Tagged: “resentment”

You have said that once we forgive people, then we are ready for the next injustice and we might be able to go ahead a little better the second time. Isn’t that statement self-righteous? I say that because some people and some injustices are much harder to forgive than others. Why do you claim that we just get better and better in our forgiving?

Aristotle made the wise point that as we practice any of the moral virtues, this practice helps us get better in how we appropriate the virtues.  He never implied, nor do I, that the next incident will lead to quicker forgiveness than the first one and the person easier to forgive just because of the practice.  Instead, Aristotle implied this:  We will be more familiar with the process of practicing the virtue and so we may be more efficient and accurate in our next attempt.  Yes, you are correct, in that the next person who hurts us might do so in a very grave way, making it hard to forgive.  Yet, if we bring a lot of experience to this new person and situation, we may get through it more deeply and more quickly than otherwise might have been the case.

To get very concrete about this, suppose that to forgive Person A, you ideally needed two weeks.  To forgive Person B, without your having any prior practice in forgiving, you would need six months to forgive because the incident was so unjust.  Yet, if you have a lot of practice in forgiving, then your forgiving Person B now might take only three months rather than six.  Yes, this is still much longer than what was needed to forgive Person A, but the time needed for this with Person B is shortened precisely because the former practice is aiding your forgiving Person B now.

If I go through the forgiveness process one time only, do you think my anger could diminish so much that I will not have to repeat the forgiveness process?

There are no definitive psychological rules about this.  If you take the time to deeply go through the forgiveness process once, then you may experience a return to a manageable level of anger without having to go through the forgiveness process again.  Please keep in mind that anger in smaller doses can remain in a person’s heart after that person forgives.  So, please do not expect perfection with regard to the emotion of anger.  As long as you are in control of the anger, rather than the anger controlling you, this is a very positive accomplishment.

You talk about having to wait to experience emotional relief when forgiving.  What do you mean by waiting and how long does one wait?

When I use the word “wait” I mean that you are not in complete control of your emotions.  For example, if you are very angry at someone, you cannot just turn on a switch in your brain and then all of a sudden there is no more anger.  Because of this, we have to be patient as our emotions gradually change from anger or sadness or disappointment to more neutral and then possibly to more positive emotions.  There is no precise timeline for this.  You will know that the transformation is working by introspecting and seeing small changes in your anger or sadness.  As you see these small changes emerging, you can keep doing the work of forgiving and then you likely will experience larger and more positive changes in your emotions toward the one who harmed you.

I heard that you recently published a study with your colleagues in which you helped men in prison learn to forgive.  What did you find and why did you focus on prisoners who, it seems to me, need to ask us for forgiveness because of what they did?

Rehabilitation in correctional institutions tends to focus on changing the behavior which led to the sentencing in the first place.  Yet, our research found that about 90% of 103 men whom we surveyed had considerable injustices against them when they were children or adolescents.  One gentleman was thrown out of his home by his mother when he was 10 years old.  He slept under cars at night as his bed.  So often, this kind of cruelty against children can lead to a welling up of hatred and this can lead to crime, arrest, and imprisonment.  Forgiveness Therapy allowed the men to forgive those who abused them which led to a statistically significant decrease in clinical levels of anger, anxiety, and depression to normal or near normal levels.  They also developed more empathy toward people in general.  Those in the control group, without Forgiveness Therapy, did not show this kind of improvement in their mental health, but when they then were given Forgiveness Therapy, they, too, showed similar improvement compared with the original experimental group.  Here is the reference to that research:

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.

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