How forgiving heals
Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.” Jesus uttered these famous words as soldiers cast lots for his clothes after crucifying him.
Forgiving is one of the hardest things to do when your heart and mind are bursting with anger, resentment, and bitterness.
Forgiveness is a choice to let go and move on. Once we forgive, we feel free from a bondage. We feel light and free. The physical feeling of forgiveness is the exact opposite of what we feel when we are angry and vengeful. We all know that holding a grudge hurts us physically, hence forgiveness is good for our health.
“Psychologists generally define forgiveness as a conscious, deliberate decision to release feelings of resentment or vengeance toward a person or group who has harmed you, regardless of whether they actually deserve your forgiveness,” says The Greater Good Science Center of the University of California Berkeley.
Numerous studies reveal that people who forgive are happier and healthier than those who hold grudges. One study to look at how forgiveness improves physical health discovered that when people think about forgiving an offender, it leads to improved cardiovascular and nervous systems functions. In yet another study at the University of Wisconsin, they found that the more forgiving people were, the less they suffered from a wide range of illnesses. Less forgiving people reported more health problems.
Karen Swartz, MD, a Johns Hopkins psychiatrist and associate professor, shares her thoughts about forgiveness and health. She has several videos and interviews on the subject.
“I don’t think we know enough about emotions and the brain to separate everything out. I think if you are in a very upset, agitated state about a conflict, we know people get into fight-or-flight mode. You’re breathing fast. Your blood has gone into your arms and legs. You go into this hyper state. And being in that state gets your heart pounding, gets you on edge. And that’s not necessarily healthy. Can that be triggered by emotional things? Absolutely.”
“If someone is stuck in an angry state, what they’re essentially doing is being in a state of adrenaline. And some of the negative health consequences of not forgiving or being stuck there are high blood pressure, anxiety, depression, not having a good immune response. You’re constantly putting your energy somewhere else.”
“There has been excellent work that looks at what gets better after forgiveness training. Blood pressure is lower. People report needing fewer medicines. They report having better sleep. They report physically feeling better and having fewer physical complaints.”
“If you think of the steps of relaxation training, they’re often a part of forgiveness training. When you go into fight-or-flight mode, what you’re trying to say to your body is, we don’t need to be in this mode. Let’s relax. Let’s do some deep breathing, let’s do muscle relaxation. You focus on something else. And you actively work on relaxing your body; that’s often the first step. Let’s physically get you feeling differently, because then maybe you can think about things differently and not be in such a tense and geared-up state that you can’t really process information.”
“Certainly, the healthiest thing is to forgive. There are many studies now that are demonstrating that — that you’ll have lower blood pressure and better blood flow. I think it would be better if people could view forgiveness as something they’re doing for themselves. Again, it’s not absolution. I think they get hung up on, if I forgive you it gets forgotten, or you’re not in trouble, or something else. Forgiveness is something different, which is to say, I am not going to have these negative emotions consume me. That’s how I view it. And so forgiveness isn’t so much about the other person as your own process of saying, I’m moving forward.”
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