Counseling

The Forgiving Heart: Cultivating Compassion

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At times, scholars who study forgiveness use a term called “decisional forgiveness.”  It refers more to the mind than the heart as the person thinks about forgiveness and commits to reducing anger and increasing mercy toward those who have been unfair.  While thinking about forgiveness is important, it is reductionistic to define forgiveness, which is a moral virtue (Song, Enright, & Kim, 2025), primarily as a cognitive activity. This is the case because any moral virtue is much broader than that, including thinking, behaving, and feeling toward the one who acted unjustly.

The purpose of this essay is to focus on forgiveness from the heart, from one’s feelings as a vital part of the forgiveness process.  As you cultivate a more holistic view and practice of forgiveness that goes beyond decision-making, you may find a deeper and more satisfying way to respond to those who have hurt you.  Consider seven exercises to strengthen the forgiving heart.

1. What Exactly Is Compassion?

In this first exercise, we will be somewhat philosophical. The point is to understand compassion deeply enough so that you can define what it is. Compassion includes the emotion of caring for others who are in need, for example, due to unfortunate decisions or unexpected life circumstances that engender suffering. Compassion is a softening of the heart toward others, including a willingness to suffer with the other. When we forgive with compassion, we move from a wounded heart to a softened heart. It is distinguished from reconciliation, which includes mutual trust and a behavioral coming together. Aristotle connected compassion to the moral virtue of kindness toward others. Compassion can stir the heart to action, or helping those in need.

2. Don’t Start with Forgiveness, but Start with a Little Compassion 

In this exercise, the point is not to apply a sense of compassion toward those who have been cruel to you.  Instead, let us step back from all this hurt and turn to a time when one person unconditionally showed you compassion.  Maybe this happened when you were a child, fell and hurt yourself, and your mother embraced you, comforting and protecting you.  This is compassion toward you.  Take some time to think of one such incident and reflect upon it, letting it abide in your heart.  Stay with this image until you can truly say, “Yes, this experience convinces me that I have been the recipient of others’ compassion.”

3. When Have You Been a Giver of Compassion? 

The point of exercise 3 again is not to apply this directly toward those who offended you.  Now, please think of a time in which you (not someone else) exercised compassion toward someone who needed your help.  Maybe it was spending much time with a friend who was grieving. Maybe it was helping a neighbor or co-worker under pressure and needed someone to rely on, who was you.  When did you serve another person by exercising this compassion? Let this abide in your heart.  Stay with this image  until you can truly say, “Yes, this experience convinces me that I can be compassionate in this way.”

4. Without Turning Yet to Compassion, Now Bring the One Who Hurt You into Your Awareness.  

We start not with the heart, but with the mind.  Can you think of any time in which the one who hurt you was so wounded that those wounds were passed to you?  I do not ask so that you can excuse what the other person did.  Instead, the point is to understand the person better, as this someone who has gone through pain.  Who is this person?  Is this someone who has been carrying wounds from others, even for years?  What might it be like for this person, deep inside, with such a wounded heart?  As you engage in this exercise, can you sense that your heart is moving, even if slowly, from an entrenched anger or a deep resentment to, perhaps, a different form of feeling?  Might you be shifting from resentment to mourning about what happened to you?  Might your heart be shifting from anger toward sadness toward the other for what was endured by this person?

5. Take Some Time to Put All of This Together. 

Take some time to understand that: a) You understand compassion; b) you have experienced compassion from another or others; c) you see clearly that you have offered compassion to others; and d) you see the one who hurt you as hurting.  Who are you as a person?  Who are you, given that you have experienced the giving and receiving of compassion in your life?  You are more than your wounds.  Take some time to reflect on this.

6. Take the Compassion Test Before Applying It to the Offending Person. 

I will give you six questions here. Please answer yes or no and defend your answers.  Question 1: Is it reasonable to try to feel another’s pain and serve this person even if it is difficult for you to do so? Why or why not? Question 2: Can compassion build you up in your own humanity? Why or why not? Question 3: Can compassion refresh you, the one who was cruel to you, and others with whom you frequently interact? Why or why not? Question 4: Can compassion, practiced over time, help to heal a wounded heart? Why or why not? Question 5: Do you want to live a life with more compassion? Why or why not?

7. Now, Put the Pieces of Compassion Together, a Little at a Time, Toward the One Who Hurt You.   

When you are ready, first cultivate that sense of receiving compassion and being compassionate toward others into your heart from Exercises 1 and 2 above.  With that softness now in your heart, ask yourself this: Can I extend this compassion, even a little bit, toward the one who was cruel to me? How might this aid the person in growing in humanity? How might it help me and our potential renewed relationship? Take your time here. Be aware of small but important transformations in your heart. Be aware of the positive change in yourself when you ask: Who am I, truly, as a person, and what do I want to leave behind as my legacy when I leave this world?

Conclusion

In the end, you have a choice. You can forgive with a sense of being respectful toward the other and not bring compassion into the process if you are not ready.  Be aware of your readiness to extend your compassion toward those who are not good to you.  As you decide to include compassion in your forgiveness process, you are exercising forgiveness more deeply, perhaps than ever before. The outcome might be a surprising joy that you receive as you practice forgiveness from the heart.

Reference: Song, J., Enright, R.D., & Kim, J. (2025). Definitional drift within the science of forgiveness: The dangers of avoiding philosophical analyses. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 45(1), 3-24.

Addressing the “Both/And” Approach to Family Conflict: Why This Is Insufficient for Healing

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I recently read a self-help article about family conflict.  The author was advocating for what is called the “both/and” approach to healing.  It means this: Acknowledge the hurts against you, but also focus on times of positive interaction.  Both are truthful, and if you can live with both side by side, this will promote healing.

I write this essay to respectfully disagree with this approach to family healing.  I think it can be a first step, but it is incomplete by itself.  It is so incomplete that I think it could lead to future conflicts rather than deep emotional and relational healing.

Let me start with an analogy.  Suppose you damaged the cartilage in your knee.  It annoys you and diminishes your quality of life because you cannot work out as rigorously as before.  Yet, you have strong shoulders.  If you take a literal “both/and” approach here, you will live with the broken-down knee and the strong shoulders.  You can still work out, such as bench pressing or bicep curls.  Yet, your ability to run now is hampered.  Should you simply live with all of this or try to heal the knee?  I vote for healing the knee.

It seems to me that this analogy applies to the “both/and” of family conflict.  Yes, you have the challenge of injustice and the happy times, but isn’t it more beneficial to go for the healing from the resentment that has built up in the heart from the injustices?  As with knee surgery, resentment in the heart can be healed by forgiving those who caused the pain.  Yes, you still have a memory of the injustice, but now the emotional reaction to that memory is healed.  The “both/and” is not likely to eventually lead to the “and” of resentment overpowering the “and” of fond memories.  After all, resentment is a formidable foe.  It can last for years and grow, overpowering any positive thoughts about the other person.

So, yes, let us be aware of the “both/and” as we do with a torn knee and strong shoulders, but let us move beyond that to forgiving those who caused the damage to the heart through unjust actions.  “Both/and” focuses on insight.  Moving forward with forgiveness focuses on healing once the insight is understood, confronted, and the forgiveness is accomplished.

Forgiveness Therapy and Getting Past Unconscious Resistances

Guest Blog by Gianna Elms, LCSW

My experience as a psychotherapist who has specialized in helping clients resolve unconscious anger through forgiveness for nearly a decade has been a mission of healing. Forgiveness is the most powerful therapeutic method that I have found because it is the answer to what underlies the psychological conflicts that produce psychiatric symptoms in many, yet the medical model would prefer that we believe differently. Forgiveness is the antidote to anger, which is difficult for people to release because the world teaches us that “getting back” at someone for hurting us or at least desiring revenge is healthy and a sign of strength.

Beyond everything else that I have learned, there’s an important factor that must be in place before I recommend working with forgiveness therapy.

Gianna Elms, LCSW, is a mental health and disability advocate who has been practicing for twelve years in Missouri and Arizona and is a passionate ambassador for Forgiveness Therapy.

In the case of forgiveness therapy, the role of the psychotherapist is to help the client to abandon their anger towards the offender and adopt agape love for the offender. Some clients are not ready to even hear words that are common in forgiveness therapy like forgiveness, love, fear or even anger. I have learned that some other psychotherapeutic interventions are necessary to help these clients to be ready to accept that they are angry, and forgiveness can help them heal.

The greatest challenges that I have witnessed clients face when working towards forgiveness is an unwillingness to let go of the illusion of strength or control that they believe they have when they hold onto their anger and maintain a lack of healthy boundaries, which often leads to continuing or renewing a relationship where there is no forgiveness, trust, apology, or justice between the parties. It’s another attempt to hold onto another illusion that they have achieved forgiveness or reconciliation. Many times, it’s more about learning to let go of what is familiar, such as a belief system that they had prior to beginning psychotherapy or an unconscious defense mechanism (e.g., denial). After all, unconscious defense mechanisms have an original protective purpose. It can be hard for clients to believe that forgiveness, which is so new and unfamiliar, is going to offer them greater freedom and protection.

The journey to learning how to forgive is often challenging and rewarding as clients work through their pain. I have learned that it is important to always demonstrate that I understand by being genuinely empathetic and compassionately normalizing the client’s pain, fear, and other emotions. I also provide teaching and reasoning as a therapeutic intervention about how healthy boundaries, for example, serve as a means of self-protection from future abuse and how it is consistent with healthy self-love and agape love for others.

If a client decides to receive or continue treatment while communicating with the offender, I provide supportive therapy and help the client to identify how the relationship is healing or causing more pain. Clients are typically able to figure out on their own, with the help of this type of psychotherapeutic intervention, that the relationship is unhealthy, and they will ultimately abandon their false belief that somehow they can make a relationship work with the person who is unwilling to change, which then increases their willingness to accept the new, healthier ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving, to include the primary goal of forgiveness.

“I believe that forgiveness should be used more in therapy because it promotes wellness and it’s good for the soul.”
Gianna Elms, LCSW

There are some cases when clients choose not to forgive and the effects are simply the same as when they started treatment, or in some cases, worse. I believe that forgiveness should be used more in therapy because it promotes wellness and it’s good for the soul. The secret to forgiveness though is that once a person learns how to forgive…the person can forgive immediately, even while the injury is happening because they’ve learned the meaning of forgiveness beyond just the therapy model. It comes from their heart that was healed and they adopt it as a new belief system that protects them from anger as long as they put it into practice. It’s like a muscle memory in the unconscious that connects to the heart, which needs to be exercised regularly, so that they never forget. That’s something that I learned one night, and I now teach it to others.

I hope that you will consider your state in life and how forgiveness will be of value to you and others who you have the opportunity to help. We all need forgiveness because we have hurt others, but we need forgiveness to heal us when others hurt us too.

About Gianna Elms:

Gianna Elms, LCSW is a mental health and disability advocate who has been practicing for twelve years and is currently based in Flagstaff, AZ where she provides tele-therapy, spiritual counseling, consultations, and on-site services when travel permits. She has been a passionate ambassador of forgiveness since completing the International Forgiveness Institute’s Helping Clients Forgive course (now called Forgiveness Therapy). She has an MSW in Social Work and has a valid license to practice as a Clinical Social Worker in Arizona and Missouri. She is also a qualified clinical supervisor in Arizona.

Before her MSW, Gianna earned an M.Ed. in Counseling Psychology and a B.S. in Disability Studies and has a valid certification to practice and supervise as a Rehabilitation Counselor nationwide. After receiving her MSW, she completed a Post-Graduate Fellowship in Psychoanalytic Thought and an ADA Coordinator Certification. Her clinical experience includes crisis intervention, treatment of past abuse, trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and psychogenic non-epileptic seizures (PNES); evaluation and treatment of mood, anxiety, alcohol and substance use disorders and chronic pain; career counseling, case management, advocacy, accommodations of people who experience disabilities, blindness and visual impairments; and training clinicians and others.

For more information about Gianna, you may find her on giannaelmslcsw.com or forgivepraylove.com.

Why Forgiveness Is Not Only a Psychological Construct

The entrance of the idea of forgiveness into the social sciences is quite recent. The first publication within psychology that centered specifically on people forgiving other people was published in the late 20th century (Enright, Santos, and Al-Mabuk, 1989).  That article examined children’s, adolescents’, and adults’ thoughts about what forgiving is.  In other words, the study took one slice of forgiveness, in this case people’s thoughts, and examined those thoughts from a scientific perspective.  Such an investigation, of course, does not then imply that forgiving is all about thoughts and thoughts alone just because that was the focus of the scientific investigation.

People forgiving other people is an ancient idea, first explicated thousands of years ago in the story within the Jewish tradition of Joseph forgiving his 10 half-brothers who sold him into slavery.  The portrait of forgiveness in that ancient report includes Joseph’s entire being, not just his thinking, as he shows anger, a sense at first of revenge, which slowly transforms into tenderness toward his half-brothers in the form of weeping, hugs, generosity, and an outpouring of love.  His entire being was involved in the forgiving.

Philosophers, such as Aristotle and Aquinas, have developed what is known as the virtue-ethics tradition to explain morality.  To be virtuous is, like Joseph, to produce a moral response with one’s entire being: thoughts, feelings, behaviors, motivations toward goodness, and relationships that reflect that goodness.

Psychologists, in contrast, and especially if they do not rely on this wisdom-of-the-ages, tend to compartmentalize forgiveness.  For example, they may borrow from personality psychology and conclude that there is a trait of forgiving and a state of forgiving and these are somehow different.  A trait forgiver, it is assumed, already has a personality geared to forgiving.  In other words, expertise in forgiving is not forged by practice, practice, and more practice as we all have this opportunity toward developing expertise in forgiving.

Other psychologists, when they do not take the virtue-ethics position, tend to think of forgiving as mostly emotional as the forgiver substitutes more pleasant feelings for the existing resentment toward an offending person.  Substitution of feelings, as seen in the Joseph story, is only one part, and not even the most important part of forgiveness.  Offering love in a broad sense is the most important part.

The bottom line is this: Taking only a psychological perspective on the concept of forgiving tends toward reductionism, breaking up of forgiveness into smaller and more exclusive parts than should be the case.  This tends to distort the concept of forgiveness.  If a distorted view of forgiveness is presented to clients in therapy, are we helping those clients reach their highest potential as forgivers?

Robert

Reference:

Enright, R. D., Santos, M., & Al-Mabuk, R. (1989).  The adolescent as forgiver. Journal of Adolescence, 12, 95-110.

On the Accumulation of Wounds

Has the struggle with the injustice made you tired? Let us say that you have 10 points of energy to get through each day. How many of those points of energy do you use fighting (even subconsciously) the injustice as an internal struggle? Even if you are giving 1 or 2 points of your energy each day to this, it is too much and could be considered another wound for you.

When you consider the person and the situation now under consideration, do you see any changes in your life that were either a direct or indirect consequence of the person’s injustice? In what way did your life change that led to greater struggle for you? On our 0-to-10 scale, how great a change was there in your life as a result of the injustice? Let a 0 stand for no change whatsoever, a 5 stand for moderate change in your life, and a 10 stand for dramatic change in your life. Your answer will help you determine whether this is another wound for you. As you can see, the wounds from the original injustice have a way of accumulating and adding to your suffering.

Excerpt from the book The Forgiving Life (APA Lifetools), Robert D. Enright (2012-07-05).  (Kindle Locations 2750-2753). American Psychological Association. Kindle Edition.

Enright, Robert D. (2012-07-05). The Forgiving Life (APA Lifetools) (Kindle Locations 2784-2788). American Psychological Association. Kindle Edition.