1. Elaine R. Ferguson, MD Copyright 2012

2.  "Forgiveness is the key that can unshackle us from a past that will not rest in the grave of things over and done with. As long as our minds are captive to the memory of having been wronged, they are not free to wish for reconciliation with the one who wronged us."  -Lewis B. Smedes Forgiveness

3.  "[Four case] studies, taken as a whole, suggest that forgiveness may be taught and learned, and that the outcomes can be quite favorable. Across all of the studies, there was not one instance in which a group experiencing forgiveness education showed a decline in psychological health. In fact, statistically significant improvement in such variables as hope and self- esteem, as well as significant decreases in anxiety and depression, were more the rule than the exception."  -Robert D. Enright & Catherine T. Coyle

4.  Forgiveness is a virtue of the brave. Indira Gandhi Indira Gandhi  Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself. Suzanne Somers Suzanne Somers  One forgives to the degree that one loves. Francois de La Rochefoucauld Francois de La Rochefoucauld  It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend. William Blake William Blake

5.  There is no love without forgiveness, and there is no forgiveness without love. Bryant H. McGill Bryant H. McGill  Without forgiveness, there's no future. Desmond Tutu Desmond Tutu  The practice of forgiveness is our most important contribution to the healing of the world. Marianne Williamson Marianne Williamson

6.  Forgive yourself for your faults and your mistakes and move on. Les Brown Les Brown  Life is an adventure in forgiveness. Norman Cousins Norman Cousins

7.  It is very east to forgive others their mistakes; it takes more grit and gumption to forgive them for having witnessed your own. Jessamyn West Jessamyn West  The ability to forgive is one of man's greatest achievements. Bryant H. McGill Bryant H. McGill

8.  There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness. Josh Billings Josh Billings  Humanity is never so beautiful as when praying for forgiveness, or else forgiving another. Jean Paul Jean Paul

9.  According to the American Psychological Association, forgiveness is a process (or the result of a process) that involves a change in emotion and attitude regarding an offender. Most scholars view this an intentional and voluntary process, driven by a deliberate decision to forgive. This process results in decreased motivation to retaliate or maintain estrangement from an offender despite their actions, and requires letting go of negative emotions toward the offender.

10.  Theorists differ in the extent to which they believe forgiveness also implies replacing the negative emotions with positive attitudes including compassion and benevolence. In any event, forgiveness occurs with the victim’s full recognition that he or she deserved better treatment, one reason why Mahatma Gandhi contended that “the weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong”. 

11.  Let go of your anger. Your heart may be healthier, and it certainly won't be as heavy.  Forgiveness is one of the most challenging components of healing, yet it is one of the most powerful.  It is not, as most people think, an endorsement of wrongdoing, but an act of releasing the pain and hurt through love. In order to heal, we must forgive, release our anger and hostility that cannot occupy the same space in our minds as love quietly and powerfully, like an ocean tide promotes and provokes forgiveness.

12.  It is an exercise of releasing the past pains, wounds, and anguish, that facilitate our dis- ease. As in the case of love, we must first forgive ourselves for our transgressions. We must give up the shadows of past unhealed wounds. No one is exempt. We cannot truly love ourselves without forgiving. Once we begin to forgive ourselves we can forgive others.

13.  Forgiveness allows us to move on, releasing the ties that have bound us to our past. The discordant energy of these old unresolved impede and interfere, circumventing our path to wholeness. Often we can be more forgiving of others than we are of ourselves.

14.  How do we begin to forgive? How do we forgive those who have caused us great pain? It isn’t easy, but it is imperative. As in the case of self-love, we must first forgive ourselves of our own transgressions. Forgiveness aids the process of ending self- abuse and self-loathing. We must forgive ourselves and others in order to be whole and healed.

15.  When we open our hearts the first areas that need to be forgiven the most are usually not the wrongdoings that come to mind, but the deeper, hidden transgressions that have lurked in the hidden trenches and recesses of our unconscious mind. Because they are so painful and severe, they tend to surface gradually, when we are ready to weather the emotional storm their memories bring.

16.  Most Americans believe that it is very important to forgive, according to a Gallup Poll. But in reality, less than half of us actually try to do so. Maybe more people would give forgiveness a try if they knew the positive benefits of releasing anger.

17.  Researchers Julie Juola Exline and Roy Baumeister have proposed that forgiveness has both internal (emotional) and external (behavioral) elements. Sometimes, we might choose to tell people we forgive them, even if we are still angry inside. Or, we might not be angry anymore, but we might not want to tell the offending person this so they don't think they have a license to walk all over us.

18.  Which of these is forgiveness? Exline and Baumeister do not seem to prefer the private aspects over the public aspects, but merely point out that forgiveness can involve one or both. However, little research has been done on this interesting and important distinction between private and public forgiveness.

19.  Does forgiving someone mean you treat them the same as before?  Imagine an unfortunate but all too common situation in which a husband abuses his wife. Many people would say that an abused wife should not forgive her husband because that would make her vulnerable to future abuse. Can an abused wife forgive her husband and yet not go back to living with him

20.  Most forgiveness researchers agree that forgiveness does not require exposing oneself over and over again to a dangerous situation. Still, in this example, many people may nevertheless equate forgiving with going back to the abusive spouse.

21.  Does forgiveness mean saying that the offense was all right? Does it mean forgetting about the offense?  Most of us understand that forgiveness is not the same as forgetting an offense, or saying that is was ok. Nevertheless, some people see a link between forgiveness, forgetting, and pardoning offenses.

22.  Michael McCullough and Everett Worthington, are always careful to distinguish forgiveness from pardoning an offense, or forgetting about it, or opening yourself up to further abuse. In a 1997 paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, McCullough, Worthington, and Kenneth Rachal defined forgiveness primarily in terms of changes in motivation.

23.  They wrote, "We define interpersonal forgiving as the set of motivational changes whereby one becomes (a) decreasingly motivated to retaliate against an offending relationship partner, (b) decreasingly motivated to maintain estrangement from the offender, and (c) increasingly motivated by conciliation and goodwill for the offender, despite the offender's hurtful actions."

24.  How can we measure forgiveness?  There are many different ways there are to measure forgiveness. There seem to be as many forgiveness scales as there are forgiveness researchers. Here’s two scales to discuss because these scales have been well-validated. Both of them focus on interpersonal forgiveness.  The Transgression Narrative Test of Forgiveness  The first scale is the Transgression Narrative Test of Forgiveness (TNTF) and was developed by John Berry, Everett Worthington, and their colleagues. This questionnaire asks you to imagine yourself in five different situations where someone harms you, and to rate in each case how likely you would be to forgive the person.

25.  One’s pattern of forgiveness across the five situations gives some important clues about his/her general willingness to forgive other people, or your dispositional forgiveness. Berry and his collaborators presented evidence that their scale measures people's general tendencies to forgive.  Numerous studies conducted to alidate this scale, published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, determined that people who were not inclined to forgive were more likely to be prone to anger, anxiety, and other negative emotions.

26.  Also, there appeared to be a small, positive relationship between one’s willingness to forgive in these situations and the personality trait of agreeableness. Agreeable people are usually more good-natured. This may suggest that forgiving people are also likely to be high in empathy, compassion, and trust.

27.  The Transgression Related Interpersonal Motivations Inventory  Another important tool to measure forgiveness was developed by Michael McCullough, Everett Worthington, and some colleagues, and is called the Transgression Related Interpersonal Motivations Inventory (TRIM). Initial work on the scale was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. This scale, like the TNTF, focuses on forgiveness in relationships between people. However, the TRIM asks participants to remember a specific offense in which someone harmed them.

28.  And, unlike the TNTF, which simply asks people's likelihood of forgiving, the TRIM asks people several questions about their motives for revenge and for avoiding the perpetrator. The authors explained, "When an offended relationship partner reports that he or she has not forgiven a close relationship partner for a hurtful action, the offended partner's perception of the offense is stimulating relationship-destructive levels of the two motivational states;

29.  That is, (a) high motivation to avoid contact with the offending partner and (b) high motivation to seek revenge or see harm come to the offending partner."

30.  The following five items comprise their Revenge scale: (1) I'll make him/her pay; (2) I wish that something bad would happen to him/her; (3) I want him/her to get what he/she deserves; (4) I'm going to get even; and (5) I want to see him/her hurt and miserable.

31.  The following seven items make up their Avoidance scale: (1) I keep as much distance between us as possible; (2) I live as if he/she doesn't exist, isn't around; (3) I don't trust him/her; (4) I find it difficult to act warmly toward him/her; (5) 1 avoid him/her; (6) I cut off the relationship with him/her; and (7) I withdraw from him/her.

32.  One of the ways these investigators validated the TRIM scale was to examine how the scale predicts qualities of people's relationships. It is likely that tendencies to forgive have important implications for personal relationships, and their study supported this. People's

33.  People's revenge and avoidance motivations (TRIM scores) had predictive value of their relationship satisfaction. Forgiving people reported greater relationship quality, and also greater commitment to relationships. The authors concluded that "these findings gave some encouraging support for our conceptualization of forgiving as a motivational transformation that occurs more readily in satisfactory, committed relationships."

34.  Here’s a few findings of recent forgiveness research:  · A study at the University of Wisconsin showed that older people are more likely to forgive, suggesting forgiveness is a form of wisdom learned in stages.  · A study at the University of Northern Iowa of psychological treatment plans for adult women who had been victims of childhood incest found that those who went through forgiveness therapy experienced less anxiety and clinical depression than a control group. Gains for the forgiveness group also persisted after the therapy ended

35.  · A survey conducted by the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan found that nearly three-quarters of respondents felt God had forgiven them for their sins, but only 52 percent had forgiven someone else. The survey also supported the contentions that older people are more likely to forgive than the young, and that older people who forgive are rewarded by improved health. "The benefits of forgiveness seem to increase with age," said the lead researcher psychologist Loren Toussaint.

36.  · A survey conducted by the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan found that nearly three-quarters of respondents felt God had forgiven them for their sins, but only 52 percent had forgiven someone else. The survey also supported the contentions that older people are more likely to forgive than the young, and that older people who forgive are rewarded by improved health. "The benefits of forgiveness seem to increase with age," psychologist Loren Toussaint, the lead researcher, said.

37.  · A study of elderly women, published in the journal Psychotherapy, found that those who scored well on a standard test of forgiveness traits had higher self-esteem and fewer episodes of anxiety and depression compared to those who scored poorly. None of this makes forgiveness a cure all. The researcher noted that when people have first suffered a wrong or a tragic loss, it's often pointless to speak of forgiveness: that only comes with time.

38.  But research is beginning to say that, in most cases, most people will be better off if they forgive others for wrongs experienced during life--anything from small transgressions to horrific tragedies. Forgive others because it's good for you. And if you make the world a more peaceful place in so doing, that's a nice bonus.

39.  Fred Luskin holds a PhD in counseling and health psychology from Stanford University, where he is the cofounder and director of the Stanford Forgiveness Project. He's a pioneer in the burgeoning forgiveness field. He notes that numerous research studies have found that forgiving is good for the body as well as the soul.  It can lower blood pressure and heart rate and reduce levels of depression, anxiety, and anger. People who forgive generally have more and better relationships with others, feel happier and more hopeful, and score higher on just about every measure of psychological well-being.

40.  Next session we’ll reveal in detail the health benefits of forgiveness.