Are you struggling to make peace with the actions of someone in your life? Find out why forgiveness is good for you, and how to do it.
It may seem strange, initially, to think of forgiving someone else as beneficial to us, but research shows that forgiveness is actually a powerful mental health tool, with benefits including reduced stress, anger, and depression, and increased hope, gratitude, and emotional resilience.
MyCounselor.Online conducted meta-analyses of 15 studies,examining 78 outcome measures. And they discovered that forgiveness interventions have a significant impact on reducing stress or distress, a moderate effect on anger and hostility, and a small effect on depression.
And forgiveness didn’t just help participants to let go of negative symptoms; they also reported a boost in positive emotions, such as hope, gratitude, happiness, empathy and confidence.
As one study on the psychology of forgiveness concluded: “forgivers experience greater psychological health (lower anxiety and depression and greater self-esteem) indirectly through reduced anger and improved hope for the future.”
Can forgiving others help you to live longer?
And the benefits of forgiveness don’t just stop at better mental health. We know that holding onto anger can be incredibly physically damaging. In the short term, symptoms of anger include:
- Headaches
- Digestion problems
- Insomnia
- High blood pressure
- Skin problems
- Heart attack
- Stroke
In the longer term, chronic anger has the potential to kill. Many studies have found clear links between negative emotions and cardiovascular problems. Over time, anger can lead to “permanent damage and increased risk for cardiovascular disease”. This can lead to heart disease, hypertension and stroke.
And it’s not just your cardiovascular system that can pay the price of holding onto resentment. Persistent cortisol release can lead to a consistently suppressed immune system, which can make you more at risk of infections and illnesses. The disruption to your digestive system can contribute to conditions like irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and acid reflux. And constant muscle tension can lead to chronic pain conditions like tension headaches, migraines and back pain.
Chronic anger can also damage your relationships and impact your professional life – leading to a viscous cycle of greater stress and increased risk of physical symptoms.
Carrying anger doesn’t just feel bad – it impacts everything from our health to our relationships. But HOW do you go about forgiving someone? Especially if you don’t feel like they deserve it?
How to forgive someone – and let them go
Forgiveness is not always easy, and nor is it usually instant. I am not suggesting you simply say to yourself, “ I forgive that person for what they have done” and move on. True, lasting forgiveness is a process, and about you as much as them.
Personally, I like to reframe forgiveness as ‘letting go’. I am not absolving someone of something they have done, but I am choosing to release them and their actions from my mind; I am freeing myself of them and choosing inner peace.
As Karen Swartz, MD, director of the Mood Disorders Adult Consultation Clinic at The Johns Hopkins Hospital says, “[Forgiveness] is an active process in which you make a conscious decision to let go of negative feelings whether the person deserves it or not.”
Here are some strategies you can use to practice forgiveness, or letting go.
Talk to people
Talking to other people about our worries is beneficial – it’s why therapists exist! By taking through issues we allow our mind to process them, and get sympathy, support and a fresh point of view from someone else.
Sometimes hearing how someone else has overcome something significant themselves can help put our position in a different perspective, or make us feel less alone. Forgiveness is an active process, and talking through what has happened in a constructive way (and not just raking over old coals and re-opening wounds) can aid in that process.
If you are finding it difficult to move past something that happened to you, find someone you trust to talk it through with. This might be a relative, friend or colleague, or you might decide to see a therapist. If you don’t yet feel ready to talk about what happened you could try journaling. Many people find the practice therapeutic.
Seek an alternative point of view
When we see ourselves as victims of someone or something it can be hard to move past the injustice. But in my own journey of forgiveness, I have found it helpful to see a scenario from a broader perspective.
People don’t always set out deliberately to hurt us; they may be acting from of a position of pain themselves, or they may just be very limited in how they are able to relate to others. Hurt people hurt people, as the saying goes. And even if they DID want to hurt us, that in itself demonstrates just how emotionally ‘poor’ they are.
I always believe that how someone makes us feel is how they themselves feel inside. Just think: when you are happy you only want the whole world to be happy too. But when you are in pain, it’s harder seeing others life a joyful life. So when someone makes me feel negative emotions, rather than hold onto anger at them I can have empathy for the pain they must feel. And without growth that pain will be inescapable for them. That helps me to let them go.
‘De-victim’ yourself
Another strategy is to de-victim yourself. By this I mean examining the situation that has made you angry or hurt, and exploring your own role in it. Was there anything you could have done differently? Did you always act at your very best? Were there personal limitations of your own that led you to interact with this person, or enable them to hurt you?
This isn’t about apportioning blame, or even taking on any culpability yourself, but instead about learning whatever lessons we can to avoid being in a similar situation in the future. It is also about preventing feeling like we are passive victims – and the self-pity trap that can lead us into.
Personally, I find this approach liberating because I don’t need to view myself as a victim, and it feels like I am learning lessons that will protect myself in future.
In 2006, I left an abusive marriage. Initially I was angry at my ex-husband for how he had behaved in the marriage, but after a while I realised I was also angry at myself for ‘allowing’ him to treat me poorly for five years by staying.
As part of my healing process, I looked back at my ‘role’ in the marriage – why I chose to marry him, and why I chose to stay. Eventually I was able to understand why I had made those choices and forgive and have compassion for myself. Finally this enabled me to release him and move on. Today I feel no anger or any negative emotion towards my ex; I actually feel nothing – he isn’t in my life or consciousness any more.
Trust karma
One thing that can hamper forgiveness is a sense of injustice. If you don’t feel like the person who hurt you has paid an appropriate price, isn’t aware, or doesn’t care, it can be hard to move on.
But when we hold onto anger towards someone, it is us that pays the price. We feel the negative emotion, and it is our lives that are still impacted by what we believe they have done. Just like the famous saying: “Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”
Personally I trust that karma ultimately prevails – even if I am not around to see it work. If someone doesn’t learn their lessons and stop harming others, then their life will be poorer and more difficult as a result. And they’ll have to deal with the consequences.
That is their journey and not mine. By letting them go, I make the choice to remove them from my life and leave them to their own fate.
Free yourself of anger and live longer and more happily
When we let go of the anger and bad feeling, and allow ourselves to move past something painful, we are able to find inner peace, and reap the mental and physical rewards that offers. It’s not always easy to release someone, and it may take some work on your part, but trust me, the inner peace you find when you can let someone go is worth the effort.
