Five for 2005: Five reasons to forgive

Content provided by the Faculty of the Harvard Medical School

Five for 2005: Five reasons to forgive

In recent years, the most common New Year’s resolutions have veered away from self-improvement pledges. Instead, people are committing themselves to spending more time with family and friends, enjoying life more, and reducing stress. But what if your family and friends are the ones stressing you out, their disappointing or hurtful behavior a nagging source of unhappiness or resentment?

Life regularly presents us with situations that hurt or anger us, from physical assault and emotional betrayal to everyday clashes between our wishes and those of the people around us. Sooner or later, depending on the extent of the injury and the help we receive, we are usually able to move beyond hurtful incidents. But sometimes it’s hard to let go of a grudge or feeling of injustice. We mentally replay situations in which we were wronged or misunderstood and may feel angry or victimized all over again, perhaps silently rehearsing our side of the story or thinking about ways to get even.

“This creates a stress response, with higher levels of stress hormones and increased blood pressure and heart rate. When people hold on to anger and past trauma so strongly that the stress response never goes away, they pay a toll in their physical and emotional well-being,” says psychologist Ann Webster, Ph.D., director of the Mind/Body Cancer Program at the Mind/Body Medical Institute in Chestnut Hill, Mass.

Centuries of religious teachings extol forgiveness as a virtue. Now there’s increasing evidence that when we forgive, we help ourselves to greater health and a happier life. The ability to forgive may have evolved, in part, as a way to remedy situations that would otherwise lead to unhealthy psychological and neurobiological stress, says Pietro Pietrini, M.D., Ph.D., chair of clinical biochemistry at the University of Pisa. In his laboratory, researchers are investigating what happens in the brain when we forgive. Based on data from functional magnetic resonance imaging, they’ve found that different parts of the brain are activated when we contemplate forgiveness rather than revenge or retaliation.

What is forgiveness?

Forgiveness means letting go of anger or resentment, sometimes accompanied by greater empathy for the point of view of the person who has harmed us. It is a choice not to let past grievances compromise our future by clogging our thoughts and emotions. It does not mean denying harm, or necessarily letting the person or people you forgive back into your life or even speaking directly with them. It may be surprising to some, but the main benefits of forgiveness go not to the person who is forgiven but to the person who forgives.

“Forgiveness is a skill like any other,” says Webster. “You can examine your negative thoughts — perhaps through writing about them — and consider whether they are distorted or worth hanging on to. Sometimes you can refocus how you think about the stories of what has happened to you, a technique psychologists call narrative repair, to appreciate your own strengths or the ways you coped in the situation. Sometimes you need to make a concrete change, like getting out of an abusive relationship, before you can move on. Forgiveness isn’t denying anything or stuffing away your feelings, but shifting into an acceptance and understanding, softening and letting go of your resentments.”

Some people, often those with built-in resilience and optimism, find it easy to forgive and go forward after all sorts of disappointments and traumas. For most of us, however, it’s a difficult process.

“Forgiveness requires change on many levels. There is no time frame or specific thing you must do,” says Webster.

Recent research suggests five reasons to forgive in 2005:

1. Reduced stress

Researchers at Hope College in Michigan have found that when we mentally replay a hurtful memory or nurse a grudge against a person who mistreated or offended us, the body reacts with a stress response. Brow muscles tense, sweating increases, heart rate and blood pressure rise, and other measures indicate that the nervous system is on high alert. If we imagine granting forgiveness instead — or simply picture how that person might have felt or what might have contributed to the hurtful behavior — physical stress indicators remain fairly steady. You can’t change the past, but this study shows that changing how you think about past hurt can reduce its impact on you and the resulting likelihood of stress-related illness.

2. A change of heart

Willingness to forgive may lower your heart disease risk. In laboratory studies at the University of Tennessee, forgiving a parent or friend for a betrayal was associated with lower blood pressure, lower heart rate, and a reduced workload for the heart muscle.

3. Stronger relationships

Like it or not, partners in long-time relationships often hurt one another. In a University of Buffalo study of long-term marriages published in the June 2004 issue of the Journal of Family Psychology, women were found to resolve their marital conflicts more effectively when they could forgive and feel benevolent in response to hurtful behavior by their husbands.

Developing a capacity for forgiveness can help keep small disappointments from developing into big ones. Regularly practicing forgiveness (see “An exercise in forgiveness,” above) toward those you live with — whether a spouse or a messy toddler — is like flossing your teeth to prevent tartar from forming. It can keep small incidents from hardening into lingering resentment.

4. Help with pain and chronic illness

Faced with pain or chronic illness, we sometimes respond with anger, frustration, self-blame, or guilt for the effect of the illness on loved ones, and grief at the loss of healthy life. The ability to forgive yourself, your pain, or your illness may help promote healing.

In a pilot study at Duke University Medical Center, 43 patients with chronic back pain were randomly selected to receive either their usual care or an eight-week course in loving-kindness meditation, a traditional Buddhist practice used to transform anger into compassion. At the end of the eight weeks, those receiving usual care showed no change in their discomfort, but those practicing the meditation felt significantly less pain and anxiety.

People often confront the issue of forgiveness when faced with a terminal illness.

“The end of life is a time when people have an opportunity to say what they need to say, to repair relationships, to say they are sorry, to let go of things they have done or said. There can be forgiveness on many levels, making things easier for the person passing and the people who are left,” says Webster. She adds, “I do a lot of work with people who work on forgiveness after losing somebody, and it’s hard. People often say it would have been really nice to do it when the person was alive.”

5. Greater happiness

When you forgive someone, you make yourself — rather than the person who hurt you — responsible for your future happiness. Increasingly, psychotherapists are finding that at the appropriate time in therapy, forgiveness techniques can help people deal with the emotional fallout from past hurts.

According to one survey of mental health counselors, 94% felt that it was appropriate for therapists to raise the issue of forgiveness. Three out of four used forgiveness techniques to help clients express and release their anger; a smaller number used techniques to help clients develop empathy for the person who hurt them.

In a survey of clients in individual therapy presented at the 2004 annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, almost all reported experiencing a significant hurt in their lives. And three out of four indicated that they would like to be able to forgive the persons responsible, replacing bitterness and anger with feelings of goodwill.

Many of those who weren’t yet ready to offer forgiveness hoped to reduce the intensity of their bitterness and anger. They said they were no longer fixed on righting the wrong or getting even. Most significantly, clients who talked explicitly about forgiveness during their therapy experienced greater improvement in their symptoms.

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Last updated:	August 21, 2006