Forgiveness: Where Heaven and Hell Meet

• What does the research say about the health benefits of forgiveness?
• How do I forgive someone who has never apologized?

By Dr. Douglas Cowan, Psy.D., MFT

I’ve had clients physically leave my office when I said the word.

Not storm out angry — just quietly get up, gather their things, and leave. Because the word felt impossible. Because what had been done to them was real, and unforgettable, and had changed the shape of their life. And here I was suggesting forgiveness as if that were a reasonable thing to offer.

I’ve been a therapist for nearly forty years. I understand why people leave when they hear that word. I also know — from thousands of hours of practice and from one of the most robust bodies of research in clinical psychology — that forgiveness is the most powerful thing I can offer anyone sitting in that chair. Not because it’s easy. Because it’s the only way out of certain kinds of prison.

What’s Happening in the Brain

Unforgiveness is not just an emotional state. It is a physiological one.

When we hold resentment — when we replay the offense, rehearse the anger, stay in the posture of grievance — the body’s stress response stays activated. Cortisol, the primary stress hormone, remains elevated. The sympathetic nervous system stays on alert. Over time, this chronic stress state produces measurable damage: elevated blood pressure, suppressed immune function, increased inflammation, disrupted sleep, and heightened risk of cardiovascular disease.

Neuroscience research has shown that chronic resentment activates and maintains the brain’s threat-detection circuitry. The amygdala — the brain’s alarm center — treats the memory of the offense as an ongoing threat rather than a resolved past event. The person carrying unforgiveness is, in the brain’s experience, still in danger. The body responds accordingly.

Forgiveness interrupts this cycle. Studies measuring physiological responses to forgiveness interventions show reductions in heart rate, blood pressure, and cortisol levels. Brain imaging research indicates that forgiveness activates structures associated with reward, social connection, and positive affect — the systems that allow us to re-engage with life rather than remain locked in defensive posture. A 2025 study in Frontiers in Psychology found that forgiveness is one of the most significant predictors of mental health improvement in emerging adults navigating interpersonal conflict.

The Stanford Forgiveness Project and Everett Worthington’s research at Virginia Commonwealth University have produced consistent findings over decades: forgiveness interventions reduce anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress. A meta-analysis of fifty-four studies found that forgiveness interventions not only helped people forgive — they measurably improved their mental health outcomes.

Now You Understand Why

The first recorded act of true forgiveness in history dates back more than 3,800 years, in the story of Joseph. Sold into slavery by his brothers. Imprisoned on false charges. Forgotten by people he helped. And yet, when he finally had the power to exact revenge, he chose something else entirely. “You intended to harm me,” he told his brothers, “but God intended it for good.”

That is not naivety. That is one of the most sophisticated psychological moves a human being can make — reframing a story of victimization into a story of purpose, and releasing the bitterness that would have consumed everything that followed.

The reason unforgiveness is such an effective prison is precisely because the grievance is real. Nobody struggles to forgive things that didn’t actually hurt them. The things that require forgiveness are the things that cut deep — betrayal, abuse, abandonment, humiliation, injustice that was never acknowledged or corrected. The harder the thing, the more the unforgiveness feels justified. And it is justified, in a sense. The wrong was real.

But justified and healthy are not the same thing. Justified and free are not the same thing. You can be entirely right about what was done to you and still be destroying your health, your relationships, and your future by refusing to let it go.

Unforgiveness steals joy. It kills relationships. It destroys health. Not because of anything the person who hurt you is doing — they have likely moved on entirely — but because of what you are doing to yourself by staying in the posture of grievance.

What Wisdom Looks Like Here

There are two kinds of forgiveness, and confusing them is one of the main reasons people resist the whole idea.

The first kind is forgiveness after repentance. This is when the person who hurt you has genuinely acknowledged what they did, taken full responsibility, and changed their behavior. This kind of forgiveness can restore a relationship, rebuild a marriage, repair a family. It is genuine reconciliation, and it is a beautiful thing when both parties are willing and able to do the work.

The second kind — and the harder kind — is forgiveness without repentance. This is when the person who hurt you refuses to acknowledge it, or minimizes it, or has died, or has simply moved on. There is no apology coming. There is no acknowledgment. And yet the weight of what was done is still yours to carry.

This is where people get stuck. “Why should I forgive someone who never said they were sorry?” The answer is not for their sake. It is for yours.

Forgiveness without repentance is not the same as saying what happened was acceptable. It is not excusing the behavior, pretending the damage wasn’t real, or restoring the relationship. It is a decision — an act of will — to stop allowing what someone else did to continue to govern your life. It is cutting the bungee cord that keeps snapping you back into the past every time you try to move forward.

This kind of forgiveness often requires faith. It requires giving the offense to God — saying, in effect, “I cannot hold this anymore, and I refuse to let it hold me.” The apostle Paul put it plainly: “Get rid of all bitterness, rage, and anger… Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” (Ephesians 4:31–32)

This is not a platitude. It is a clinical instruction. The research and the Scripture point to the same place.

What To Do Starting Today

• Name what you’re carrying. You cannot release what you haven’t acknowledged. Be specific with yourself — not in a way that rehearses the grievance, but in a way that brings it into the light. What exactly happened? What did it cost you? What have you lost by staying in the posture of unforgiveness?

• Separate the offense from the offender. This is the hardest move and the most important one. The person who hurt you is not the thing they did. Forgiving them does not mean approving of what they did or resuming a relationship with someone who is harmful. It means releasing the person from the prison you’ve been holding them in — which, it turns out, is also the prison you’ve been in.

• Choose to forgive as an act of will, not a feeling. Forgiveness is not a feeling. It is a decision. The feeling of forgiveness often follows the decision, not the other way around. You may not feel forgiving at all when you make the choice — that is normal. Make the choice anyway. Feelings are indicators; they are not the decision-makers.

• Expect the anger to return. Forgiveness is rarely a single moment. It is more like a practice. The memory will surface again. The old anger may return. That doesn’t mean the forgiveness wasn’t real — it means you’re human. When it surfaces, make the choice again. Over time, the grip loosens.

• If the weight is very heavy, get help carrying it. Some things are too large to move alone. Forgiveness-based therapy, pastoral counseling, and structured forgiveness programs have solid research behind them. You don’t have to figure this out by yourself. A good clinician or pastor can walk alongside you through a process that is genuinely difficult and genuinely transformative.

Forgiveness is the hardest thing in the human experience. I have watched people do it. I have watched it change the entire trajectory of a life. I have watched marriages restored that had every reason not to be. I have watched people walk out of decades of bitterness into something that looked, finally, like peace.

It is not naive. It is not weak. It is the most courageous thing a person can do — and it is the most healing.

The door is open. Freedom is on the other side of it.

References

1. Worthington, E. L. (2006). Forgiveness and Reconciliation: Theory and Application. Routledge.
2. Enright, R. D., & Fitzgibbons, R. P. (2015). Forgiveness Therapy: An Empirical Guide for Resolving Anger and Restoring Hope. American Psychological Association.
3. Toussaint, L., et al. (2016). Forgiveness, stress, and health: A five-week dynamic parallel process study. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 50(5), 727–735.
4. Webb, J. R., et al. (2025). A path to better mental health among emerging adults: Forgiveness as a solution to interpersonal conflicts. Frontiers in Psychology, 15, 1477283.
5. Harris, A. H. S., & Thoresen, C. E. (2005). Forgiveness, unforgiveness, health, and disease. In E. L. Worthington (Ed.), Handbook of Forgiveness (pp. 321–334). Routledge.
6. Wade, N. G., et al. (2014). Efficacy of psychotherapeutic interventions to promote forgiveness: A meta-analysis. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 82(1), 154–170.