How to Forgive and to Get Forgiveness
Discover tips and techniques for forgiveness.
KEY POINTS
Forgiving someone means overriding the natural impulse to strike back.
Forgiving is not deciding that what the other person did was justifiable or excusable.
The more you practice forgiveness, the more quickly other people may forgive you, too.
Have you ever struggled to forgive someone? Held a grudge longer than you wanted? Felt shame
or guilt about hurting someone else and didn't know how to ask for forgiveness? Forgiveness is
essential to maintaining and repairing relationships—but that doesn’t make it easy. Many of us struggle
to forgive and to get the forgiveness we want. In this post, we’ll talk about forgiveness, how to give and
get it, and why it's important.
Forgiveness, in simplest terms, is letting go of angry feelings and thoughts toward somebody who
hurt you and replacing them with positive feelings and thoughts. When we forgive, we accept that
something bad happened to us and say that we want to move on. We become willing to see the other
person for more than what they did that hurt us. But moving from anger to more positive emotions can
be a lot harder than it sounds. When somebody hurts you, it is natural to want them to feel what you’re
feeling. Forgiving that person means overriding that natural impulse to strike back (Wade et al., 2008).
At the same time, forgiving is not deciding that what the other person did was justifiable,
excusable, or OK. When you forgive somebody, you’re not absolving them of blame—you are deciding
that you won’t hold what happened against them. What they did was still wrong, but letting go of your
feelings about it has become more important. Whether or not you ever want to interact with somebody
again, you can still forgive them.
You might have noticed that when you don’t know the person who hurt you very well, it may be
easier to let go of the negative feelings you have (Worthington, 2005). In fact, you might not even need
an apology from the person who hurt you (Enright & Fitzgibbons, 2000). However, forgiving someone
you are closer to may require more effort on your part or an apology from that person (Enright &
Fitzgibbons, 2000).
Often, we forgive when the benefits of forgiving start to seem more important than the benefits of
staying angry. We might miss the company of the person we’re angry with or be tired of feeling upset
every time we hear their name. But there is a range of health benefits to practicing forgiveness (Witvliet
& McCullough, 2007; Worthington & Scherer, 2004) that make it worth your while to learn more about
how to practice forgiveness.
How to Forgive Someone
Forgiveness has to happen in your own head; if you say you forgive somebody, but don’t mean
it, that forgiveness isn’t driven by your conviction. To be ready to forgive someone, you can ask yourself
if you believe the three following statements (McCullough, 2009):
The other person deserves forgiveness.
