Forgiveness Boosts Health And Self-Esteem, Research Shows

Jet, Jan 11, 1999

Learning how to forgive may be the smartest thing you can do.

Recent research shows that holding on to anger increases your chances of a heart attack as well as cancer, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and other illnesses, according to news reports.

Forgiveness boosts your self-esteem and lowers your blood pressure and heart rate, experts say. Forgiveness also helps you sleep better at night and boosts a positive change in your attitude.

"Forgiveness is an intellectual decision you make to give up your anger and feelings of revenge," Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons, a psychiatrist based in suburban Philadelphia, said in a Rodale Press stow published in the Chicago Sun-Times.

He added that forgiving is not forgetting: It is letting go of anger and hurt and moving on.

Fitzgibbons said forgiveness heals by removing certain amounts of anger within you each time you forgive someone, the Rodale Press reported.

Dr. Robert Enright, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, conducted a study in which he measured people's emotional states before and after they forgave someone who had hurt them. His study found that those who forgave no longer had feelings of anxiety and depression and felt better about themselves, the Sun-Times noted.

Listed below are several tips on how to forgive that were cited in the Rodale Press story in the Chicago Sun-Times:

1. Acknowledge your anger.

2. Decide to forgive.

3. Do no evil. Do not act negatively against the person who hurt you.

4. Consider the source. While there is no excuse for someone's behavior, it may help you to forgive if you understand the background of the offender that could explain his or her behavior.

5. Put yourself in the other person's shoes. Empathize. Consider what was going on in the person's life when he or she hurt you.

6. Give yourself some time. "Unfortunately, it takes weeks, months, sometimes years to get over being disappointed and angry," Fitzgibbons told the Rodale Press.