Forgiving someone can be a boon to mental health

NEW YORK – For someone who has led a charmed life, my eight-year-old can hold a serious grudge. Out of the blue, he recently brought up “that bad pencil thing that happened”.

It took me a while to divine that he was talking about the time a classmate nabbed one of his writing utensils, which took place nearly two years ago.

I thought about my son’s inability to let go of The Great Pencil Incident of First Grade when I learnt about new research that suggests forgiveness improves mental well-being, and offers a road map for getting there.

In the study, which was presented recently at an interdisciplinary conference on forgiveness at Harvard University and is under review for publication, researchers randomly assigned 4,598 participants from five countries into groups.

One set received a forgiveness workbook with exercises they completed on their own.

An example: Write the story of a specific hurt you want to forgive. Then, write it again as more of an observer, without emphasising how bad the wrongdoer was or how you felt victimised. Look for at least three differences between the two versions.

Those in the control group waited for two weeks before receiving the workbook.

When the two weeks were up, researchers found that those participants who had completed the workbook felt more forgiving than those in the control group, and had reduced symptoms of anxiety and depression.

These findings align with other studies on forgiveness, which have found it can be a boon to mental health, helping to do things like lower stress and improve sleep.

“What forgiveness does is sort of free the victim from the offender,” said Professor Tyler VanderWeele, director of the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard and one of the co-authors of the study. “I would never say, ‘Once you’ve forgiven, everything’s fine.’”

But it is a better alternative to rumination or suppression, he said, which is likely why it can improve overall mental well-being.

As my son shows, it can be hard to forgive even minor transgressions. I am not dunking on him here. I could easily prattle off a list of perceived offences I have been holding onto for years.

But Prof VanderWeele believes forgiveness is a skill that can be practised. I spoke to him about how to get started.

What does it mean to forgive someone?

My working definition is just to replace ill will towards the offender with goodwill. Forgiveness is not forgetting the action or pretending it did not happen. It is not excusing or condoning the action, and it is not the same as reconciling or forgoing justice. One can forgive while still pursuing a just outcome.

The workbook in the study relies heavily on the work of one of your study co-authors, psychologist Everett Worthington, who has a remarkable forgiveness story himself. His mother was murdered in the mid-1990s and he forgave the perpetrator. What are some of the core strategies?

One is to recall the hurt – do not try to suppress it. Another is to try and empathise with the offender without condoning him or her, or invalidating your own feelings.

Easier said than done.

One exercise is to set up two chairs and pretend the offender is in one of them. After describing what happened from your perspective, you sit in the chair of the offender and describe what happened from his or hers.

It can be a bit unsettling, but it is a very powerful experience.

Do you think people can get better at forgiveness over time?

It is possible to move to a more forgiving disposition – to think: “How do I want to interact with the world more generally? This is most certainly not going to be the last time I’m hurt or offended by others, so when this happens again, might I be in a better position to forgive?”

In a society like the one we are living in, with increasing polarisation and animosity, that disposition to forgive is potentially very much needed. NYTIMES