Forgive.
“Forgive” is a little word that packs a powerful load of baggage – and benefits. Did you know that whether or not you are able to forgive seriously affects your health? Holding on to anger, whether it’s toward the driver who just cut you off or the parents or former spouse who hurt you deeply, impacts your health in a multitude of ways.
Studies have shown that negative emotions are debilitating, because they cause your brain to produce an overload of the stress hormone cortisol. Cortisol makes you feel tense and overwhelmed, and over time, too much cortisol weakens the immune system. Anger-prone people are three times as likely to have heart attacks. The New Zealand Medical Journal published a letter from a clinician who analyzed 200 case histories and found that 60 percent of patients with chronic pain had failed to forgive.
How else does holding onto grudges affect your health?
A University of Tennessee professor discovered over 25 years of study that anger and resentment seriously affect the heart. She measured adults ages 28-70 to get their baseline blood pressure, heart rate and forehead muscle tension, then asked those in the study to recall a time when someone betrayed them. Each adult also filled out a questionnaire about their physical and mental health. Each person in the study showed some increased heart rate, muscle tension and blood pressure when they relived the experience of being betrayed.
But the increases were one-fourth higher in the patients who stated they had not forgiven the one who betrayed them. Those who had not forgiven stated they had more illnesses like headaches, colds, and fatigue. They also took one-fourth more medications than those who had practiced forgiveness.
On the flip side, forgiveness has many positive health benefits. One study from the Journal of Behavioral Medicine showed that forgiveness is tied to lower heart rate and blood pressure, as well as stress relief. It also positively affects fatigue, sleep quality, how many medications people take, and how many symptoms of illness they feel.
The act of forgiveness positively affects fatigue, sleep quality, how many medications people take, and how many symptoms of illness people feel.
Another study in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin discovered that forgiveness creates positive behaviors that “spill over” to others even beyond the relationship that needed to be forgiven. Forgiveness restores positive thoughts toward the offender, but it also is associated with altruistic behaviors such as charitable donating and volunteerism. In other words, people with a “clean slate” are happier, healthier, and more giving to others.
How do you forgive?
First of all, recognize that forgiving does not mean you are letting the other person off the hook , so to speak. You are not excusing or condoning what was done to you. What you are doing is acknowledging how hurt you were and letting it go. You make a conscious choice not to hold on to the anger and pain toward the offender any more.
One successful way of doing this is through prayer. You can also talk with a friend, advisor or counselor. The point is to sort through your feelings, recognize that healing requires you to change, and say, “I forgive you.” This can be said to yourself, to the offender, or to a confidant.
Remember that forgiveness does not require the offender to be sorry in return , and that can be tough to swallow. Forgiveness can be totally one-sided, but the benefits are still there for the forgiver. If the offender is sorry and seeks forgiveness, the relationship may be able to be reconciled or restored over time, but it is not a requirement for forgiveness.
Tags: anger, emotions, forgiveness, stress