Forgiveness Is Good Medicine

Research reveals that pardoning others can heal you emotionally — and physically

- Lia Grainger

FOR WEEKS, KARSTEN Mathiasen had been consumed by rage. Several months earlier the Danish circus director’s wife had left him to live with another man. Overwhelmed with hatred for his wife’s new lover, the 40-year-old lay awake at night, a knot of pain growing in his stomach, angry thoughts swirling. He began drinking in the evenings to get to sleep.

Eventually, it was the concern of his two young children that persuaded Mathiasen he should meet this man towards whom he felt so much anger.

When the two met at a Copenhagen coffee shop, Mathiasen knew he would forgive his wife’s new partner. Instead of one cup of coffee, the two men had many, talking for hours.

As Mathiasen headed home, he was amazed to discover that his anger and sadness were gone. But more than that, he felt physically good—for the first time in months. He slept like a baby that night and awoke with a clear mind and relaxed body.

“Forgiveness was a great gift I gave myself,” says Mathiasen.

We often think of forgiveness as something we do for the sake of someone else, but new research shows that’s not the whole story.

“When people engage in forgiveness, it changes their physiology,” says Dr. Robert Enright. As the founder of the International Forgiveness Institute and the author of The Forgiving Life and 8 Keys to Forgiveness, Enright has been researching the power of forgiveness for three decades. “Forgiveness helps you get rid of what we call toxic anger,” he says. “The type that can literally kill a person.”

In a study published in the journal Psychology and Health, Enright and his team examined the effects of forgiveness on heart health in cardiac patients. They found that those subjects who had engaged in forgiveness experienced significantly improved cardiac blood flow, even four months after the forgiving had taken place.