I want to talk about a specific inner move that comes late in healing — and only when it comes on its own.
The move is being able to see the person who hurt you as a wounded human being. Recognizing that they too have their own childhood trauma, their own unhealed wounds, their own limitations that produced who they became. Feeling something like compassion or even pity for them — for the person they might have been if their formation had been different.
This move is real. It is important. It is also often misunderstood.
The misunderstanding: some people rush this move. They think being spiritually mature or being a good Christian requires immediately feeling compassion for anyone who hurt them. So they force the feeling, before their own healing has done the work of allowing it to arise naturally.
The result is not compassion. It is bypass. They perform the compassion while still carrying unhealed anger underneath. The performance keeps them stuck.
Real compassion for the person who hurt you emerges naturally, if it emerges, after specific work. And when it comes, it does not erase the accountability of what they did. It does not reopen your vulnerability to them. It just widens your view.
I want to share what I see in this work.
Why This Move Cannot Be Rushed
The reason compassion for the person who hurt you cannot be forced is that it requires specific inner work to have been completed first.
You have to have grieved what happened to you. Fully. In the body. Not just cognitively.
You have to have felt your anger, and let it move, rather than suppressing it.
You have to have gotten out of harm’s way, if the harm was ongoing. You cannot cultivate compassion for someone who is currently damaging you.
You have to have processed the pattern — how it developed, why you were vulnerable to it, what you learned from it.
You have to have built enough of your own self back that seeing them as a wounded human does not threaten your own reality about what happened.
When all of this has happened, compassion can arise on its own. It usually does, eventually. But if you try to jump to it before the earlier work is complete, you are bypassing.
What Rushed Compassion Looks Like
Rushed compassion has specific markers.
You feel obligated to forgive. Because your faith says so, because your family expects it, because you want to be a good person.
You minimize what they did. Their behavior gets softened in the telling. You explain it away. You focus on their pain and lose sight of yours.
You cannot fully feel the anger. It gets suppressed in favor of the compassion.
You reopen access to them. You forgive so much that you let them back into your life before they have earned it.
You still have the physical signs of unhealed anger. Chronic tension. Reactive moments. Persistent low-grade rage that you keep trying to override.
You feel a specific tiredness after being around them. The performance is exhausting.
If several apply, the compassion is not real yet. It is bypass. The underlying work has not been completed.
What Real Compassion Looks Like
Real compassion for the person who hurt you looks different.
It arises on its own. You do not force it. It appears one day, sometimes years into the work, as a natural response.
It does not minimize what they did. You can hold both truths: they were wounded, and they hurt you. Both are real.
It does not reopen your vulnerability. You can feel compassion for someone from a safe distance. Compassion does not require access.
It coexists with anger about the specific behaviors. When they do something harmful going forward, you can still respond appropriately. Compassion does not disable your discernment.
Your body has released the chronic tension. The compassion is not layered over stored anger. The anger has actually moved.
Your energy is not drained by them. The compassion is easy rather than effortful.
Your sense of what happened is intact. You have not revised the story to make their behavior more acceptable.
Real compassion is spacious. It sees them as a whole person — wounded parts, harmful parts, everything — without collapsing your own reality about what happened.
Why This Move Matters When It Comes
When compassion arises naturally, it accomplishes something specific.
It releases the last of the corrosive charge. The anger that had been giving them power in your interior life dissipates.
It changes how you carry the history. What was defining becomes contextual. You are not primarily a person who was hurt by them. You are a whole person who, among many other things, was once hurt by them.
It gives you accurate information about what happened. Seeing them as a wounded person who wounded you is more accurate than seeing them as a monster or as a hero. Accuracy is healing.
It protects you from the specific spiritual trap of hatred. Long-carried hatred shapes the hater. Compassion, when it comes, releases you from what your hate was doing to you.
It allows you to sometimes still love them, or elements of them, or the version of them that might have existed. This is a specific gift when the person who hurt you is family — a parent, a co-parent, a sibling.
None of this requires you to reconnect. Compassion is an interior move. What you do about proximity is a separate decision.
When Compassion Is Not Appropriate
Some situations do not warrant this move — at least not yet, and sometimes not ever.
Ongoing harm. If the person is still hurting you, cultivating compassion for them is dangerous. Get safe first.
Perpetrators of abuse against children. Compassion for the wounded child inside them is one thing. Compassion for their current adult behavior may or may not come. Do not force it.
People still actively manipulating you. Compassion often gets weaponized in these dynamics. Wait until you are fully out.
When you have not grieved yet. Compassion before grief is bypass.
When the person has not shown any accountability. You can still feel compassion, but it is a different move. Requires more inner stability.
If any of these apply, compassion is not the current work. Different work is.
What This Is Not
This is not the same as forgiveness. Forgiveness is a specific inner and often relational act. Compassion is a way of seeing them. They can overlap or not.
This is not required for healing. Some people heal fully without ever cultivating compassion for the specific person who hurt them. That is fine.
This is not an obligation. Christian teaching about loving enemies does not require this specific move on any particular timeline.
This is not reconciliation. You can feel compassion for someone you never see again.
This is not fast. This move usually comes years into the work, if it comes at all. Every earlier stage of healing matters.
Frequently Asked Questions
Am I a bad person if I cannot feel compassion for them? No. Compassion at this depth is not something you can force. Your inability to feel it now may be information about work that still needs doing, or it may just be that your soul is not ready.
Does my faith require me to feel this? Christian teaching includes compassion for enemies, but the depth of feeling and the timeline are not prescribed. Grace at your specific edge is enough.
How do I know if my compassion is real or bypass? Real compassion is easy. It does not require performance. It does not exhaust you. Your body is at peace. If it feels like work, it may still be bypass.
A Gentle Invitation
If something here met you and you’d like to talk it through, I offer a free 15-minute consultation. No pressure to begin anything — just a quiet conversation to see if this is the kind of support that fits.
Book a free 15-minute consultation.
Can’t find a time that works, or want to reach Tracey directly? Send a message or email truehealthcounselling@gmail.com.
You don’t have to do this alone.
Therapy in Toronto and online
I’m Tracey Nguyen, RN, MN, a registered nurse and psychotherapist in Toronto (Ontario licence #12492206), practising since 2015. If this article speaks to you, I offer complex trauma and CPTSD therapy in person in Toronto and online across Ontario, Canada and internationally.
Book a free 15-minute consultation →
Can’t find a time that works, or want to reach Tracey directly? Send a message or email truehealthcounselling@gmail.com.
