Forgiveness Improves Your Physical & Mental Health, New Research Shows
The concept of forgiveness is familiar to those in faith communities, but new research shows whether you approach it through a secular or faith-based lens, forgiveness is good for your health, period.
Early in his career as a marriage counselor, psychologist Everett Worthington noticed the critical role of forgiveness in maintaining healthy relationships. It inspired him to pursue forgiveness as an academic subject over the next several decades. Now professor emeritus at Virginia Commonwealth University, he and his colleagues recently published “a study conducted across five countries showing that when forgiveness is taught, practiced and achieved, the result is better mental and overall well-being,” the Washington Post reports.
“Forgiveness can change relationship dynamics and prevent a lot of very costly things that can happen in society,” he explained. “There are injustices we experience every day. People don’t have to forgive — it’s a choice people may make or not make.”
What good does it do to forgive?
Worthington’s work includes developing workbooks and prompts which allow people to explore their feelings of anger, hurt, and bitterness in order let go of them. The newest version – which builds off of evidence-based prior research and is free to download in five languages – offers a path to forgiveness starting in just two hours.
In the randomized trial involving nearly 4,600 participants in five countries – Hong Kong, Indonesia, Ukraine, Colombia and South Africa – half the people worked through the workbook in a two-week period while the other half were given the opportunity to try it at a later date. For those who worked through the forgiveness exercises, “there was a statistically meaningful reduction in depression and anxiety symptoms among users compared with the control group.”
The study, presented at an interdisciplinary conference on forgiveness at Harvard University last weekend, is under review for inclusion in a medical journal.
Research on forgiveness is being conducted nationwide. Tyler VanderWeele, a professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, director of the Human Flourishing Program, and co-author of the research, stresses the implications of forgiveness on public health. “I think the experience of being wronged is quite common,” he noted. “We’ve seen that this forgiveness workbook can be used to address forgiveness and improve mental health. If the resource is widely disseminated, the effects on population mental health could be substantial.”
Similarly, a research team led by Robert Enright, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, has developed forgiveness programs for young people. Their workbooks have been used by educators and students worldwide. Studies have shown that “children who forgive do better academically” and that among other physical and mental health benefits, “forgiveness can result in lower blood pressure, better sleep and less anxiety.”
What if forgiveness feels impossible?
Forgiveness can feel utterly impossible, as Worthington knows all too well. Worthington’s own work was challenged when his mother was brutally murdered in 1996 in horrific circumstances. Over time, he shared that he was able to forgive “the man suspected in the killing, a troubled individual with a below-average IQ and a history of being abused as a child,” but it was much harder to forgive the police, whose incomplete investigation failed to obtain a conviction. Through this experience, he learned how forgiveness and desiring justice are not mutually exclusive.
But forgiveness has a profoundly freeing effect for those who learn to practice it. “The science is clear that it works,” said Andrew Serazin, president of the Templeton World Charity Foundation, which helped fund the research study. “It helps the people who are doing the forgiving. It helps inside your own skin. That doesn’t mean you can’t seek justice. It doesn’t mean people can’t go to trial. It doesn’t mean there are no consequences.”
Forgiveness advocates are also clear that forgiveness is not appropriate for people trapped in abusive relationships. They should not forgive their abuser but instead, get out and seek safety.
Where do you start?
The first step is simply deciding to forgive, to stop dwelling on being wronged, which “requires a conscious choice to replace ill will toward a person with feelings of good will.” The decision comes first and “emotional forgiveness takes longer,” Worthington explained.
The new research study uses the REACH method of forgiveness, which involves the following:
- RECALL – Recall the hurt objectively. Acknowledge your feelings.
- EMPATHIZE – Without rejecting your own feelings or excusing their actions, find a way to empathize with the offender. Maybe the aggressor was acting out of childhood deficits.
- ALTRUISTIC GIFT – Offer the altruistic gift of forgiveness, acknowledging that all of us have failings and hurt others.
- COMMIT – Make a decision, an act of the will, to forgive. Writing a letter you do not send can help your process.
- HOLD – Hold on to the forgiveness instead of the hurt. The act that required forgiveness does not change. But how you continue to respond to it, and how you feel in response, can.
Forgiveness requires intention, effort, and continuous practice. You can start small, forgiving the person who cut in front of you on the freeway or was rude at the checkout counter, to begin exercising your forgiveness muscles. It helps you recognize that although bad behavior may impact you, it is not always personal. And when you forgive, you are the beneficiary.
“Forgiveness doesn’t solve all problems,” Worthington noted. “But forgiveness is freeing. It’s the right response to being wronged.”
Read the full Washington Post article here.
Parker-Pope, Tara. “Are you ready to forgive? A new study shows that letting go is good for health.” The Washington Post, 20 Apr 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/04/20/forgiveness-mental-health-benefits/
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash