Has someone wronged you gravely? Have you ever felt completely betrayed, hurt or angry at something or someone to the point from where you feel there’s no going back?
You might want to back up a bit. Forgiveness is talked about everywhere- in spiritual texts, in mental detox courses…it might feel overrated by this point of time, but let me assure you, it’s not.
Over 15 years ago there lacked any research on the impact of forgiveness on our health. Thankfully to date, there are hundreds of scientific papers and clinicians ready to share their knowledge with us. And they show, if you refuse to forgive it not only makes you sick, but can keep you that way.
Let us start with the impact of staying angry, being frustrated or feeling negative about an event. Dr. Steven Standiford, chief of surgery at the Cancer Treatment Centers of America, says that holding onto these negative emotions creates a chronic state of anxiety. This produces a predictable excess of adrenaline and cortisol, which deplete the production of natural killer cells.
You’re literally killing your body’s chances of defending itself.
And since we are on the topic of cancer, a neat randomized controlled trial with over 83 cancer patients evaluated feelings of forgiveness, pessimism, and self-acceptance after taking a course in self-forgiveness. The course taught techniques such as reflection, expressive writing etc. As expected, the patients that took the course had statistically significant higher scores for self-forgiveness, acceptance, self-improvement, and lower pessimism scores compared to the control group.
Recent studies show that participants who practice empathy and forgiveness to those who do them wrong have a lowered stress response. To further deepen this point, roughly 1,500 Americans who forgave reported greater satisfaction with their lives, less distress symptoms, less nervousness, and less sadness.
Forgiveness even helps in cases of severe emotional abuse. Women were placed into two treatment groups; the first using techniques such as anger validation, assertiveness, interpersonal skill building, and the second using forgiveness. Women in the forgiveness group had significant improvements in depression scores, post-traumatic stress symptom, self-esteem, less anxiety, and better overall mastery of their life. Months later all these gains were still present!
