Forgiveness & Healing

topic

Forgiveness is the deliberate psychological process of releasing the resentment, anger, and vengeance motivation toward someone who has caused harm — not the condoning of the harmful behavior, the requirement of reconciliation with the person who caused harm, or the forgetting of what occurred, but the freeing of the self from the ongoing psychological and physiological burden of sustained resentment through a process of working toward seeing the offender with compassion rather than hatred. Research by Fred Luskin establishes forgiveness as both a psychological skill and a physical health intervention.

Role

Forgiveness is one of the most psychologically consequential choices available to people who have been genuinely harmed — with sustained unforgiveness maintaining the physiological stress response of resentment long after the harmful event has passed, producing the documented cardiovascular, immune, and mental health consequences of chronic stress in the person who carries the resentment rather than in the person toward whom it is directed. The common confusion of forgiveness with condoning harm or with reconciliation (which requires the offender's accountability and change rather than only the offended person's internal process) is the primary barrier to the adoption of forgiveness — with most people resisting it because they believe forgiving means saying the harm was acceptable, when it actually means freeing themselves from the ongoing injury of sustained resentment.

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