Tagged: “Forgiving”

What is your opinion of brief therapy when it comes to forgiveness therapy?

Short-term forgiveness interventions may be effective for those who are not deeply hurt, are not treated deeply unjustly, and who are not clinically compromised.  We have to be very careful in generalizing brief interventions to all people, especially those who are deeply hurting from deeply unfair treatment.  Those treated so unfairly will need forgiveness therapy for a longer time than a brief forgiveness intervention.

 Your research tends to show that as people forgive, their own self-esteem rises. Why do you think this happens?

It seems to me that as people bear the pain that others caused them, there is a tendency for the forgivers to realize that they are stronger than they previously had realized.  They see that they can endure pain and in that pain, they can be good to others, particularly to those who acted unfairly and even cruelly.  This shows the forgivers that they are good people and this can lead to an increase in liking the self.  Too often, when people are beaten down by others, the victims begin to believe the lie that they are less than they truly are.  Forgiving helps to correct this lie.

It seems to me that this “giving of a gift” to those who hurt me is kind of ridiculous.  They deserve correction, not admiration.  Can you clarify this for me?

As people forgive, they are engaging in a moral virtue.  All moral virtues center on goodness toward others for those other people’s sake.  Part of the moral virtue of forgiveness is this gift-giving to the one who acted badly, as you point out.  This gift-giving, we find in our research is a paradox in that, as forgivers reach out to the offending person, it is the forgivers who are healed.

What was your biggest surprise when you started to do research on forgiveness therapy?

I would say the biggest surprise was how effective forgiveness therapy is in the context of very deep trauma caused by other people’s unfairness.  Forgiveness therapy seems to be even more effective in reducing clinical levels of anger, anxiety, and depression than other models of psychotherapy that preceded forgiveness therapy within the social sciences.  As just one example, the Freedman and Enright (1996) study showed that incest survivors, upon forgiving, went from clinical levels of depression to non-depressed status and this continued at the one-year follow-up.  The reference to this work is as follows:

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.

As another question that I have about forgiveness therapy, does the amount of time spent in this form of therapy matter?  In other words, is longer better?

Yes, longer is better.  Baskin and Enright (1994) showed that forgiveness therapy lasting 12 weeks or longer seems more optimal than short-term therapies.  Longer therapies as more effective than short-term therapies also was supported by the meta-analysis by Aktar and Barlow.  The references to these two journal articles are as follows:

Baskin, T.W., & Enright, R. D. (2004).  Intervention studies on forgiveness: A meta-analysis.  Journal of Counseling and Development, 82, 79-90.

Akhtar, S. & Barlow, J. (2018).  Forgiveness therapy for the promotion of mental well-being: A systematic review and meta-analysis.  Trauma, Violence, and Abuse, 19, 107-122.