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Christmas closed: Tuesday, December 24, 2024 – January 1, 2025
Christmas closed: Tuesday, December 24, 2024 – January 1, 2025
Think about how much energy we can spend carrying old hurts. We replay the conversation. We remember exactly what was said. We imagine what we should have said. We tell the story again—and sometimes, years later, we can still feel the anger rise as though it happened yesterday! And here’s the frustrating part: the other person may have moved on while we are still carrying the emotional baggage.
Sometimes we hold onto resentment because it feels like letting go means the other person “gets away with it.” We may think, If I forgive, doesn’t that mean what they did was okay? Or perhaps we believe that staying angry somehow protects us from being hurt again. But forgiveness isn’t about approving what happened. It isn’t about forgetting, excusing bad behavior, or handing someone a free pass.
It is the decision to stop allowing an old wound to have so much power over your present life. And here’s where this becomes more than an emotional or spiritual conversation. Research increasingly suggests that the way we handle anger, resentment, and unforgiveness can influence our stress levels, psychological well-being, and even aspects of our physical health. In other words, letting go may be good for more than your heart in the emotional sense—it may be good for it and the rest of your body in the physical sense, too.
So, what happens when we stop fighting an old battle?
Why can forgiveness feel like such a relief?
And perhaps most importantly…
What might become possible when we finally decide to get past all this?
When we feel threatened or emotionally wounded, the body’s stress-response system can become activated. Heart rate and blood pressure can rise, stress hormones are released, and the body shifts resources toward dealing with what it perceives as a threat.
That’s helpful when you’re facing an immediate danger. It’s not quite so helpful when the “danger” is a conversation from five years ago that you’re replaying while brushing your teeth!
Chronic stress and persistent anger can keep the body in a state of heightened physiological arousal. Research has found associations between anger, hostility, stress, and cardiovascular responses such as elevated blood pressure and increased cardiovascular workload.
And forgiveness appears to offer an interesting counterpoint.
In laboratory studies, people who adopted a more forgiving perspective when thinking about an interpersonal offense showed less cardiovascular reactivity than those who engaged in angry rumination. In one study involving 202 participants, forgiveness was associated with smaller increases in blood pressure—not only while initially thinking about the offense, but also when participants later began thinking about it again.
So perhaps the question isn’t simply:
“Who was right?”
Perhaps it’s also:
“What is holding on to this doing to me?”
The research on forgiveness has become considerably more interesting over the past several decades.
A five-week longitudinal study of 332 adults found that increases in forgiveness were associated with decreases in perceived stress, which were then associated with improvements in mental health symptoms. The researchers concluded that cultivating forgiveness may have beneficial effects on stress and health.
Earlier intervention research has also shown that forgiveness can be learned and practiced. And, at Morter HealthSystem, we’ve taught this for years!
Interestingly, in one recent randomized study, 259 adults who were struggling with the effects of an interpersonal hurt participated in a six-week forgiveness intervention. Compared with a no-treatment control group, those receiving the intervention experienced greater reductions in negative thoughts and feelings about the offense and greater increases in positive thoughts and feelings toward the person who had hurt them.
That’s an important point:
Forgiveness isn’t simply something that either comes naturally to you or doesn’t. It can be practiced.
A growing body of research suggests that forgiveness is associated with better psychological well-being. Studies have linked forgiveness with lower levels of stress, anger, hostility, anxiety, depression, and psychological distress, while also finding relationships with greater emotional well-being.
And the effects aren’t necessarily limited to how we feel.
Researchers have also examined physiological responses associated with forgiveness. Studies have found relationships between forgiveness and lower blood pressure, heart rate, cardiovascular workload, and faster cardiovascular recovery following stress.
The evidence does suggest something important:
How we process emotional hurts matters to our overall health and well-being.
And perhaps that makes sense.
If your mind continually returns to an old offense, your body doesn’t necessarily know that the event happened five years ago. The memory is in the past, but the emotional response can still happen in the present.
Here’s another beautiful thing about forgiveness: The other person doesn’t have to participate. You can forgive someone who is no longer in your life. You can forgive someone who lives thousands of miles away. You can forgive someone who has died.
That’s because the forgiveness process ultimately isn’t about controlling the other person. It’s about changing your own response.
This distinction is especially important. Forgiveness doesn’t require you to become naïve. You can forgive someone and still learn from what happened. You can forgive someone and maintain healthy boundaries. You can forgive someone and decide that a relationship is no longer safe or appropriate. You can forgive someone and still recognize that what happened was wrong.
Forgiveness is not permission. It is not approval. It is not pretending. It is freedom.
Think about the emotional energy we spend holding grudges.
We rehearse conversations. We explain what happened to friends. We imagine what we should have said. We remember exactly what they did. We wait for them to apologize. We hope they’ll finally understand. And sometimes we carry the whole story for years.
That’s exhausting.
What if some of that energy could be redirected toward living? Toward your family. Toward your health. Toward your friendships. Toward creativity. Toward serving others. Toward enjoying the life that is happening right now.
The goal isn’t to change the past. The goal is to stop allowing the past to continually change your present.
If there is someone or something you’re still carrying, try asking yourself:
1. What am I still holding onto? Name it honestly. Anger? Betrayal? Resentment? Shame? The need to be right? Sometimes simply identifying what we’re carrying begins to loosen its grip.
2. What has holding onto this cost me? Consider your peace, relationships, energy, sleep, concentration, or ability to enjoy the present. What has this old hurt been taking from you?
3. What can I learn from what happened? Every painful experience doesn’t have to become a wasted experience. Perhaps there is a lesson about boundaries, discernment, communication, self-respect, or compassion.
4. What boundary do I need going forward? Forgiveness and boundaries can coexist. Protecting yourself and releasing resentment are not contradictory. You can let go emotionally without giving someone permission to hurt you again.
5. Am I willing to release my need for the past to be different? This may be the hardest question of all. You may not be able to change what happened. But you can begin changing what happens inside you because of what happened.
We all have moments we wish we could redo. Words we wish we hadn’t spoken. Decisions we wish we’d made differently. Opportunities we wish we’d taken. Interestingly, recent research has also begun examining self-forgiveness as an important part of psychological well-being. A 2024 systematic review examined 19 studies of interventions designed to promote self-forgiveness and found growing evidence that structured approaches can help people move toward greater self-acceptance and well-being.
Self-forgiveness doesn’t mean avoiding responsibility. It means accepting responsibility without making a permanent identity out of a temporary mistake.
At Morter HealthSystem, we have long recognized forgiveness as a vital part of emotional and personal well-being. In our Private Treatment programs, individuals have used the Morter Forgiveness Process—the 5 Steps of Forgiveness—as a way to work through resentment, anger, self-negativity, and painful emotional experiences. The 5 Steps, carried out with feeling and emotion are: 1. Forgive Yourself; 2. Forgive the other person; 3. Give the other person permission to forgive you; 4. See the good in the situation; 5. Be thankful! You can learn more about this process at www.morter.com or by visiting a Morter B.E.S.T. practitioner.
Carrying an old hurt doesn’t punish the person who hurt you nearly as much as it weighs down the person carrying it — emotionally and physically. So, why not get past all this? Your future may have better things waiting for you than another round of an argument that already happened.
