Meeting Clients Where They Are: What Safety in Therapy Teaches About Forgiveness

A conversation between Jennifer Parker, MSSW and LaDonna Carey, M.A.

LaDonna Carey is a specialist in Betrayal Trauma with over 33 years of experience. She

provides psychotherapy virtually and in her private practice in Kingsport, TN. She is the creator of SOS Sharpening Our Skills for therapists.

I invited Carey to talk about forgiveness, something she is going to delve deeper into at the Smoky Mountain Symposium on Relational Trauma in October.

Jennifer: Forgiveness after betrayal or abuse is a topic that often creates strong reactions from both therapists and clients. How do you approach it?

LaDonna: I actually don't begin with forgiveness. I begin with the client.

One of the greatest responsibilities we have as therapists is resisting the urge to move clients toward our own definition of healing. Every intervention has a time and place. Our work begins with understanding what a particular person needs today.

Forgiveness illustrates this beautifully because people arrive with very different beliefs about what it means.

• Some learned “good” people should quickly forgive from faith communities, and they experience healthy anger and grief as contrary to that belief.

• Some believe forgiveness is necessary for healing.

• Others have rejected forgiveness because it has been used to silence their pain or discourage accountability.

Each of those starting points tells me something important about their story. My first task is understanding what forgiveness means to them.

Jennifer: I love how you framed the temptation to assume what clients need from us, instead of asking for more information. Curiosity first. So, you don't avoid talking about the topic.

LaDonna: Not at all. If a client brings forgiveness into the room, I think it's absolutely appropriate to explore it. I usually begin with questions like:

"What does forgiveness mean to you?"

"Where did you learn that?"

"Who has encouraged you to forgive?"

"What do you hope forgiveness would accomplish?"

Those questions often reveal whether forgiveness reflects the client's own values or whether it has become an expectation carried in from a partner, family member, faith community, or even a previous therapist.

Once we understand the meaning they're assigning to forgiveness, we can help them evaluate whether working on it supports healing at that moment or interferes with it.

Jennifer: What if the client never mentions forgiveness?

LaDonna: Then I don't introduce it. Clients recovering from betrayal are often asking much more immediate questions.

"Am I emotionally safe?"

"Can I trust my own judgment?"

"Will I ever stop feeling this overwhelmed?"

Those questions deserve our attention first.

Judith Herman's phase-oriented model of trauma recovery begins with establishing safety before deeper processing can occur. I see that principle reflected every day in clinical practice. People need enough stability and clarity to make thoughtful decisions before they can begin considering larger questions about meaning, reconciliation, or forgiveness.

When therapy focuses on restoring safety, emotional regulation, and personal agency, conversations about forgiveness often emerge naturally.

Jennifer: I agree focusing on safety and emotional regulation has to come first. Survivors have difficulty learning agency skills before those become established. Timing is so important.

LaDonna: Yes, it isn’t the discussion of forgiveness that concerns me. It is the timing. Getting it wrong can be harmful.

I once read of a client’s first session in which the therapist encouraged working on forgiveness before exploring what that meant to the person, whether betrayal was ongoing, whether safety was established, what accountability looked like, or even what the client hoped to accomplish in therapy.

I recently saw The Chicks in concert and the crowd erupted when they started singing “I’m Not Ready to Make Nice”.  Many betrayed partners are going to be singing along to that!

As therapists, we all have interventions we value because we've seen them help people. The risk comes when an intervention begins to take precedence over understanding the person sitting in front of us. That’s why I focus on these types of questions:

"Could you tell me more about what happened?"

"Do you feel physically and emotionally safe today?"

"What feels most overwhelming right now?"

“What do you hope therapy will accomplish for you?

Only after understanding the client's experience can we decide which interventions fit their needs. Assessment always comes before intervention.

When we understand the client's story, values, protective strategies, and current circumstances, we can choose interventions that fit the person rather than expecting the person to fit the intervention.

Jennifer: Occasionally, I saw clients whose anger and bitterness interfered with healing. How do you approach that?

LaDonna: The first thing I do is become curious about what their anger is accomplishing.

Research on betrayal trauma reminds us that our emotional responses develop in the context of survival. Jennifer Freyd's work on betrayal trauma demonstrates that our responses are shaped by the need to adapt to overwhelming relational experiences. Internal Family Systems describes these responses as protective parts working hard to prevent further injury. Janina Fisher similarly encourages therapists to approach protective reactions with curiosity rather than trying to eliminate them.

Instead of focusing on how to let go of anger, I begin by asking how anger serves them.

"What is your anger trying to protect?"

"What happens if it isn't there?"

"What feels dangerous about letting anger soften?"

Those conversations often uncover grief, fear, shame, or continued threats that have not yet been addressed.

The goal isn't to eliminate anger, but to understand what it has been doing for the client and help them develop additional ways of feeling safe.

As clients experience greater safety and begin rebuilding their lives, anger often changes on its own. It no longer has to work as hard because it no longer carries the entire burden of protection.

Jennifer: I think your method allows room for talking about anger as being healthy. Often clients are uncomfortable with feeling angry because they associate it with a partner’s abuse. Clients benefit from normalizing their anger and naming it as an emotion, while abuse is a behavior.       

LaDonna: Anger is our messenger that something is not as it should be! Let’s normalize anger about being mistreated. Education around the appropriateness of anger and strategies to work functionally with it are very important. Healing involves owning our own emotions and allowing others to own their behavior.

If we are free from comparing our emotions to others, it gives us the opportunity to build a relationship with the messages our body and soul are sending us.  I want to understand if their nervous system is working with them in healing by being curious about these questions:

• Can they think clearly?

• Can they make decisions that reflect their values?

• Can they reconnect with meaningful relationships?

• Can they experience moments of peace without immediately returning to survival mode?

Those are the outcomes I'm looking for.

As safety increases, many clients discover that their relationship with anger changes. They don't force it away. They simply no longer need it in the same way.

Jennifer: If you could leave therapists with one idea about forgiveness, what would it be?

LaDonna: Our clients don't need us to decide whether forgiveness is right for them. They need us to create enough safety that they can decide for themselves.

When we remain curious, respect the client's pace, and respond to what they need in the moment, we create the conditions where lasting healing becomes possible.

Forgiveness may become part of that process, or it may not. Forgiveness does not have to be a clinical objective. 

Our responsibility is not to lead clients toward a predetermined destination. Our responsibility is to understand where they are, help them establish safety, and support them as they discover their healing path. 

Jennifer: Your description of the healing process means having betrayal or abuse take up less space and time in survivors' lives. That is what some call forgiveness. However, it’s best not to use that term unless we understand what it means to survivors.

Thank you for this conversation and for the important work you do with betrayal trauma. I look forward to meeting you at the Smoky Mountain Symposium on Relational Trauma in October!

LaDonna Carey's Betrayal Trauma website: https://www.betrayalrecoverycenter.com/ 

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LaDonna Carey and I will both present at the Smoky Mountain Symposium on Relational

Trauma Oct.21-23, 2026. Organized by Carey, this three-day conference is designed to give practical, evidence-informed tools you can immediately apply in your work with clients. Here's a link for more CE information: Smoky Mountains Symposium On Relational Trauma

An outstanding lineup of presenters will cover betrayal trauma, coercive control, therapist resilience, Predictive Processing Flash, disgust in trauma therapy, the Enneagram, and forgiveness in trauma work.

Secure your spot now and register here: https://tinyl.co/4acW 

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Herman, J. L. (2022). Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence: From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror 

Freyd, J. J. (1996). Betrayal Trauma: The Logic of Forgetting Childhood Abuse.

 Freyd, J. J., & Birrell, P. J. (2013). Blind to Betrayal: Why We Fool Ourselves We Aren't Being Fooled.

Fisher, J. (2017). Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors: Overcoming Internal Self-Alienation.

Fisher, J. (2021). Transforming the Living Legacy of Trauma: A Workbook for Survivors and Therapists.

The Chicks. (2006). Not ready to make nice [Recorded by The Chicks]. On Taking the Long Way.