Why Forgiveness is Important For Health of Human? Benefits of Forgiveness

Contents

Introduction 

Sources of Forgiveness

The personality of Forgiving and Less Forgiving People

Forgiveness and Religiosity 

Impacts of Forgiveness

Conclusion

References                                      

Why Forgiveness is Important For the Health of Humans?

Introduction

 

Forgiveness is defined differently by different scholars and researchers. Some define it as Forgiveness is a dominant trait that is capable of freeing a person from a negative association to the source that has transgressed against a person (Thompson et al., 2005). Open forgiveness requires sympathy, benevolence, and love for the crook, together with the sacrifice of the right to revenge, anger, and indifference. Forgiveness has a double function both interpersonal and intrapersonal. Forgiveness happens in reaction to interpersonal violation and the person who forgives does it concerning someone else.

"To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you, Lewis Smedes". CLICK tO tWEET 

Sources of Forgiveness

The three sources of forgiveness are

• another person,
•    oneself,
•    a situation or circumstance could be used to understand how it functions.

The personality of Forgiving and Less Forgiving People

Researchers found that forgiving people differ significantly from less forgiving people on many personality attributes. Forgiving people are found

      less ruminative
      less narcissistic 
      less exploitative, and
      more empathic than less forgiving people.

Forgiveness and Emotional State

The emotional state of the person is very important in defining forgiving behavior. For example, people with positive moods feel that the experienced misbehavior is not a serious threat or a grave problem and thus forgivable.

Forgiveness and Religiosity        

One of the important indicator of religiosity is forgiveness. Religiosity functions as a take on (internalized) socio-moral appliance for forgiveness. In this viewpoint, the role of religion is understood as smearing social pressures on sufferers to perform in a socially and morally desirable manner irrespective of their religious thoughts or emotions.

Impact of Forgiveness

Potential benefits of forgiving behavior as a result of the body's response to self-injury. In the process of the nervous system working to resolve perceived injustices with parasympathetic activity such as meditation, there will be significant physical and psychological improvements such as decreased heart rate, better breathing, lower levels of anxiety, depression, hostility, and anger and increased self-esteem.

Forgiveness was found positively connected to global mental health and relationship quality and hope. High self-esteem and low levels of anxiety and depression were the results of higher levels of forgiveness among elderly women (Hebl & Enright, 1993).

Parents who have high forgiveness level were also high on self-esteem, positive parenting styles, and lower anxiety and depression among college students (Al-Mabuk & Enright, 1995).

Intervention Study of Forgiveness

Clinical forgiveness interventions also show an important benefit of practicing forgiveness. Freedman and Enright (1996) applied forgiveness interventions to the fighters of incest. After the intervention, women survivors described important increases in procedures of forgiveness and hope, and significant decreases in measures of anxiety and depression in contrast to their pretreatment scores.

Stage Model of Forgiveness

This stage model is used for adults, elaborate four different stages of forgiveness.

 The First Stage, the detection stage, stressed the understanding and control of anger.

In The Second Stage, the decision stage, psycho-education about forgiveness and its positive consequences to the target, resulting in a decision to give up anger or even display compassion toward the lawbreaker.

 In The Third Stage, the work stage, clients grew to understand the lawbreaker and his or her life situations that enabled the misbehavior. By the time the client reaches the third and final stage of deepening, he/she finds increasing meaning in the suffering feels more connected with others, and experiences decreased negative affect and, at times, renewed purpose in life.

Forgive Self and Others

Additional similar intervention study on forgiveness was done by Coyle and Enright (1997) on 10 men who reported as having felt hurt by their parents’ decision for abortion. The findings showed that after the completion of forgiveness intervention, these men reported important increases in forgiveness behavior and noteworthy decreases in negative emotions such as grief, anger, and anxiety. In a study of the adult population of USA, Toussaint, Williams, Musick, and Everson (2001) described that forgiveness of the self and others was positively related to life satisfaction. Similarly, Krause and Ellison Webold, Hill, Neumann, and Chi (2001) also documented that forgiveness predicted positive compared among the respondents.

Conclusion

From all these We come to know those who have the quality of forgiveness live happy and satisfactory life compared to others who are less forgiving. Most forgiving people enjoy the following benefits;

      satisfaction with life,
      positive emotions,
       decreased negative emotions,
      high self-esteem
      self-compassion
      hopeful and optimistic
      recover from life-threatening diseases effectively and quickly
       have high Morale
      Strong interpersonal communication on the other hand less forgiving people have
      Feelings of Inferiority
      Always self-blame and self-criticism which effect their health and wellbeing
      Hostility

Forgive Yourself  by Forgiving Others and Move on,  Universe will Deal with them for their Actions

References

Al‐Mabuk, R. H., Enright, R. D., & Cardis, P. A. (1995). Forgiveness education with parentally love‐deprived late adolescents. Journal of Moral Education, 24(4), 427-444. https://doi.org/10.1080/030572-49502.4040.5.

Hebl, J., & Enright, R. D. (1993). Forgiveness as a psychotherapeutic goal with elderly females. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training, 30(4), 658. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-3204.30.4.

Thompson, L. Y., Snyder, C. R., Hoffman, L., Michael, S. T., Rasmussen, H. N., Billings, L. S., ... & Roberts, D. E. (2005). Dispositional forgiveness of self, others, and situations. Journal of personality, 73(2), 313-360.   https://doi.org/10.1111/j.14676494.2005.00311.x.