Forgiving is the kindest thing you can do—for yourself
If just hearing your evil old boss’s name triggers you or you lie in bed each night spinning out about a friend who stole your boyfriend back in high school, you know how hard it is to shake a grudge. Holding onto a grievance can even feel good, in a perverse way, like: I’ve been wronged!
But hanging onto the hurt is not doing your health any favors. A new study found that being the forgiving kind may be good for both your body and mind. To find out more about the study and the fascinating science of forgiveness, I reached out to two experts: study author Richard Cowden, PhD, research scientist with the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University, and Fred Luskin, PhD, director of the Stanford Forgiveness Projects and author of Forgive for Good.
Read on for the benefits of shedding grudges—and how to do it, even when it’s hard.
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How does forgiveness benefit us?
Practicing forgiveness can lead to greater well-being over time, according to the new study, published in the Nature Portfolio Journal (npj) Mental Health Research. “Our findings suggest that forgiveness may be one helpful ingredient in well-being,” says Cowden. “People who were more forgiving tended to do a little better across a range of outcomes about a year later.”
The researchers investigated “dispositional forgivingness”—as in, a tendency to forgive. Being high in it seems to give you an edge on many fronts, including psychological well-being, purpose in life, relationship satisfaction and hope.
Why is forgiveness key to well-being? “One way to think about it is that unresolved hurt can be emotionally taxing,” Cowden says, “and forgiveness, when it is safe and appropriate, may help loosen some of that burden.”
The benefits aren’t just for the natural-born forgivers. Earlier studies have shown that when people learn forgiveness skills, life gets better for them in a slew of ways. There are two big payoffs to these “forgiveness interventions”: They reduce some of the negative effects of stress hormones, and they free us up to live bigger lives.
“The biggest damage that unforgiveness does is from rumination or blame, which are highly stressful for the body,” he says. “Forgiveness dims them, so it reduces the general stress on the mind and body.”
It also increases your sense of efficacy. “The idea is: ‘If I can get over that crap life has dumped on me, I can be more brave and creative,’” Luskin notes.
Here are some of the ways forgiveness benefits our well-being:
It may reduce depression and anxiety symptoms
When folks are taught to practice forgiveness, their mental health improves. In a 2024 study in BMJ Public Health, people instructed to practice forgiveness using workbooks reported less anxiety and depression symptoms a few weeks later than those in the control group. Another study, which focused on parents who’d lost a child, found forgiveness interventions improved their mental health more than grief counseling.
In a study by Luskin from the early 2000s, Protestants and Catholics who had lost a family member in the violence in Northern Ireland were taught forgiveness training at Stanford and had a 40% decline in symptoms of depression.
It makes us more resilient
What happens in your brain when you get past a hurt? Brain imaging studies show its powerful and fast-acting effects: Letting go of an offense activates pathways and parts of the brain that improve resilience and social bonds, according to a 2020 study review in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews.
In other words, by forgiving them, you’re building your own buffer against life’s hardships.
It helps relationships
When one partner lets the other off the hook for something they’ve done, it benefits the marriage as a whole, research shows. “Forgiveness is one of those hidden qualities that is like WD-40 for the relationship,” Luskin says. “If you don’t learn some strategy or skill to love somebody even though they’re imperfect, the relationship will not last.”
Are some people more forgiving than others?
While anyone can learn to pardon others, it doesn’t come equally easy to everyone. “Narcissistic people have a hard time practicing forgiveness because it’s all about them, and they tend to lack empathy,” Luskin says. “And some folks have very reactive nervous systems that get turbocharged really quickly, so they find it harder to do.”
If you’re slow to forgive, does that mean it’s hopeless? No, stress the experts. “Forgiveness often unfolds gradually, rather than all at once,” Cowden notes. “It may help to think of it as a muscle that can be built with practice.”
How can you learn to be more forgiving?
The good news is that anyone can learn this vital skill. And make no mistake: It is a skill. “You can teach people to forgive, and they can practice and get better at it,” Luskin says.
To begin with, understand that the real reason we hold onto grudges is that we’re disappointed with how something turned out. As Luskin puts it, “forgiveness is about making peace with the world telling you ‘no.’”
He learned this teaching forgiveness workshops, where he’d hear similar stories that amounted to “I had this picture of how it was supposed to go, and then this other thing happened, and I couldn’t forgive that difference.”
For example, you thought your maid of honor would go the extra mile to make your wedding super special. But actually? She did the bare minimum—and even blew off a few important things. So you’re (rightly) disappointed, but your big feelings are not about your lazy bridesmaid; they’re about your dashed expectations. You need to fully grieve that and then take steps to move on.
So how do you forgive when you really (really) don’t want to?
People often imagine forgiveness as a two-person conversation in which you’re offering an olive branch. It can be that, but it’s usually more about making peace with the situation, for your own good. To do that, follow the four steps below, which Luskin uses in workshops he teaches.
Step 1: Calm yourself down
When someone wrongs you, you get triggered just thinking about what they did, hearing their name, even seeing their favorite dish on a menu. You need to counter that reaction, which is your body’s fight-or-flight response.
Slowly breathe in and out a few times, then picture someone you love. (Or you can use any quick meditation or mindfulness exercises that you find helpful.) This two-step process calms your system down in the moment. What’s more, doing it again and again can help you be less consumed by it the next time it happens.
Step 2: Repeat your mantra
Consciously think, Every life has its challenges. Or repeat to yourself, “You can’t always get what you want” or any other phrase that reminds you that this is life.
It’s a cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) tool to help your brain frame the situation and start to accept it. “These first two steps together form a pattern that literally puts your brain back online,” Luskin says.
Step 3: Remind yourself how lucky you are
A couple of times a day, take stock of your blessings. By noting everything that’s going right for you, “you are retraining your negativity bias to see your life more clearly,” Luskin says.
What is negativity bias? It’s that inborn survival skill that makes us hyper alert to all the ways life can harm us so we can (endlessly) prepare. While that’s quite helpful if a tornado is bearing down on your town, it’s just pointless self-punishment if you’re spinning about all the times your friend shows up late for drinks—or even something weightier, like how your in-laws constantly criticize your parenting.
To get in a gratitude groove and feel all-around happier, ask yourself questions like: What’s one way that somebody was kind to me today? What’s a simple thing I took for granted this morning?
You don’t have to mine for deep answers. Your response could be as basic as “My co-worker saved me a conference room chair” or “There was food in my fridge.” Doing it regularly makes you more forgiving, Luskin says, because you recognize that, big picture, your life is actually pretty great.
Step 4: Flip the script from victim to hero
The problem with dwelling on the hurt is that you give the other person power over you. Instead, think of it like a stone in your shoe on your way to do something amazing. Repeat after us: “Yeah, that person/behavior sucked, but I’m not letting that stop me from living a kick-butt life.”
Change the story you’re telling yourself to focus on the fact that you’re making the decision to forgive for your own good. When you do this, you go from victim to hero, which “frees you from the prison of that vulnerable victim, which only keeps people stuck,” Luskin says. It’s sort of like that old quote: Living well is the best revenge.
You forgave someone. Now what?
You don’t have to be best friends again—unless you want to. “Forgiveness and reconciliation are not the same thing,” Cowden says. “You may decide that trust needs to be rebuilt slowly, that the relationship should be more limited or even that distance is necessary.”
It’s your call, but whatever you decide, you can bet you’ll no longer be consumed with those draining hard feelings.
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Sources:
- Richard G. Cowden, PhD, research scientist with the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University and the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; email interview, March 25, 2026
- Fred Luskin, PhD, founder of the Stanford Forgiveness Projects and author of Forgive for Good; phone interview, March 24, 2025
- Nature: “Longitudinal associations of dispositional forgivingness with multidimensional well-being: a two-wave outcome-wide analysis in the Global Flourishing Study”
- Applied Research in Quality of Life: “Childhood Predictors of Dispositional Forgivingness in Adulthood: A Cross-National Analysis with 22 Countries”
- Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews: “Parsing the components of forgiveness: Psychological and neural mechanisms”
- Greater Good Science Center: “How Forgiveness Changes You and Your Brain”
- The Conversation: “Forgiveness isn’t always easy, but studies show it can help you flourish”
- BMJ Public Health: “International REACH forgiveness intervention: a multisite randomised controlled trial”
- Omega: “The Effectiveness of a Forgiveness Intervention on Mental Health in Bereaved Parents-A Pilot Study”
