Learning to forgive our parents has enormous implications for our emotional and spiritual growth, perhaps more than any other relationship we have, for the simple reason that our parents are internalized parts of our own personality in a unique sense. Achieving a more harmonious relationship with our parents in the outer world simultaneously affects our inner world as well, that is, our relationship to ourselves. If we experience forgiving our actual mother and father for the hurt they caused us, the internalized representations of our parents would also change, allowing for less need to split off or repress painful aspects of the self. Our “inner” parents would become far less persecuting and more supportive as a consequence.

Bearing the Unbearable: Trauma, Gospel, and Pastoral Care
Deborah van Deusen Hunsinger