What Comes After Forgiveness: Benefits of Forgiveness

Forgiveness offers significant mental and physical health benefits and helps you move forward in your life. Releasing the chains of resentment and anger can improve relationships with yourself and others. The benefits of forgiveness can be long-lasting and encompass the entire person. Forgiveness has significant benefits for those who have experienced complex, dysfunctional, and abusive experiences, as well as ordinary hurts and harms.

What is Forgiveness?

Forgiveness is the intentional, voluntary process of releasing deep-seated anger, resentment, and vengeance toward someone who has harmed you, regardless of whether they deserve it. It is an internal, emotional, and cognitive shift that promotes personal well-being, mental health, and physical health, such as lower blood pressure and reduced stress.

Ultimately, you make the choice to forgive and in that process your emotions towards the other person changes.

Stability of Forgiveness

Forgiveness is often not a one-time thing. You may be triggered and have to go through the process again. It won’t take as long as it did previously, but you do need to make the decision and go through the emotional process again.

What Comes After Forgiveness?

Forgiveness can be separate from the other person, from reconciliation, or from an acceptance of an altered relationship.

Separation with No Blame, Hate, or Resentment

Forgiveness is a unilateral action. You can forgive someone and never have anything to do with them again. You may move on and have emotionally made peace with what happened. The resentment, anger, blame and hate are no longer part of the equation.

With the forgiveness comes healing and freedom from being tied to the past hurt and what the person did to you.

Reconciliation

You can have reconciliation with or without forgiveness. Reconciliation requires a mutual effort to build trust and strengthen the relationship between the two people. If the effort is one-sided, it is not reconciliation but submission or something else. Just because someone has reconciled with someone doesn’t mean they have forgiven them.

Forgiveness with reconciliation doesn’t mean the relationship has returned to the way it was before. It may include lessons learned from the pain and adjustments to the relationship that result from those lessons. You may forgive someone but not trust them the way you did before. Your new mindset towards the person may include accepting things you don’t like about them and understanding why you don’t trust them with certain things. You may establish boundaries so the same situation does not happen again, and you can focus on a healthier relationship. Forgiveness with reconciliation often involves compassion and empathy for the other person, and understanding why things might have happened.

Acceptance of an Altered Relationship

You may forgive the person but realize that they are incapable or unwilling to reconcile. Often, in this situation, you accept the person as they are and adjust your relationship with them so they don’t hurt you as they did before. This might include boundaries and accepting a more superficial relationship instead of yearning for a deeper connection they can’t provide.

Other Benefits of Forgiveness

Physical Health Benefits of Forgiveness

When you release the resentment and anger towards the other person through forgiveness, there can be multiple physical health benefits. Studies on forgiveness have shown associations with lower heart rate and blood pressure, reduced pain, improved cholesterol levels and gastrointestinal health, better immune and sexual function, improved sleep, and a lower risk of heart attacks.

In the brain, research has shown that forgiveness can trigger the shutdown of the pain network in the anterior insula, reducing the emotional pain of grievances and curbing revenge cravings. Forgiveness can have a calming effect on the nervous system and help to normalize the stress response.

Mental and Emotional Health Benefits of Forgiveness

The process of forgiveness can produce many mental and emotional health benefits. As you release the resentment and anger that can cause stress and emotional instability, you can find yourself in a much healthier place.

Research on forgiveness is associated with reductions in toxic anger and stress, decreased anxiety and depression, reduced substance abuse, emotional stability, and higher life satisfaction.

Forgiveness can help to shift you out of “victim mode” and free you from the pain of past mistakes. Forgiveness can also help to reduce rumination.

Spiritual Health Benefits of Forgiveness

Resentment and anger can prevent you from connecting fully with various spiritual experiences. Forgiveness has a prominent place in many religions and can help you to connect more deeply with your spirituality.

Interpersonal Benefits of Forgiveness

Releasing resentment and anger from one relationship can benefit your other relationships. Studies have shown that forgiveness fosters better communication, reduces hostility in relationships, and allows for greater empathy and connection with others.

Intrapersonal Benefits of Forgiveness

Forgiveness also brings benefits in your relationship with yourself. Releasing the resentment and anger through forgiveness can provide a sense of peace, increased self-esteem, and resilience. Many find a sense of power and control in breaking free of the chains of the past. Forgiveness can restore a sense of agency and purpose.

Conclusion

There are many benefits to forgiveness and releasing resentment and anger. They can affect you holistically and benefit many areas of your life.