Forgiveness: a ‘whole-body experience’

The way Everett Worthington, Ph.D., talks about forgiveness, it sounds more like a state of being than an act.

“Forgiveness is a whole-body experience,” says Worthington, an emeritus professor in VCU’s Department of Psychology in the College of Humanities and Sciences and the author of 16 books and more than 250 articles on forgiveness. “There are all these collateral benefits to people. They also get better in terms of depression and anxiety. They report more flourishing. They report better well-being and forbearance. People sleep better when they forgive. 

“As a [public health intervention], forgiveness is not really stigmatized [like other mental health treatments can be]. It’s a secular program and has been found to be acceptable to — and about equally effective with — people of all major religions and people embracing no religion.”

For these reasons, Worthington sees forgiveness as a practice that can help ease the current mental health crisis. In America, the crisis is characterized by pervasive anxiety, depression and loneliness, which experts attribute, largely, to social media- and screen-induced isolation, the pall of the pandemic, insufficient mental health resources and insufficient access to those resources.

“It’s going to get worse because the rise in people wanting mental health services is increasing much faster than we can train professionals to meet that need,” Worthington says. It takes about four years for an aspiring therapist to get their license. “Not only is there a gap, but that gap is growing, and it’s going to grow for a long time.”

The KFF, the health research nonprofit formerly known as the Kaiser Family Foundation, estimates that only 27.3% of America’s mental health needs are being met, and the American Psychology Association projects that by 2037, the U.S. will be short about 80,000 mental health professionals.

A 2022 KFF survey found the main barriers to care are cost (80% of respondents) and the shame of seeking help (60%), although that’s less of an issue in the U.S., where therapy has been more mainstreamed.

Enter forgiveness — which is not to be conflated with reconciliation. That requires two people. Forgiveness is something people can do on their own and costs nothing, except a little effort. In 1998, Worthington debuted the final version of his REACH model of forgiveness. The name is an acronym containing the program’s instructions.
R is for recall the hurt; E is for empathize; A is for seeing forgiveness as an altruistic gift; C is for commitment to forgiving (the plan recommends writing it down for permanence); and H is for holding on once you’ve committed.

To facilitate all this, the REACH method comes with a workbook that, according to a 2024 study co-conducted by Worthington, not only helps people forgive but also offers key supplementary benefits: reduced anxiety and depression symptoms.

The workbook, developed in 2019, takes about 3 1/3  hours to finish, is available in several languages and free to download at DiscoverForgiveness.org. (A 2013 iteration takes seven hours.)

The state of what Worthington calls “unforgiveness” creates high resting levels of cortisol, a hormone produced in the adrenal glands that, among other things, regulates stress and helps us deal with threats. It’s good in short bursts, but over time, not so much. That’s when it festers physiologically.

“When people get offended and they can’t turn it loose, they are often ruminating about this,” Worthington says. “They’re just playing it over and over and over, just keeping it fresh, so it’s a new hurt every time. Rumination is what I think of as the bad boy of mental health. It’s implicated in anger disorders, depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorders.”

Grudge-induced stress can undercut the immune system, increase heart rate and blood pressure, make you sweat when you don’t want to, and can even shrink your hippocampus by as much as 25%. That’s the part of your brain responsible for long-term memory.

Forgiveness, though, isn’t a panacea. It’s a tool to help aim people’s minds in a healthier direction, where it’s a little easier to stay cool and just … let it go.

“If you make a habit of forgiving,” Worthington says, “it tends to be more: ‘This is what I do. I don’t have to think about this. I don’t have to debate whether I’m going to forgive and struggle with the transgression. I know how to do this. I’ve done this, this many times.’”