Ask Dr. Forgiveness

My husband had an affair.  Because we have three children, I do not want to divorce him.  In fact, I do think I have reconciled with him.  Yet, I sometimes feel consumed with anger toward the woman.  I have begun reading your book, The Forgiving Life.  What pointers do you have for me as I work through this book so that I can get the best out of it?  I am highly motivated to try forgiving.

Given your strong desire to forgive and move on, there is a considerable chance that you will do so. You most definitely possess the will to forgive, which is a necessary component of the healing process.  Regarding my book, The Forgiving Life, Chapter 10, The Forgiveness Pathway, contains the exercises for forgiving an individual. The ideal place to start would be Chapter 1, which guides you in discovering your inner love. Before you forgive someone who has profoundly wounded you, I begin by strengthening and fortifying you. Next, please read If You Are Traumatized, Chapter 2. It might provide you with answers to some of the difficult questions surrounding forgiveness. After reading Chapters 3–7, I strongly advise you to go straight to Chapter 10.

Ask your husband for assistance with this. You claim to have made amends with him. For this reason, he likely will be your ally. Discuss with him your experiences, particularly in relation to your answers to Chapters 1 and 10. These are the keys for you: forgiving others and learning to allow love to blossom within you.

I strongly advise you to start practicing forgiveness (from the material in Chapter 10) whenever you think about the woman. Never give up and keep going at this. Your determination is crucial to this endeavor. You’ll win.

I heard a lecture by an advocate of forgiveness interventions in which he claimed that helping prisoners to forgive could help them.  Is this some kind of joke?  These people are in prison because of their harm to others.  Why should we then help them to forgive others after all the chaos they have caused?

We did a study with men in a maximum-security correctional institution, and about 90% of them suffered from serious injustices against them when they were young.  This is not at all to excuse their crimes because we all have many free-will options when we are very angry.  Yet, we hypothesized that if we can reduce their hatred, then they may be better citizens within the correctional institution, improve in their mental health, and possibly be more open to traditional rehabilitation approaches in the correctional system.  We did a randomized experimental and control group study with the experimental group going through a forgiveness intervention and the control group going through the hand-picked rehabilitation program from the institution. Results showed that those who had the forgiveness intervention went from clinical levels of anger, anxiety, and depression to normal levels.  The control group participants remained clinically angry, anxious, and depressed.  Yet, when these participants then had the six-month forgiveness program, they, too, reached normal levels of anger, anxiety, and depression.  Following the forgiveness intervention, some of the participants went to medium-security corrections because they were seen as less of a threat for violence.

Here is a reference to this work:

Yu, L., Gambaro, M., Song, J., Teslik, M., Song, M., Komoski, M.C., Wollner, B., & Enright, R.D.

(2021). Forgiveness therapy in a maximum-security correctional institution: A randomized clinical trial. Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, 28, 1457-1471.

It seems to me that forgiveness could work effectively when people are mildly hurt by others, but it would not work when there is deep trauma. Can you convince me that forgiveness actually is effective for trauma survivors?

We have many experimental and control group clinical trials with trauma survivors showing that they can forgive and with excellent mental health benefits.  As just one example, the study by Freedman and Enright (1996) with incest survivors showed that all 12 of the female victims of sexual abuse by a father or father figure led to a statistically significant reduction in psychological depression.  A follow-up study of six of these women, done approximately one year after the forgiveness intervention ended, showed that they still had normal levels of depression.

Here is the reference to that work:

Freedman, S. R., & Enright, R. D. (1996).  Forgiveness as an intervention goal with incest survivors.  Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 64(5), 983-992.

How did you come up with the Process Model of Forgiveness?

Our little group read case study descriptions of forgiveness and consulted with people who said they had forgiven.  We asked them for feedback on their forgiveness journeys. The Process Model underwent some revisions as we continued to talk with people and to work with some on their forgiveness.  Eventually, our final version of the Process Model of Forgiveness emerged, and we tested its validity through randomized experimental and control group research studies.