Could a lack of forgiveness harm your mental health? 

Many people see forgiveness as a necessary step in our growth as humans. However, some people see the idea of forgiveness as outrageous. If this is you, I would love to be able to give you a new outlook on the idea. 

What is forgiveness? 

Many psychologists believe that forgiveness is a conscious decision to release feelings of anger or hatred towards a person or group of people who have caused harm to you. There is a common misconception that in order to forgive someone, you have to forget what they did to cause harm to/offend you. Forgetting what happened to cause the harm or offence in the first place, could potentially leave you open to more harm in future. 

How can forgiveness benefit you? 

It is very easy, some might say, too easy to hold a grudge. However, forgiving someone could have a number of potential benefits. One potential benefit of forgiveness is improved levels of hostility/ anger. When we hold a grudge, we can often find it hard to think of anything else. Many times, the person or group of people we hold the grudge against completely move on, yet we still find that we cannot move on. We may not realise this in the moment, but in situations like these we are letting the person win by holding the grudge against them. A potential by-product of improved levels of hostility is improved blood pressure levels. 

When we hold a grudge, we often develop trust issues as a result. These trust issues can result in us drifting apart from people we know,  or struggling to make new friends. Both of these issues can eventually lead to us becoming lonely. When we drop grudges, we may find it easier to trust other people and make new friends. Furthermore, this could lead to improvements in your relationships with your existing friends and family. 

Risks of holding grudges 

A potential risk of holding a grudge is that you can bring your feelings of bitterness and anger into new relationships and experiences. If you brought feelings of bitterness and anger into a new job, you could be unable to complete the work you are set to the required standard. This could potentially lead the loss of this job, which could lead to even more feelings of bitterness and anger. In addition to this, you may find it hard to enter new relationships because the feelings of anger and bitterness could cause you to have a sense of distrust of new people. This feeling of distrust could eventually lead to a sense of loneliness as it may prevent you from meeting to new people. 

Another risk of holding a grudge is that you could become so focused on the past that you cannot enjoy the present. This could lead to you not finding joy in things that typically bring you joy. For example, if you enjoy playing video games, you could be so wrapped up the memory of the event which caused the offence in the past that you cannot find joy in doing it. 

How should you forgive? 

Before forgiving someone, an important thing to note is that forgiveness doesn’t mean that you have to excuse the person or people who caused you harm. Another thing to note is that forgiveness is something that you do for yourself, as opposed to the person that you are forgiving. 

When you forgive someone, you should think to the incident and accept that it happened. In my opinion, without doing this you cannot move on from it. Many people decide to lock the memory away and refuse to think about it. I believe that this is a flawed mindset as the incident will never truly be forgotten. There is danger that the memory of the incident could come up at any point during your life. Accepting the incident may ensure that this doesn’t happen. 

Why should we forgive? 

• Forgiving people provides you with a sense of peace that you may not feel without it 
• Forgiving people allows you to move on with your life and do things that your lack of forgiveness may have been holding you back from doing. 
• Forgiveness could improve your mental and physical health