Tagged: “Barriers to Forgiveness”
If I have resentment but am unsure if forgiveness is the way to proceed, how can I know?
I would urge you to ask yourself these questions:
Have I been treated unjustly by someone or perhaps by more than one person?
Am I resentful of this treatment against me? Try to give this a number from 1 (very little resentment) to 10 (extreme resentment that could be described as hatred).
If the number of your resentment is in the 5 t o 10 range, you may need some help in reducing that. Thus, you should ask yourself this: What have I been doing to reduce the resentment (if that number is in the 5 to 10 range)?
If what you have tried is not lowering that resentment number, then are you interested in trying forgiving as a way of reducing that resentment?
Your answers can help you determine whether or not to pursue forgiving. It always remains your choice.
Would you please clarify how one forgives a large group such as a government? In other words, do I forgive individuals or the whole group together?
I recommend that you first decide what the injustice is. Who perpetrated this injustice specifically and concretely against you? You can start with these specific people who directly hurt you. Yet, this likely is not enough. I say this because, if this is a governmental dictate that led to hardship for you, then the group as a whole is implicated. Thus, you can forgive the group because groups are comprised of persons and it was those persons who hurt you by their decisions. Of course, it is more abstract to forgive an entire group, but you can do this because: a) groups can act unjustly; b) you still are forgiving persons and this is where forgiveness centers (we do not forgive a tornado, for example); c) you can have resentment toward the entire group of persons; and, d) your forgiving the group can reduce your resentment toward those who were unfair to you.
Forgiveness Interventions Help Depressed Adolescents Cope and Thrive
Ample research has shown that depression is a significant and growing problem for today’s adolescents. Depression can impair a teenager’s cognitive functioning (i.e., thinking, reasoning, etc.), relationships with parents and peers, academic performance, and for cases of severe depression may even result in suicide attempts. Moreover, adolescent depression is also associated with poor outcomes in adulthood such as low-income levels, low educational aspirations, and high substance use.
Now, two international education and forgiveness specialists believe they may have uncovered one of the keys to reducing adolescent depression and major depressive disorder (MDD). According to the researchers, their first-of-its-kind study has shown that promoting social skills such as responsibility and self-control could be “particularly salient for the prevention of adolescent depression.”
The new study, A Longitudinal Analysis of Social Skills and Adolescent Depression: A Multivariate Latent Growth Approach, was published in the current issue of the International Journal of Psychological Research (the official publication of the Faculty of Psychology at San Buenaventura University in Medellin, Colombia.). The study authors included Dr. Zhuojun Yao, an educational psychologist and lecturer at Soochow (Suzhou) University in Suzhou, China, and Dr. Robert Enright, of our International Forgiveness Institute.
BACKGROUND: Adolescence is a period of increased vulnerability to depression because of complex changes in biology, cognition, and social domains. According to the 2019 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), 3.5 million adolescents aged 12 to 17 in the United States (14.4% of the total) had at least one Major Depressive Episode (MDE), and 70% of these adolescents had an MDE with severe impairment in 2018.
Most clinical depression among children starts in middle adolescence (ages 15-18) and is much higher for those in that age group than for those in early adolescence (ages 13-15). Although there are substantial empirical research studies demonstrating the association between social skills and adolescent depression, the authors of this study could not locate a single scientific work investigating how the change in social skills influences the change in depression from early to middle adolescence.
THE STUDY: To address this gap in fundamental knowledge, the researchers in this study questioned how changes in social skills (cooperation, assertion, responsibility, and self-control) influence changes in depression from early to middle adolescence. Using internationally respected measurement tools, the authors measured both social skills and depression in 1,064 participants (half boys, half girls). Those participants were drawn from a separate longevity study by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (NICHD SECCYD) that ran from 1991 through 2008.
STUDY RESULTS: According to the study authors, adolescents who had more increase in responsibility and self-control from 5th grade to 9th grade tended to experience a slower increase in depression; while adolescents who had more reduction in cooperation and assertion from 5th grade to 9th grade tended to experience a faster increase in depression. Overall, the results suggest that responsibility in early adolescence may decrease adolescent depression by protecting adolescents from risk-taking and problematic behaviors in middle adolescence.
“When used in association with other therapeutic modalities. . .the psychotherapeutic
use of forgiveness can resolve the anger associated with depressive disorders.”
Dr. Robert Enright
IMPLICATIONS FOR FORGIVENESS: Interventions to reduce adolescent depression are becoming more important with each passing day because, as outlined above, adolescent depression also is associated with poor outcomes in adulthood. A 2009 study revealed that at least 27 million Americans take antidepressants, nearly double the number (13.3 million) who did so in the mid-1990s (Olfson & Marcus, 2009). Less understood is the fact that approximately 80% of adult mental disorders begin during childhood and adolescence (Kim-Cohen et al., 2003) and typically include an intense emotional state of anger.
“Anger begins in early childhood and later extends to relationships with significant others, particularly those one wants to trust,” Dr. Enright writes in Forgiveness Therapy, the widely-heralded forgiveness intervention manual he authored with psychiatrist Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons. “Anger from childhood hurts and disappointments with parents and others can be unresolved and later misdirected unconsciously at others. [page 108]
“Once anger develops, three options are available for addressing this powerful and complex emotion: denial, expression (active or passive-aggressive), and forgiveness. If the anger is resolved through a forgiveness process, it can facilitate the healing of the associated sadness, depression and the tendency to ruminate over past hurts.” [page 108]
According to Dr. Enright, “This study provides yet another compelling reason why we need Forgiveness Education in our schools NOW.”
This study on adolescent depression is just one of the many research projects undertaken by Drs. Zhuojun Yao and Robert Enright. Others include:
- The influence of moral stories on kindergarteners’ sharing behavior
- The role of consequences of moral action in maximizing moral elevation
- Belief in altruistic human nature and prosocial behavior: a serial mediation analysis
- The Link Between Social Interaction with Adults and Adolescent Conflict Coping Strategy in School Context
I have been doing the work of forgiveness. Now I want to quit. Is this normal?
The process of forgiveness is not a straight line from beginning to end. Instead, there are times of fatigue and needing a break. There are times of needing to go back near the beginning of the process as you find yourself getting angry again with the person. Therefore, your current feelings are not atypical. Instead of the word “quit,” what do you think about the idea of taking a rest, taking a break for a while? This kind of thought may keep the forgiveness door open for you once you take the time to rest and refresh.
Regarding forgiveness, do you, personally, have any doubts about its effectiveness?
Because forgiveness is a moral virtue, as with all moral virtues such as justice and kindness, it is good in and of itself. Therefore, I am confident that to forgive is a moral good. Yet, I do have doubts, but not about forgiveness itself. My doubts instead are with how people imperfectly understand what forgiveness is or have errors in trying to apply it. For example, if a person thinks that to forgive is just to move on and forget the other person, this is not what forgiveness is. The misunderstanding, of course, is not the fault of forgiveness itself. As another example, if a person spends only 2 hours forgiving someone who was brutal to him when he was a child, this is an error of not taking sufficient time to forgive. Again, this is not the fault of forgiveness itself. So, in summary, my doubts are in human imperfection not being able to lead to an effective forgiveness response. I have no doubts about the goodness of forgiveness itself.
