Stop Drinking the Poison: The Science of Forgiveness, for Others and for Yourself

So let's start with some of the misconceptions around forgiveness, uh, mainly what forgiveness is, is not.

You know, forgiveness is not condoning.

You c- you could still say, you know, what they did or what you did was wrong.

It's also not forgetting.

You know, in fact, remembering may help protect you from being harmed again.

That's an interesting one because I know that a lot of...

Y- there's a common phrase, forgive and forget, but for this, we're distinguishing that, like, forgiveness is not the same as forgetting.

And forgiveness is not, uh, reconciliation.

You know, rec- reconciliation requires two people.

Forgiveness can happen entirely with one person.

Forgiveness is also not, uh, you know, doesn't just equal trust.

You know, trust is rebuilt through demonstrated behavior, and it's also not removing consequences, which is a really important aspect, I think, where someone can be forgiven and still be held accountable.

And we'll, we'll walk through a few examples of that today, actually.

But the, the APA specifically distinguishes forgiveness from reconciliation, excusing someone, merely accepting what happened or, or s- simply ceasing to feel angry.

I think the key point is forgiveness changes what we carry.

It doesn't change, you know, who we allow back in our lives, and that distinction may be one of the most useful things in this episode.

So I wanna introduce decisional versus emotional forgiveness.

As we prepared for this, this was one of the big ideas for me.

Worthington, that same psychologist, his, his work distinguishes the sort of two different processes.

The first one is decisional forgiveness.

That's saying, "I'm choosing not to retaliate.

I'm not going to pursue revenge.

I'm not gonna purposely harm that person.

I'm not gonna retaliate." And then there's emotional forgiveness.

That's over time, resentment, hostility, and vengeance begin to diminish in how we feel, and that can be replaced either by neutrality or empathy or compassion even, or other more positive emotions.