. We become capable to create space for healing, renewal, and spiritual clarity.
– Our stories don’t end in trauma. Our stories ends in Christ, and through grace, your story too, can move from wound to witness, and from suffering to strength.
I pray that you are able to acknowledge the pain, recognize what causes it, allow yourself to sit with the feelings, forgive yourself, and release the grip that the offense has in your heart. May you be blessed, may you be well, may you find freedom in forgiveness, and receive blessings for your choices. I pray to God for new strength and grit, as you stay the course and do the hard work. In Jesus’ name, Amen!
“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him.” — Romans 8:28
Even in the pain, He is present.
©️2025 Denise Kilby New Hope MHCLC Assoc. All rights reserved.
