A reader asks:
I have a close family member who mistreated me for years. I still see this family member when I visit my close family. We've discussed the issues from childhood in the past and all these discussions were unhelpful or even harmful. I've accepted that I can't change them or the past, but if I feel this way, have I truly forgiven them? And how do you truly forgive someone?
Forgiveness is a tricky concept because it has different meanings in different contexts…
- Many faiths and religions, for example, have specifically spiritual definitions of what forgiveness is and what it means to have successfully forgiven someone.
- Similarly, how forgiveness is defined and accomplished can vary depending on your specific culture or community.
That said, I think it can be helpful to think about forgiveness from a psychological perspective—in part because many people want to forgive and experience forgiveness but don’t have a religious or cultural context in which to do so—or find it inadequate.
While this won’t be a comprehensive overview on the psychology of forgiveness generally, I’m going to share what I see as the three most important ideas to keep in mind when it comes to trying to forgive someone.
1. Forgiveness Is Behavior, not a Feeling.
Probably the biggest obstacle to forgiveness I see is confusion about what type of thing forgiveness is.
Most people understand that there is a behavioral component to forgiveness, but they mostly think about it in terms of how they want to feel—that an event or memory is resolved and doesn’t produce any more anxiety, anger, guilt, or other uncomfortable emotions.
For example:
- I worked with a young woman once who said she wanted to forgive her parents for not being attuned enough to her emotional needs as a child. But when we discussed the issue more deeply, what she actually wanted was to not feel bad (angry, sad, and disappointed) about her relationship with her parents as a child.
- Another client I worked with was an older gentleman who said he wanted to forgive his best friend for having an affair with his wife 30 years ago. But the more we talked about it, the more clear it became that what he actually wanted was to stop having memories of the affair and experiencing all the anger, disappointment, and guilt that went along with those memories.
- One client had the goal of forgiving himself for cheating on a big test in school. But as he went on to explain things, it was clear that the main thing he wanted out of forgiveness was to not feel guilty any more about what he had done.
I share these examples because they illustrate why most people struggle to “achieve” forgiveness:
People think they want to forgive but really they want emotional relief.
This is understandable, of course. And I do think some amount of emotional relief does happen when you forgive someone. But it’s never going to happen if you’re mixing up cause and effect—or, as the saying goes, putting the cart before the horse.
From a psychological perspective, forgiving someone is behavior, not a feeling—something you do, not something that happens to you.
If you want to forgive someone, the first step is to remind yourself that all you can control is whether you decide to make the choice to forgive, not the outcome (e.g.: how you will feel emotionally, whether you’ll keep having memories of the person or event, how the other person will feel or behave, etc.)
Now, at this point, the question I always get goes something like this:
That makes sense, but what do I do exactly to forgive? What does it look like?
This is a tricky question because while forgiveness is a behavior, it’s not fundamentally a physical behavior. Yes, you might decide that telling someone you forgive them is a part of forgiveness. But it’s not essential. You can forgive someone even if they’re dead and gone.
Fundamentally, forgiveness is a mental behavior. It means taking control of your attention and not letting it obsess over past injuries.
To make this a little more concrete, here are a few examples:
- If you want to forgive a coworker for an insulting comment they made toward you, the act of forgiveness is being reminded of the unjust and then choosing not to ruminate on it unproductively.
- If you want to forgive an old boyfriend for cheating on you, the act of forgiveness means that when you’re reminded of that old injury, you don’t dwell on it, and instead, refocus on something else.
- If you want to forgive yourself for treating someone else poorly in the past, it means being willing to stop obsessing over it and criticizing yourself for it, and instead, shift your attention onto something more helpful.
In short…
Forgiveness means taking responsibility for your attention.
At this point, you might be thinking to yourself:
Yeah, but I’ve done that and I still don’t feel like I’ve truly forgiven them.
This is usually because of another common misconception about forgiveness which we’ll look at in my next point….
2. Forgiveness Is a Commitment, not an Event.
My experience is that most people who say they want forgiveness actually want forgetfulness. They want to not experience painful memories from the past and all the emotions they trigger. And they think that there’s some kind of secret trick—spiritual, psychological, or otherwise—that will help them achieve that.
Unfortunately, that’s not how the human mind works.
Unless you have a serious neurological condition, you’re unlikely to forget a significant injury or harm someone committed against you. In fact, that’s usually the type of thing you’re more likely to remember.
So, tempting as it is, be careful of the hidden expectation that if you just find the right approach to forgiveness, you’ll be able to avoid the memories and emotions that go along with being hurt.
If someone has harmed you, you will always have to deal with that memory and the emotions it triggers.
Now, that might sound pretty bleak. But it doesn’t have to be. Because while you will always experience the memories and emotions associated with a significant harm done to you, the frequency and intensity of those memories and emotions is not set in stone.
If you talk to someone who has successfully forgiven another person and moved on from a harm done to them, what they’ll probably tell you is something like this:
Sure, I still think about it from time to time. And when I do it hurts a little—I still feel a pang of anger or a twinge of disappointment. But it doesn’t really bother me much and I just get on with my day.
So, while it’s not possible to completely forget an injury or avoid any difficult emotions related to it, you can dramatically reduce how much those memories and emotions affect you.
And the best way to do this?
Commit to forgiveness as a process, not an event.
Because you will always have memories of the harm done to you—and for many people, you may have to regularly interact with the person who harmed you—forgiveness by definition can’t be a one-time event.
Instead, you should think about it as a process: something you commit to doing repeatedly.
As an analogy, think about the goal many people have of eating healthy….
- First of all, eating healthy is something you do, not something that happens to you. And while you undoubtedly want the benefits that come from it (better energy, lower blood pressure, looking good in a swimsuit, etc.), it would be a big mistake to confuse the output with the input. That is, you don’t get the results of eating healthy without the behavior of eating healthy.
- Second, eating healthy isn’t a one-time thing. Sure, you might decide on January 1st that you’re committing to healthy eating this year. But you have to keep making the decision to eat healthy dozens of times per day if you want to be successful.
I think forgiveness is similar….
- Forgiving someone is something you do. And you need to be clear on not confusing it with the desired outcomes you’re hoping for.
- But more than that, you need to come to terms with the fact that you will need to continue to forgive. Probably not dozens of times per day, like in the healthy eating example. But very likely it’s a process that never actually ends. That can be tough for a lot of people to hear, but it’s essential to come to terms with.
Here’s another way to think about it:
Forgiveness is a commitment to managing your attention well whenever you’re reminded of an injury against you.
Luckily, like many commitments, the more you practice, the easier it gets. Not that it ever gets easy necessarily—although often it actually does—but it doesn’t have to remain as hard as it is now.
So, just like healthy eating, exercise, playing the piano, or learning French, forgiveness is about committing to positive behavior in a sustainable way.
There are no quick fixes.
3. Forgiveness Is About the Future, not the Past.
Imagine two people, both of whom have been deeply insulted by someone close to them and are trying to forgive…
- Serena is a high-school history teacher who’s passionate about her job and is very active in her community. She’s raising three young kids as a single mom, which is “awesome” but also very challenging and stressful—in part because she’s constantly worried about money. She’s currently dating someone, and while it’s hard to dedicate time to her own relationships, she has a lot of fun when she does, and definitely thinks “there’s a future there.”
- Robert is a partner at a prestigious law firm. He enjoys the prestige and income that comes with it, but “has never really liked being an attorney.” He currently lives with his wife with whom he has a “stable but distant” relationship. He plays golf most weekends, but outside of that doesn’t have any hobbies. He’s looking forward to retiring but can’t really say why beyond “less stress.”
If you had to guess, which of our two people will be more successful in their goal to forgive someone?
Of course there’s a lot we don’t know, but I’d bet on Serena because she has something that, in my experience, is highly predictive of success with forgiveness…
- Serena is pretty stressed and overwhelmed, but she feels like her life’s on a good trajectory and the future looks bright if she can hang in there. When you spend time around her, you get the strong sense that she’s actively pushing her life into the future. In other words, she’s an optimist about her own life.
- Robert seems similarly stressed (in different ways, of course), but he doesn’t seem to have much he looks forward to. When you spend time around him, you get the sense that he’s just sort of getting through life. Put another way, he’s apathetic about his own life.
I’ve found that people who are able to successfully forgive things in the past have a fundamentally future-focused orientation to life. There’s a strong sense of agency and forward momentum in the way they go through life. It’s as if putting time and energy into the future makes it easier to let go of the past. On the other hand, people who struggle to forgive often spend a lot of their time and energy in the past and their futures are poorly defined and kind of empty.
The more general principle here is this:
It’s hard to let go of the past when you don’t have much to look forward to in the future.
The implication for forgiveness is that the more clarity you have about your goals, aspirations, values, and overall vision for your future, the easier it will be to do the fundamental act of forgiveness, which—as we talked about earlier—means letting go of your impulse to fixate on the past, and instead, redirect your focus onto something helpful in the present or future.
Forgiveness is about your future. It’s about choosing to live your life according to what you really want rather than letting it be consumed by what you don’t want.
Next Steps
Here are a few resources from me that I think will be helpful if you’re struggling to forgive someone (including yourself):