Overcoming Unforgiveness

How to Move Forward and Let Go

Note: This is the fourth article in the series on forgiveness. It focuses upon reconciliation, particularly interpersonal reconciliation (as opposed to systemic or issues such as racial reconciliation). If you’re new to this series, please visit No Trifling Matter to read the prior articles.

Last week, someone asked how my thinking about forgiveness and reconciliation correspond with scriptural wisdom. As you might have noticed, I don’t quote a lot of scripture or even use it as my primary source. That’s because, as I mentioned in the first article, forgiveness is not exclusively a biblical or theological concept. It is also a relational, social, and psychological concept. And emerging research indicates that forgiveness may be associated with certain brain structures. In other words, forgiveness is inherently multidimensional. How we conceptualize and practice forgiveness is not only influenced by our religious beliefs but also by our personalities, neuropsychology, interpersonal relationships, and societal structures.

Increasingly, we are approaching forgiveness in a similar way that we do emotional issues such as anxiety. Psychological and medical research have helped us to understand that it is unhelpful, and sometimes even harmful, to quote Philippians 4 at someone suffering from anxiety: “Don’t be anxious about anything; rather, bring up all of your requests to God in your prayers and petitions, along with giving thanks. Then the peace of God that exceeds all understanding will keep your hearts and minds safe in Christ Jesus.” We know now what biblical writers did not: namely, that anxiety is not just about religious belief or willpower; it is also about conditioning, biology, and personality. The same thing is true of forgiveness and its antithesis: unforgiveness.

Unforgiveness is the state of being unwilling or unable to forgive. Many of us have grappled with being unforgiving at some point in our lives. Sometimes it happens because we don’t want to forgive; we think the harm caused is severe enough to justify permanent hostility. Other times, we may desire to forgive, but we can’t seem to get there. Fortunately, forgiveness is something that we can cultivate. To start, it helps to know why we might be unforgiving. There are a few factors at play: the nature of the offense, our personality, our stress levels, and our spiritual beliefs.

Nature of the Offense. Several characteristics of the offense impact our willingness to forgive, including whether: (1) it is a one-time event or a recurring issue; (2) it is accidental or intentional; (3) it does significant harm or has minimal impact; (4) it involves something that matters to us or something we don’t care much about.; and (5) there are extenuating circumstances that explain the offender’s behavior. We are less likely to forgive transgressions that we view as habitual and malevolent, as well as those that infringe upon our closely held values. We might be willing to forgive the drug-addicted family member the first time that they steal from us, especially if the theft involves things that are easily replaced. But if the behavior is repeated or if they take one of our prized possessions, we lean increasingly toward unforgiveness.

Personality. While most, if not all, of us have difficulty forgiving at some point in our lives, it tends to be situation-specific. But some people experience what is termed “dispositional unforgiveness” and are more prone to grudge-holding across situations and contexts. There are certain personality traits that are associated with dispositional unforgiveness. Since the 1980s, the most widely researched model of personality has been the Big 5 theory, which posits that there are five core personality traits: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. In his review of decades of forgiveness research in Forgiveness and Reconciliation, Everett Worthington states that four of these have been found to correlate with unforgiving or forgiving dispositions, with the strongest links being found for agreeableness and neuroticism. People who score high in neuroticism (i.e., emotional reactivity) are more prone to grudge-holding and less likely to be forgiving. Those who score low on agreeableness (i.e., capacity to get along with others) are more likely to be vengeful and less likely to be forgiving towards others.

One of the most salient personality characteristics for forgiveness is rumination, that is, the tendency to replay and rehearse negative experiences. Research on rumination indicates that it produces negative emotions, including fear, anger, anxiety, and unforgiveness. These, in turn, impact memory and thoughts, including how we perceive and appraise threats and harm. While anyone can ruminate, it’s an existential hazard for introverts since we tend to be internal processors. Extroverts, in contrast, are more likely to lean toward vengefulness.

Stress. Have you ever been confronted with what seemed like an insurmountable problem or task, but then you got some sleep and were able to resolve the issue in no time? That happens to me all the time. When we’re tired and stressed out, it affects our perception of challenges. That includes the challenges caused by someone else’s (or our own) wrongdoing. Worthington argues (and provides empirical evidence) that unforgiveness is a stress reaction. The higher our stress levels, the more likely we are to perceive a transgression as a threat. And the more that we perceive the transgression as a threat to our safety or well-being, the more stressed we experience as a result of it. Among its many effects, being under stress increases generalized hostility, feelings of helplessness or loss of control, and anger. In addition, when our stress response is triggered, it provokes egocentrism. That is, we focus more on ourselves in order to deal with the threat. In addition, stress makes us more likely to ruminate. This, incidentally, is one of the reasons that forgiving ourselves can be so difficult. The more we rehearse the memory of our wrongdoing, the more we trigger our own stress response and reinforce unforgiveness.

Spirituality. Faith matters with forgiveness, but in a more nuanced way than many people might imagine. When forgiveness is central to our spiritual beliefs, we are more likely to try to cultivate it even in circumstances where it’s difficult. This turns out to be the case whether we are part of a organized religion or whether we practice a non-theistic spirituality such as humanism. For Christianity, moreover, our God-images are critical here. If we tend to primarily view God as merciful and forgiving toward all, we are more likely to aspire to embody forgiveness toward others. In contrast, if we primarily view God as vengeful and punishing, we are more likely to be prone toward grudge-holding and unforgiveness.

From Unforgiveness to Forgiveness

Understanding the factors that lead to unforgiveness can also help us to understand what we need to do to cultivate forgiveness. Here are a few tips:

1. Recognize how your personality impacts your disposition toward forgiveness. While personality is hard to change, there are specific behavioral traits associated with unforgiveness that are more amenable to change. Rumination is one of these. Simply being aware of our tendency towards rumination can make us more likely to stop ourselves when we are engaging in it. As an introvert, I am definitely prone to rumination. It’s also a hazard of the self-reflection required of my vocations as a psychologist, writer, and practical theologian. When I realize that I am rehearsing stories, I stop and ask myself, “What purpose does this serve? Is this engendering helpful or non helpful emotions?”

2. Manage your stress. This includes your overall stress levels as well as the stress that results from the transgression. Sometimes that means we need to distance ourselves from the offender while we work on our own healing work. If we engage the offender while stress hormones are still cycling through our body and telling us that the person is a threat, we are likely to act out in ways that reinforce unforgiveness. We may even end up becoming the transgressor as we lash out at them in pain. In general, good stress management allows us to view transgressions as challenges that we can cope with rather than as threats to our safety. It helps us to see the other person’s perspective, which can aid in the compassion that we need to replace unforgiveness with forgiveness.

3. Accentuate the positive. Worthington hypothesizes that because unforgiveness is a stress reaction caused by negative emotions toward a person, we can cultivate forgiveness by replacing these with neutral or positive emotions. When a transgressions occurs in the context of an ongoing relationship that we want to maitnain, we can remind ourselves of the person’s positive attributes or consider extenuating circumstances that may account for out-of-the-ordinary behavior. It can also be helpful to remember the occasions where we have harmed others and have needed forgiveness. Worthington’s five-step REACH Forgiveness model is helpful here (he has a free workbook, preaching resources, and video resources available on his website) .

4. Engage your faith. Sometimes we need to boost our inclination toward forgiveness by immersing ourselves in our faith tradition’s teachings and practices. This can include reading scripture and sacred texts, doing group studies on the topic, and engaging in specific practices for cultivating forgiveness and reconciliation. One of my favorite practices is a non-sectarian loving-kindness meditation. There are also religion-specific practices, such as the rite of reconciliation for Catholics.

Above all, remember that forgiveness is a process that sometimes include unforgiveness. So set your intention to forgive and then give it time.