Unforgiveness: It Affects Your Mental Health

Three words: I forgive you. Mechanically speaking, they’re three words so easy to say. Most certainly they’re nowhere near in complexity to utter as “super-cali-frag-i-listic-ex-pe-ali-docious.”

On the contrary – phonetically-speaking, I forgive you rolls off the tongue just as smoothly as chocolate ice cream, black and white, or see you later.

Even more, it doesn’t require you to roll the “r” – something that I’ve personally never been able to master, no matter how many times I’ve tried.

No, the simple act of pronouncing those three words, I forgive you, typically isn’t a challenge. Where they do, however, have the potential to pose a challenge is when it comes to the actual decision itself.

For instance: Will I choose to say, “I forgive you?” Will I forgo my right to hold a grudge even in spite of my emotional pain? That, my reader, is precisely when saying I forgive you becomes even more difficult than a lengthy tongue-twister spoken five times in a row as fast as possible. And yet, the rewards – freedom, health, blessings – that can come from doing so are nothing short of incredible.

People often think that the act of forgiving someone is more for the benefit of the offender than it is for the one who was offended. While it’s true that being forgiven is advantageous for the person held in contempt – relief from the angst of a grudge being held against them – ironically, the one who experiences the greatest blessing from those three words, I forgive you, is the one who delivers them.

Unforgiveness, believe it or not, wreaks havoc on a person’s life. When we choose not to pardon someone for their offense against us, whether they meant to hurt us or not, we have simultaneously chosen to hold onto anger and bitterness. When we choose to hold onto anger and bitterness, we are simultaneously choosing to negatively impact our health – mental, physical, and spiritual health.

To begin, God tells us in the Bible to forgive one another and to let go of anger. We see this in Ephesians 4:32, “And be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ has forgiven you.” It’s important to remember that whenever the Lord tells us to do something, it’s intended for our benefit.

God either wants to protect us or bless us in the directives He’s given us. Another Scripture where we’re instructed to forgive is Matthew 6:14-15, “For if you forgive men for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.”

It’s serious business to not have the Father’s forgiveness for our transgressions. Often people do not realize this, but when we are not washed clean by the blood of Jesus for our wrongdoings – something that can only be accomplished through the process of receiving the Father’s forgiveness – we’ve opened the door to spiritual darkness, a.k.a. the enemy. And what does the enemy come to do?

According to John 10:10, there are only three things he comes to do: steal, kill, destroy. With this in mind, we come back full circle to why I forgive you are words that are so important to say when someone has offended us. Those three words block the enemy’s assignment to steal from us, destroy us, and ultimately kill us.

Farfetched? I think not. Consider this – doesn’t anxiety rob us of peace and the ability to do things? Doesn’t depression steal our joy and motivation? Doesn’t disease destroy our bodies and rob our strength? In order for God to give us the full and abundant life that He also speaks about in John 10:10, it’s essential that our mental, physical, and spiritual health are protected.

I find the following piece of information quite interesting. Edward Hallowell, in his book Dare to Forgive (2004), asserts that the Greek root word of forgiveness means, “to set free.” He is referring to being set free as a slave is set free. When we apply that to what I just discussed – forgiveness as a means to protect us from the enemy – we realize that our choice to forgive actually sets us free from things such as sickness and compromised mental health.

If the above isn’t convincing enough that forgiveness can have a major impact on our health, consider the results of the following scientific research reported by Enright, R. 2011 and Luskin, F. 2002. They declare that a decrease in anger, anxiety, and depression as related to past betrayals are benefits associated with forgiveness. In addition, an increase in optimism and self-confidence were found to be tied in to forgiveness.

And yet, forgiving someone who hurt us can be extremely difficult for a variety of reasons. One reason is the idea that holding onto the pain and anger serves as an invisible shield of protection from further hurts by the offender. Another reason is the belief that the offender doesn’t deserve it, because whatever they did was too awful.

Yet again, unforgiveness can result from confusing the act of forgiving what was done for the act of forgetting what was done (when in reality they are two separate things). To forgive doesn’t mean we automatically forget or, in some cases, that we even should forget.

Working with a therapist can be helpful when you want to put forgiveness into practice but you’re having a difficult time doing so. A therapist can help you work through feelings of hurt and anger. A therapist can assist you in the process of replacing unforgiveness with healthier methods of assuring the offense isn’t repeated.

A therapist can even help you tap into some compassion towards the offender as you remember times when you yourself have been forgiven by others. Because unforgiveness typically ties in with matters of the heart and/or deep-seated emotional pain, it’s not uncommon to need someone by our side to assist us in the work. In other words, there is no judgment in reaching out for help when it comes to unforgiveness.

In closing, I leave you with the following Scripture, powerful food for thought:

Love prospers when a fault is forgiven, but dwelling on it separates close friends. — Proverbs 17:9