Tagged: “Barriers to Forgiveness”
Are You Ready to Become Forgivingly Fit?
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Robert Enright wants you to become “forgivingly fit.” In other words, when you have been treated very unfairly by others, your forgiveness likely will require both time and effort. In our “hurry up” world, there is a tendency to seek the quickest and least painful path. Yet, if you want to forgive deeply, you likely will need more than this. His essay on the Psychology Today website discusses this issue of “forgiving fitness” here: Are You Ready to Become Forgivingly Fit?, November 15, 2025.
Special Issue of a Journal on Forgiveness Education
Dr. Suzanne Freedman
The open-access journal Education Sciences has published 11 articles from a wide range of world contexts, all centered on forgiveness education. The introductory article, written by Dr. Suzanne Freedman, is here: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7102/15/12/1628.
My friend keeps saying, “I have forgiven because I was not hurt by what he did.” Is this forgiveness?
Forgiveness is not the experience of never being hurt by the other’s unjust actions. Yet, a person can forgive even without experiencing deep hurt. Forgiveness for small things entails seeing the other as a worthwhile human being despite the annoyance. Forgiveness is to separate the worth of the other from the offense. You are not excusing the injustice. Instead, you are broadening your view of who the other person is, despite the annoyance.
Can I still feel some pain and even anger after I have forgiven, by wishing the other well, softening my heart, and even giving a gift to the other person?
Yes, we can have residual pain and some anger left over upon forgiving. As I recall one person saying, we know we have forgiven when the memory of the injustice can pass through the heart without damage.
An Unprecedented “Big Data” Study in Australia Shows the Association between Forgiveness and Well-Being in Children and Adolescents
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A recent study with 79,670 children and adolescents (aged 7 to 18) in Australia examined whether those who report favorably on forgiveness also have sound psychological health. They concluded their Abstract this way: “These big data findings provide firm evidence that, like adult samples, forgiveness and self-forgiveness are factors in promoting psychological wellbeing, at least among Westernized youth and adolescents.” Of course, because this was not a cause-and-effect study, it is not clear that forgiveness and self-forgiveness promote psychological well-being. It could be the reverse: Those who are feeling well find it easier to forgive. Yet, this study is important because it is the first to use such an impressively large sample to examine forgiveness. The reference to this work is this:
Flaherty, E.M., Strelan, P. & Kohler, M. Forgiveness, self-forgiveness, and child and adolescent mental health: Big data findings from an Australian youth cohort. Journal of Youth and Adolescence (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-025-02285-7
