Forgiveness: A Scholarly Examination in Research Paper

These researchers examined the notion of forgiveness in formal therapy in the article entitled, "Positive Responses to Benefit and Harm: Bringing Forgiveness and Gratitude into Cognitive Psychotherapy." I found this article particularly compelling because it demonstrated how scientists and shrinks were turning with more attention to the powerful process of forgiveness and using it in clinical settings and encouraging their patients to use it. For example, "Forgiveness and gratitude represent positive psychological responses to interpersonal harms and benefits that individuals have experienced. In the present article we first provide a brief review of the research that has shown forgiveness and gratitude to be related to various measures of physical and psychological well-being" (Bono et al., 2006). I found it interesting, as forgiveness is something that I mostly view as coming from a strictly religious place. Rather, after reading this article, I see that forgiveness comes from a place of needing to complete personal growth and to essentially fight for one's own emotional health. Meaning, this article demonstrated how in many ways, forgiveness is a move one makes which fights for one's own emotional health.

In fact, a comparable study which I read boasted similar results. This study, administered by Worthington and Scherer found that forgiveness was something which could boost one's emotional and with it, physical health. For instance, the researchers concluded that, "Experimental evidence suggests that when people are transgressed against interpersonally, they often react by experiencing unforgiveness. Unforgiveness is conceptualized as a stress reaction. Forgiveness is one (of many) ways people reduce unforgiveness. Forgiveness is conceptualized as an emotional juxtaposition of positive emotions (i.e., empathy, sympathy, compassion, or love) against the negative emotions of unforgiveness. Forgiveness can thus be used as an emotion-focused coping strategy to reduce a stressful reaction to a transgression. Direct empirical research suggests that forgiveness is related to health outcomes and to mediating physiological processes in such a way…" (Worthington & Scherer, 2007).What I found so particularly interesting about this study were all the connections that the researchers made between forgiveness and positive health outcomes. They are able to lucidly explain how forgiveness is connected to a stress-relieving reaction in the body, which one finds positive and health-affirming. In fact, there are suggestions that this could prevent disease and increase people's lifespan. These are all compelling reasons for why I should forgive my father, at least in my own way.

Finally a fascinating overall study examined people who have difficulty forgiving God, in a study entitled, "When God Disappoints: Difficulty Forgiving God" by Exline and colleagues. This study looks at forgiveness and how it fits into the bigger picture of when people can't forgive God -- for giving them the parents they have, for allowing tragedies like 9/11 and the Holocaust to happen, or for making them handicapped or giving them cancer. This is a very specific type of inability to forgive, and the researchers found that this tendency in people is a general predictor of overall negative emotion (Exline et al., 1999).

Thus, I found the perusal of all these different studies fascinating, and I'm now aware of how I can forgive my father without engaging in a relationship with him and exposing myself to more hurt.

References

Bono, G., & McCullough, M. (2006). Positive Responses to Benefit and Harm: Bringing Forgiveness and Gratitude Into Cognitive Psychotherapy. Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy,, 147-158.

Exline, J., Yali, a., & Lobel, M. (1999). When God Disappoints. Journal of Health Psychology, 365-379.

Fitzgibbons, R., Enright, R., & O'Brien, T. (2004). Learning to Forgive. American School Board Journal, 1-5.

McCullough, M., Worthington, E., & Rachal, K. (1997). Interpersonal Forgiving in Close Relationships. Journal of fersonality and Social Psychology, 321-336.

Worthington, E., & Scherera, M. (2004). Forgiveness is an emotion-focused coping strategy that….....