Forgiving and Reconciling: Bridges to Wholeness and Hope
The Psychology of Forgiveness: Everett Worthington (Book Review)
I'd seen references to Everett Worthington in a previous book or two, and was intrigued to learn a bit more about him and his work.1 I feel like I have read and spent enough time on the theology of forgiveness, but I also wanted to explore the psychology of forgiveness. Particularly the question of how do you practically work on emotional forgiveness - what does it mean to mentally stop nurturing negative feelings and attitudes, to stop reliving pain, and to nurture positive attitudes and emotions? Are there strategies and techniques to do this on a mental level? How can I root out bitterness and resentment so they have no hold in my heart.
So, I looked into Worthington's work. Worthington is a psychologist and currently a Professor Emeritus of Psychology, who has done extensive research particularly in forgiveness. He is also himself a Christian.
I think no-one would be surprised to learn that there are mental and physical health symptoms related to unforgiveness, and thus health benefits to forgiving. I'm not sure that you should necessarily try to convince people to forgive with the slogan, "forgive! It's better for your health", but the relation of the mental, psychological, and physical is not at all surprising.
Worthington developed, with his team, a 5-step 'program' for forgiveness, REACH (Recall the hurt, Empathize with the offender, give an Altruistic offer of forgiveness, Commit to forgiveness, Hold onto forgiveness), which he has written into various materials, including DIY workbooks, courses, and professional materials. I read through one of the workbooks, which they deployed in a global study in Hong Kong, South Africa, Colombia, Indonesia, and Ukraine (dealing particularly with communities impacted by the 2014 annexation of Crimea; the study in Ukraine was cut short by the outbreak of the current war there).
There are standardised metrics for 'measuring' forgiveness, which sounds a bit weird, but I suppose it makes sense. That is certainly a subfield of psychology, to measure these kinds of things quantitatively.2 So, all the workbooks that Worthington is willing to make publicly available are those that have been through a research trial and have published results. Worthington also conducted research on whether self-interested or empathic reasons for forgiveness yield "more forgiveness", and found that while in the short term it was roughly equal, more time spent on forgiving that was motivated by empathy, resulted in greater forgiveness.3
In 1996, Worthington's mother was murdered at the age of 76.4 Everett had just submitted for publication his first book on forgiveness. I cannot imagine the anguish that must have caused him. Her body was discovered by Everett's brother, who committed suicide five years later. Everett took this very personally, that as a trained clinical psychologist he hadn't been able to help his brother more. Although Everett didn't get into this field because of personal tragedy, it is his own work in helping others forgive that became part of his own journey to forgive his mother's killer(s).5
I try not to write about things without putting them into practice. So I can tell you that I've worked through one of the DIY workbooks myself. I’ve also read through what I think is probably one of Worthington’s ‘core’ books (he’s written a decent number), Forgiving and Reconciling: Bridges to Wholeness and Hope. The rest of this post primarily interacts with his book, including the basics of the REACH process.
Intro
Worthington opens his book by stating what this book is for. It’s primarily for people who want to forgive, and especially if they find it hard to do so. In it, he walks through the 5-step REACH process for forgiveness, as well as a 4-step reconciliation process. He spends time in the introductory chapters talking through why you should, or might want to, forgive, as well as what unforgiveness is (see below), and there is a chapter giving a theological framework.
Decisional and Emotional Forgiveness
Worthington begins by distinguishing between "decisional" forgiveness (the explicit choice to forgive) and "emotional" forgiveness (the internal work of shifting one's feelings and attitudes over time towards positive other-oriented emotions).
Decisional:
[in] decisional forgiveness, we agree to control our negative behavior (avoidance or revenge) toward the other person and restore our relationship to where it was before the transgression occurred.6
Emotional
Forgiveness is defined as the emotional juxtaposition of positive emotions (such as empathy, sympathy, compassion, agape love or even romantic love) against (1) the hot emotions of anger or fear that follow a perceived hurt or offense or (2) the unforgiveness that follows ruminating about the transgression, which also changes our motives from negative to neutral or even positive.7
This book focuses on emotional forgiveness. In many ways I feel like this distinction answers something Keller frequently says, that “forgiveness is often granted before it’s felt”; but how do you learn to feel forgiveness? Worthington has a process for it.
Unforgiveness
I think I had been inclined to think of unforgiveness just as a ‘state’, and a default. If you haven't forgiven, then you are currently unforgiving. Worthington reoriented me with a psychological definition of it:
Fear and anger, immediate responses, are not unforgiveness. Unforgiveness must ripen through rumination. Only after mentally replaying the transgression, the motives of the transgressor and the consequences of the transgression do we become unforgiving. It takes time and reflection to develop unforgiveness.8
It’s a process, that takes time and reflection. And then you end up in a state of unforgiveness. He also writes that unforgiveness is an emotion, which he gives a technical definition to. Emotions are embodied experiences, whereas feelings are the labels we consciously give to those bodily experiences. We feel unforgiveness, which is itself a constellation of negative emotions experienced in the body.
So, what’s Worthington’s 5-step process for developing emotional forgiveness?9
RECALL the hurt
Step one involves recalling the offence. A deliberate mental recollection of what happened, with as much objectivity as you can muster. Furthermore, doing so imaginatively, and trying to see it from the perpetrator's viewpoint, in order to build empathy. Worthington describes himself doing this for his mother's murder, and frankly if he can do it, you can too. The aims here are to identify the emotions you have (whatever they are), and then to begin to work on experiencing new emotions, especially compassion.
EMPATHIZE
There are three levels of empathy:
At the shallowest level of empathy, you understand the point of view of the other person. At a middle level of empathy, you identify emotionally with the other person. You feel with and think with the other person. At the deepest level of empathy, you feel compassion for the other person as well as emotional identification. This is called compassionate empathy.10
It’s the last level of empathy, compassionate empathy, that really enables forgiveness. To identify with the other person and recognise that you and they are “the same under the skin”. I think this instantiates what Volf calls recognising the perpetrator as a member of humanity, and yourself as a fellow sinner. The research of Worthington and others shows that if you don’t achieve some empathy for the person who has hurt you, you are very unlikely to forgive. Alongside empathy comes cultivating sympathy, compassion, and agape love for them.
ALTRUISTIC Gift of Forgiveness
And yet compassionate empathy alone is not sufficient. Generally we need both humility and gratitude. Humility, in this context comes from recognising our own need for forgiveness, before God and others, past and present. We too are in need of this gift, because we are not so different from the one who hurt us, certainly we are not superior. Gratitude, especially as we reflect on how we have felt when we’ve been forgiven by others, helps to motivate us to give the gift of forgiveness altruistically. This reflection on our experience of receiving forgiveness, helps enable giving forgiveness to others.
COMMIT Publicly to forgive
This section opened with circumstances and situations that make us doubt whether we have truly forgiven. Most of these have to do with things that bring the painful memory of the hurt to mind. Worthington makes the point clearly that hurt and pain, and remembering the hurt and pain, is not itself unforgiveness. It’s the second-order loop of emotions that we are dealing with.
forgiveness does not replace hurtful memories; it replaces the negative emotions attached to those memories.11
And
When we forgive, we can’t stop the memory of the hurt with its attached immediate fear and anger. We shouldn’t want to stop them. They keep us from recklessly trusting where trust might not be deserved. What forgiveness has replaced is the second set of emotions that formed due to our rumination. We are freed to experience empathy, love, sympathy and compassion instead of being bound to hatred and bitterness.12
I found this quite liberating. To accept that there will still be hurt and pain, and that will be normal, but to work on replacing the subsequent emotions. What follows, then, in this chapter are various ways to externally declare your forgiveness and symbolise it, and make it more ‘solid’ and ‘tangible’ so that you can remind yourself of it when you do doubt it.
HOLD on to forgiveness
Simply knowing that hurt does not equal unforgiveness is important. To avoid being re-trapped in the Unforgiveness Loop, though, you must be active.13
How to hold on to forgiveness for the long-term? This chapter talks through both some ways to help and sustain you retain the emotional forgiveness won through the previous four steps, as well as twelve ways and means of becoming a more forgiving person in general, as a character trait, over time.
Reconciliation
The last four chapters deal with how to go about reconciliation - when the other party is present and available for re-establishing relationship. It’s a gap that needs to be bridged, not leaped, and Worthington’s model has four planks: Decide, Discuss, Detoxify, Devotion.
So he begins with a fairly far-ranging discussion of why two parties might decide to attempt reconciliation or not. This includes when it’s impossible, unwise, undesirable, as well factors that both encourage and discourage reconciliation. It obviously takes both parties actively deciding to reconcile to begin; if one party won’t come to the table, no reconciliation is possible. Worthington also talks through how to tackle psychological barriers to reconciliation, both for the more wounding and the more wounded side.
The Discuss chapter also has a lot of helpful material, beginning with pre-discussion about how to approach a conversation with soft attitudes, and then moving through some advice about how to best navigate a discussion of the transgression from each side of the equation. Again there is a strong emphasis on developing empathy and compassion needed to forgive, to confess effectively, and to make reconciliation possible.
Detoxification deals with ‘removing the poison’ from the relationship by altering one’s own behaviour. Worthington begins with the frank acknowledgement of our need for God and his forgiveness and change:
The toxic waste in our own soul can be far greater than what others can see. Yet—and this is the hard news—it is that unseen toxicity that needs to be cleaned out before we can detoxify our relationships. Before I can begin to detoxify the unforgiveness within, I must be willing to admit that I am unforgiving.14
He then talks through divine forgiveness, and feeling that you are forgiven as well, before moving on to the steps needed to detoxify the relationship. Here he draws upon the work of Gottman15 and applies it to relationships generally, and the need to reverse four steps of relationship breakdown. Lastly, there is a need to develop a pro-active approach to future failures of trustworthiness, lest they dredge up the whole past and sink the whole endeavour.
Devotion is the final section, dealing with cementing the gains from the previous steps and cultivating a renewed relationship that values the other person. There were one or two things in here that I found surprisingly helpfully pertinent.
Conclusion
Reading and summarising books is easy work. Doing the emotional labour of rewiring your emotions is hard work, but worthy work. And it gets easier with better tools for the job.
Post-script:
One of the things I learnt about Worthington and his research and career that has impressed me so much is that he has spent much of his time and energy not advancing his career per se, but providing free resources for as many people to benefit as possible. He puts it like this:
Giving psychology away (see Miller, 1969) to those who need more freedom in their lives from grudges and revenge to be able to bless others (therefore contributing to a more peace-filled world).16
Isn’t that blessed? It’s why REACH is a psychoeducation intervention, not primarily a tool for psychotherapy. It’s why he’s worked to create multiple versions of it that work in different contexts, including cross-culturally. That’s seeing your career as generous service for God.
Curiously no mention in Keller’s book. Though I think you see some of the outlines of the decisional/emotional distinction there regardless. I think we can do a double breakdown: there’s an internal forgiveness and an external forgiveness. External forgiveness has to do with actually reconciling the relationship, internal forgiveness has to do with change in the forgiver. But within internal forgiveness, I think we can speak of decisional and emotional forgiveness.
Stacey E. McElroy-Heltzel, Don E. Davis, Ana C. Ordaz, Brandon J. Griffin, and Joshua N. Hook, ‘Measuring Forgiveness and Self-Forgiveness: Descriptions, Psychometric Support, and Recommendations for Research and Practice’, in Handbook of Forgiveness Everett L. Worthington Jr. and Nathaniel G. Wade (eds.), Routledge 2020.
I don’t quite know how they measure forgiveness, but they generally refer to it in units of Standard Deviation. I suppose that’s meaningful, though I would be intrigued if there were some “metric unit of forgiveness”! Self-interested vs empathetic forgiveness focused on appealing to someone to forgive based on (a) its mental and physical benefits to themselves, vs (b) the appeal that giving the gift of forgiveness was beneficial to the perpetrator. (Forgiveness and Reconciling, p26)
He tells this personal story throughout the book Forgiveness and Reconciling.
My understanding is the perpetrators have never been found.
p.41
pp. 41-42
pp. 31-32.
A more recent version of the REACH steps slightly rejigs the acronym: Recall the Hurt; Emotionally replace negative emotions with empathy, sympathy, compassion or love; Altruistic gift of forgiveness; Commitment to the forgiveness experienced; Hold onto forgiveness when doubt occurs.
p. 96.
p. 133.
p. 134.
p. 146.
p. 223.
John Gottman, who has done some very good research (and practical) work on marriages and conflict over many, many years. I’ve found his stuff very enlightening.
Everett Worthington, ‘An Update of the REACH Forgiveness Model’ in Handbook of Forgiveness Everett L. Worthington Jr. and Nathaniel G. Wade (eds.), Routledge 2020. p.279