Archive for April, 2019

I think that getting rid of one’s anger is not a good thing if the goal is to achieve justice. Don’t we need some anger as a motivator to get up and do something about continual put-downs by others?

Anger in the short run is seen as reasonable because the person is basically saying, “What you did was wrong. I am a person worthy of respect and that is what I am asking of you.” At the same time, if this anger stays with a person, deepens, and lasts for many months, it can be counter-productive. One then might demand too much from the other. One might turn the quest for justice into a motivation to seek revenge and hurt the other. So, we have to be careful when discussing the benefits of anger. There are such benefits in the short-run, but anger has a way of taking up residence in the human heart if we are not careful and thus the one harboring the anger can be damaged.

Learn more at Why Forgive?

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In my experience, I find that mental health professionals emphasize catharsis or “getting the anger off one’s chest.” I now am wondering if this is an incomplete approach to good treatment. What do you think?

Catharsis as the exclusive end in and of itself is not advised when the anger is deep and long-lasting. This is because the venting of anger does not cure the anger in the vast majority of cases. Taking some time to be aware of the anger, and the expression of it within temperate (reasonable) bounds in the short-run, can help the client to be aware of the depth of that anger. The cure for the anger, in other words the deep reduction in that anger, is forgiveness, shown scientifically to be the case (see Enright & Fitzgibbons, Forgiveness Therapy, 2015).

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Celebrate Spring with a Free Gift–or Two–from Us!


Yes, we’re celebrating SPRING–and LIFE–by giving away two free gifts designed to help save lives on the highway.
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“DRIVE FOR OTHERS’ LIVES” is a world-wide campaign initiated by the International Forgiveness Institute (IFI) that uses scientifically-tested forgiveness principals to encourage development of prosocial behaviors that will help save the lives of drivers–like you.

This professionally-designed and printed vehicle bumper sticker (11″ x 3.5″) is our gift to you–and you can get up to two of them free. The glossy finish will last for years. The removable adhesive backing will not leave any residue on the surface where it is affixed..
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Most importantly, it will alert everyone who sees it to remember that safe driving practices are not only for you and your occupants but for everyone–because every person is important and every person has inherent worth..

A single life lost to a traffic crash is one life too many because it will mark the end of that person’s tremendous potential and the gifts that he or she could share with family members, our communities, and our world.


Deaths from road traffic crashes in 2018 increased to 1.35 million             a year. That’s nearly 3,700 people dying on the world’s roads                                                                                                   every single day.” 


In addition to those killed around the world, tens of millions more are injured or disabled every year — people who suffer life-altering injuries with long-lasting effects. The cost of emergency response, health care and human grief is immense.
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One of the most heart-breaking statistics in the WHO report is that road traffic injury is the leading cause of death for people aged between 5 and 29 years. “No child should die or be seriously injured while they walk, cycle or play,” according to WHO’s Ethiopian-born Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “We must return our streets to our children. They have a right to feel safe on them.”.
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Here in the U.S., April has been designated Distracted Driving Awareness Month by the National Safety Council. Wherever you are located, JOIN US IN TAKING ONE SMALL STEP TOWARD FEWER CRASHES by getting your “DRIVE FOR OTHERS’ LIVES” bumper sticker and applying it to your vehicle (completely removable self-adhesive backing)..

Get your free bumper stickers today!

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30 Years at the Forefront of Forgiveness Science: Dr. Robert Enright, “the Forgiveness Trailblazer”

Editor’s Note: Except for those literally living under a rock, few can deny that forgiveness has become not only an accepted but sought-after area of scientific psychological research during the past few decades. Forgiveness interventions have been tested, enhanced, and endorsed for both their psychological benefits as well as their physical health benefits. This year, in fact, marks a significant anniversary in what has become a remarkable evolution. Here are some of the significant dates in that chronology:

1989 – The first empirically-based published article in which there was an explicit focus on person-to-person forgiving appeared in the Journal of Adolescence. The article, “The Adolescent as Forgiver,” assessed two studies that focused on how children, adolescents, and young adults thought about forgiveness. The studies were conducted by Dr. Robert Enright, Dr. Radhi Al-Mabuk, and Dr. Maria Santos, MD.

“This year marks an important 30th anniversary of which the world is hardly aware and from which the world has greatly benefitted,” Dr. Enright, founder of the International Forgiveness Institute, wrote earlier this month in a Psychology Today blog article referring to those pioneering studies and the Journal of Adolescence article. “Prior to this study, there was research on apology, or people seeking forgiveness, but never with a deliberate focus on people forgiving one another.”

In the first 1989 study, 59 subjects in grades 4, 7, 10, college and in adulthood were interviewed and tested to assess their stages of forgiveness development. As predicted, the study provided strong evidence that people’s understanding of forgiveness develops with age. Study 2, with 60 subjects, replicated the findings of Study 1.

1993 – The next empirical study of forgiveness was published that introduced Dr. Enright’s Process Model of how people forgive. (Hebl & Enright, 1993). This study showed that as elderly females forgave family members for unjust treatment, then they (the forgivers themselves) became psychologically healthier. This was the first published intervention study and it showed a cause-and-effect relationship between learning to forgive and the subsequent positive changes in psychological health.

1995 – Other researchers began to publish the results of their studies as they, too, took up the empirical cause of forgiveness. Dr. Enright, on whom Time magazine bestowed the title “the forgiveness trailblazer,” shared the knowledge he gained from his groundbreaking forgiveness research with inquisitive researchers around the globe who significantly broadened the scope of forgiveness investigations.

2015 – The empirically-based treatment manual, Forgiveness Therapy, is published by the American Psychological Association. Its authors: Dr. Robert Enright and psychiatrist Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons. Its audience: thousands of mental health professions around the world who are helping to make forgiveness therapy a gold-standard therapeutic treatment like psychoanalysis and cognitive behavioral therapy.

Learn more about Dr. Enright’s pioneering role in forgiveness therapy by reading his complete April 16, 2019 Psychology Today blog article “Reflecting on 30 Years of Forgiveness Science.”

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In your book with Dr. Fitzgibbons, Forgiveness Therapy (2015), you focus on the initial emotional reaction as unhealthy anger. I feel more sad than angry and so I am wondering why such a heavy emphasis on anger in particular.

In our experience, we do see that some people present with anger, some with confusion, some with mild anger, and some with a burning hatred. So, you are correct that anger is not the exclusive presenting emotion. Yet, it is excessive anger that most concerns us because of the scientifically-supported relationship between deep, abiding anger (unhealthy anger) and the development of other psychological symptoms such as anxiety and depression. See for example, Vidal-Ribas, P., Brotman, M.A., Valdivieso, I., Leibenluft, E., & Stringaris, A. (2016). The status of irritability in psychiatry: A conceptual and quantitative review. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 55, 556-570. When a client presents with a pattern of unhealthy anger because of unjust treatment by others, and if the person chooses to forgive, we do recommend Forgiveness Therapy as the treatment approach so that psychological symptoms can decrease.

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