{"id":270882,"date":"2026-01-29T22:45:21","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T22:45:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/270882\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T22:45:21","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T22:45:21","slug":"what-we-get-wrong-about-forgiveness-a-counseling-professor-unpacks-the-difference-between-letting-go-and-making-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/270882\/","title":{"rendered":"What we get wrong about forgiveness \u2013 a counseling professor unpacks the difference between letting go and making up"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two in five Americans have fought with a family member about politics<\/a>, according to a 2024 study by the American Psychiatric Association. One in five have become estranged over controversial issues, and the same percentage has \u201cblocked a family member on social media or skipped a family event\u201d due to disagreements.<\/p>\n

Difficulty working through conflict with those close to us can cause irreparable harm to families and relationships. What\u2019s more, inability to heal these relationships can be detrimental to physical and emotional well-being<\/a>, and even longevity.<\/p>\n

Healing relationships often involves forgiveness \u2013 and sometimes we have the ability to truly reconcile. But as a professor<\/a> and licensed professional counselor who researches forgiveness, I believe the process is often misunderstood.<\/p>\n

In my 2021 book, \u201cPracticing Forgiveness: A Path Toward Healing<\/a>,\u201d I talk about how we often feel pressure to forgive and that forgiveness can feel like a moral mandate. Consider 18th-century poet Alexander Pope\u2019s famous phrase<\/a>: \u201cTo err is human; to forgive, divine\u201d \u2013 as though doing so makes us better people. The reality is that reconciling a relationship is not just difficult, but sometimes inadvisable or dangerous, especially in cases involving harm or trauma.<\/p>\n

I often remind people that forgiveness does not have to mean a reconciliation. At its core, forgiveness is internal: a way of laying down ill will and our emotional burden, so we can heal. It should be seen as a separate process from reconciliation, and deciding whether to renegotiate a relationship.<\/p>\n

But either form of forgiveness is difficult \u2013 and here may be some insights as to why:<\/p>\n

Forgiveness, karma and revenge<\/p>\n

In 2025, I conducted a study<\/a> with my colleagues Alex Hodges<\/a> and Jason Vannest<\/a> to explore emotions people may experience around forgiveness, and how those emotions differ from when they experience karma or revenge. <\/p>\n

We defined forgiveness as relinquishing feelings of ill will toward someone who engaged in a harmful action or behavior toward you. \u201cKarma\u201d refers to a situation where someone who wronged you got what they deserved without any action from you. \u201cRevenge,\u201d on the other hand, happens when you retaliate.<\/p>\n

First, we prompted participants to share memories of three events related to offering forgiveness, witnessing karma and taking revenge. After sharing each event, they completed a questionnaire indicating what emotions they experienced as they retold their story.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

Revenge can feel easier than forgiveness, which often brings sadness or anxiety.
\n nattul\/iStock via Getty Images Plus<\/a><\/p>\n

We found that most people say they aspire to forgive the person who hurt them. To be specific, participants were about 1.5 times more likely to desire forgiveness<\/a> than karma or revenge.<\/p>\n

Most admitted, though, that karma made them happier than offering forgiveness.<\/p>\n

Working toward forgiveness tended to make people sad and anxious. In fact, participants were about 1.5 times more likely to experience sadness during forgiveness than during karma or revenge. Pursuing forgiveness was more stressful, and harder work, because it forces people to confront feelings that may often be perceived as negative, such as stress, anger or sadness.<\/p>\n

Two different processes<\/p>\n

Forgiveness is also confusing, thanks to the way it is typically conflated with reconciliation.<\/p>\n

Forgiveness researchers tie reconciliation to \u201cinterpersonal forgiveness,\u201d in which the relationship is renegotiated or even healed. However, at times, reconciliation should not occur \u2013 perhaps due to a toxic or unsafe relationship. Other times, it simply cannot occur, such as when the offender has died, or is a stranger.<\/p>\n

But not all forgiveness depends on whether a broken relationship has been repaired. Even when reconciliation is impossible, we can still relinquish feelings of ill-will toward an offender<\/a>, engaging in \u201cintrapersonal forgiveness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not all forgiveness has to involve renegotiating a relationship with the person who hurt you.<\/p>\n

I used to practice counseling in a hospital\u2019s adolescent unit, in which all the teens I worked with were considered a danger to themselves or others. Many of them had suffered abuse. When I pictured what \u201csuccess\u201d could look like for them, I hoped that, in adulthood, my clients would not be focused on their past trauma \u2013 that they could experience safety, health, belonging and peace.<\/p>\n

Most often, such an outcome was not dependent upon reconciling with the offender. In fact, reconciliation was often ill-advised, especially if offenders had not expressed remorse or commitment to any type of meaningful change. Even if they had, there are times when the victim chooses not to renegotiate the relationship, especially when working through trauma.<\/p>\n

Still, working toward intrapersonal forgiveness could help some of these young people begin each day without the burden of trauma, anger and fear. In effect, the client could say, \u201cWhat I wanted from this person I did not get, and I no longer expect it.\u201d Removing expectations from people by identifying that we are not likely to get what we want can ease the burden of past transgressions. Eventually, you decide whether to continue to expend the emotional energy it takes to stay angry with someone. <\/p>\n

Relinquishing feelings of ill will toward someone who has caused you harm can be difficult. It may require patience, time and hard work. When we recognize that we are not going to get what we wanted from someone \u2013 trust, safety, love \u2013 it can feel a lot like grief. Someone may pass through the same stages<\/a>, including denial, anger, bargaining and depression, before they can accept and forgive within themselves, without the burden of reconciliation.<\/p>\n

Taking stock<\/p>\n

With this in mind, I offer four steps to evaluate where you are on your forgiveness journey. A simple tool I developed, the Forgiveness Reconciliation Inventory<\/a>, looks at each of these steps in more depth.<\/p>\n

Talk to someone. You can talk to a friend, mentor, counselor, grandma \u2013 someone you trust. Talking makes the unmentionable mentionable. It can reduce pain and help you gain perspective on the person or event that left you hurt. <\/p>\n

Examine if reconciliation is beneficial. Sometimes there are benefits to reconciliation. Broken relationships can be healed, and even strengthened. This is especially more likely when the offender expresses remorse and changes behavior \u2013 something the victim has no control over.<\/p>\n

In some cases, however, there are no benefits, or the benefits are outweighed by the offender\u2019s lack of remorse and change. In this case, you might have to come to terms with processing an emotional \u2013 or even tangible \u2013 debt that will not be repaid.<\/p>\n

Consider your feelings toward the offender, the benefits and consequences of reconciliation, and whether they\u2019ve shown any remorse and change. If you want to forgive them, determine whether it will be interpersonal \u2013 talking to them and trying to renegotiate the relationship \u2013 or intrapersonal, in which you reconcile your feelings and expectations within yourself.<\/p>\n

Either way, forgiveness comes when we relinquish feelings of ill will toward another.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two in five Americans have fought with a family member about politics, according to a 2024 study by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":270883,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[103,61,60,410,411],"class_list":{"0":"post-270882","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-mental-health","12":"tag-mentalhealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}