Scroll down for a transcription of this episode.
Discover how forgiveness reshapes the brain, eases the body, and helps us move forward with greater compassion and freedom.
Summary: Forgiveness isn’t about forgetting or excusing—it’s about releasing the grip of resentment so we can make room for peace. Research shows it also engages empathy, strengthens emotional regulation, and helps us reconnect with what truly matters. In this episode of The Science of Happiness, we look at how forgiveness transforms not just relationships, but our overall well-being.
How To Do This Practice:
- Acknowledge the hurt: Be honest about what happened and how it affected you—avoiding or denying the pain can keep it alive.
- Empathize with the other person: Try to see their humanity and what might have led them to act as they did, without excusing the harm.
- Choose to forgive: Decide, for your own peace, to let go of resentment and stop letting the past control your emotions.
- Offer forgiveness as a gift: Imagine extending understanding or compassion toward the person, even if they never apologize.
- Commit to your choice: Write it down, share it, or reflect on it as a reminder of your intention when old feelings resurface.
- Practice holding on to peace: When reminders or emotions arise, return to calm, compassion, or gratitude—strengthening forgiveness over time.
Today’s Guests:
DR. EVERETT WORTHINGTON is one of the world's leading experts on forgiveness.
Learn more about Dr. Everett Worthington here: https://www.evworthington-forgiveness.com/
DR. EMILIANA SIMON-THOMAS is a neuroscientist and Director of Science at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center.
Learn more about Emiliana R. Simon-Thomas here: https://tinyurl.com/2z7mhjbm
Related The Science of Happiness episodes:
The Contagious Power of Compassion: https://tinyurl.com/3x7w2s5s
Nine Steps to Forgiveness: https://tinyurl.com/vb7kk5ky
Why Compassion Requires Vulnerability: https://tinyurl.com/yxw4uhpf
Related Happiness Breaks:
A Science-Backed Path to Self-Forgiveness: https://tinyurl.com/yh2a5urt
Make Uncertainty Part of the Process: https://tinyurl.com/234u5ds7
A Note to Self on Forgiveness: https://tinyurl.com/y53tkn87
This episode was supported by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation as part of a Greater Good Science Center project on "Putting the Science of Forgiveness into Practice."
Tell us about your experience with this practice. Email us at happinesspod@berkeley.edu or follow on Instagram @HappinessPod.
Help us share The Science of Happiness! Leave us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts and share this link with someone who might like the show: https://tinyurl.com/2p9h5aap
Transcription:
DACHER KELTNER: This episode was supported by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation as part of a Greater Good Science Center Project on putting the science of forgiveness into practice.
EVERETTE WORTHINGTON: I will always kind of say forgiveness has mental health benefits to the person who forgives, it has physical health benefits, relational benefits, even spiritual benefits. The empathy parts of the brain are activated when we forgive, and also the frontal area that suppresses the executive functioning system that suppresses the nasty things we want to do. And says, no, you can't do that. You got to do something else. And then the behavioral activation system says, okay, well, what can I do? People will report just these horrendous things that they were successful at forgiving, and that gives them a sense of agency that they can forgive, even if they looked at this in the beginning and said, my gosh, this is like jumping over a 20 foot fence. I can't possibly get over that. But you know, they can lower the fence piecemeal. Forgiveness doesn't have to do all of the heavy lifting. We have all fallen short. We have all done things that we don't like, and we can appreciate forgiveness. It's never easy, but it becomes easier to forgive somebody else.
DACHER KELTNER: Welcome to The Science of Happiness. I'm Dacher Keltner. Today's episode is about something that can be hard to offer to others and ourselves, forgiveness. Forgiveness can be complex. It's a gradual process that takes honesty, courage and time. It's also essential to our relationships and our mental and physical health. Research shows that forgiveness can lower stress, help our hearts and immune systems, ease anxiety and depression, and even improve relationships. Our guest today is Dr. Everette Worthington, one of the world's leading experts on forgiveness. We'll explore what the science is revealing, what forgiveness truly involves, and how we can practice it in our own lives.
EVERETTE WORTHINGTON: I think self forgiveness in a lot of experiences can be harder than forgiving somebody else. I can forgive myself for the wrong that I did, but often I may really have more struggles with accepting that I would do such a wrong.
DACHER KELTNER: Then we hear from the Director of Science here at the Greater Good Science Center, Emiliana Simon-Thomas.
EMILIANA SIMON-THOMAS: Forgiveness does not mean reconciling. It doesn't mean trying to form a new friendship or relationship with a person who's harmed you. It's really about getting a new perspective on an experience that's in the past that you really have no, no, absolutely no ability to go back and change. All we can do is change how we feel now.
DACHER KELTNER: More after this break. Welcome back to The Science of Happiness. I'm Dacher Keltner. Joining us today is Dr. Everettee Worthington, a leading researcher in the science of forgiveness. Everette, thanks so much for joining us.
EVERETTE WORTHINGTON: Yeah, it's great to be with you, Dacher.
DACHER KELTNER: I just have to note something personal. I remember when I was entering into the field of happiness and well being and positive psychology. You are one of our pioneers in the field, and you were studying this thing, no one was studying forgiveness. And I was like, wow, psychologists can actually study forgiveness. And it was inspiring. So thanks for doing that. I think when our listeners think of forgiveness, they immediately think of personal circumstance, of course, and you know, and it's played such a prominent role in movements like restorative justice. I'm curious Everette, what personal experiences brought you to the study of forgiveness?
EVERETTE WORTHINGTON: I am a licensed clinical psychologist, and I was doing couple therapy as a part time private practice, as well as working at Virginia Commonwealth University. Once you start dealing with couples, if it's successful, it's really going to boil down to forgiveness in the end.
DACHER KELTNER: What did you see in the couples, in those moments of forgiveness that taught you it was essential to the human condition?
EVERETTE WORTHINGTON: We could teach them to resolve conflicts, to communicate better, to have more intimate relations with each other, but it would boil down in the end to a lot of old wounds to deal with and one particular couple. I was supervising a graduate student, and I said, "Don, why is it they're not getting better?” And he goes, “well, you know, they can do all the communication stuff, but they just hate each other. They've got all these grudges.” And I said, “well, we probably ought to design a little intervention to help them forgive.”
DACHER KELTNER: I think our listeners would really appreciate for you to kind of talk about your REACH forgiveness model.
EVERETTE WORTHINGTON: The REACH forgiveness model is to help people remember steps to emotional forgiving, which is to replace the negative unforgiving emotions with more positive, other oriented emotions, and we take them through five steps in order so that they also can make a decision to treat that person differently. So that's called decisional forgiveness. So the five steps make up the acronym REACH. R, recall the hurt. We have to face the hurt. We can't deny it. E, empathize with the person and that it is tough, and some people just can't do the empathy. But that's okay, because the idea here is replacing negative emotions with more positive, other oriented emotions. And so there are compassion and sympathy and even love to replace that negative. So R recall to her, E empathize, A give an altruistic an undeserved gift out of the goodness of our heart of forgiveness, and then C, commit to that forgiveness that you experience, so that H, you can hold on to that whenever you doubt. So that's the core of the model, is emotional forgiveness, so that people then can be invited to make a decision to treat the person differently.
DACHER KELTNER: What do you see as some of the key blocks to forgiving in the inevitable conflicts that happen in romantic partnerships?
EVERETTE WORTHINGTON: Well, we love ourselves, and that's a good thing, but it can get in the way, you know, [Dacher laughs] because we also, if we've been hurt, we're self protective, and so maybe I might protect myself by pushing the other person away, by building a wall, maybe even by attacking the other person. So those natural self protective coping mechanisms can actually make it harder to forgive, make it more of a challenge, but people can get past that.
DACHER KELTNER: How do you sort of connect forgiveness with things like restorative justice, reconciliation, dealing with systemic oppression like racism or sexism?
EVERETTE WORTHINGTON: Those are very complicated things that once we get past just an individual's experience, you know, the complexity goes up very much and also into a more systemic level than the complexity and what people experience. And I think the first thing to remember there is that the people who work in the area see it as justice. It's a type of justice. And some people go so far as to say, well, I don't want to talk about forgiveness. I don't want people to feel like they're being coerced to forgive in some way. What we find is that very often people naturally forgive when they experience a sense of restoration and reconciliation.
DACHER KELTNER: You know, Everette, I'd love your thoughts on kind of a broader reflection about forgiving ourselves. You know, I remember when I volunteered in San Quentin and the prisons and restorative justice programs. These people had committed harms, very serious harms, you know, and you talk to their life circumstances, and so many of them had the adverse childhood experiences, you know, off the charts. And I sensed a need for self forgiveness. And I think all of us would feel like we often do things and get lost in shame or self condemnation, and I'm curious how you think about self forgiveness, and what advice you offer people when you see that.
EVERETTE WORTHINGTON: I think self forgiveness in a lot of experiences can be harder than forgiving somebody else. It all depends on the magnitude of the event that you're trying to forgive, but people often struggle with self forgiveness more, and I think there's a good reason for that. You know, my personal experience, my mother was murdered in 1996. I was able to forgive the young man who did that, but my brother really struggled with this. He discovered her body, so he had all these, I think, PTSD pictures in his mind that he never could get over. And in the end, he ended up committing suicide. We had done these studies about three intervention studies on self forgiveness before this happened, and when I was trying to deal with my own self condemnation, because I felt like I could have helped my brother, but I really got hooked into family dynamics. And, you know, being an older brother and kind of I did not act in a mature way, you know, fairly difficult. And so I was at University of Cambridge that year on scholarly leave, and I spent that time trying to think about, you know, how do I forgive myself, how to help others? And I realized that probably there were some preliminary steps that had to be taken. We need to kind of take this to God, or take this to whatever we hold to be sacred and try to get set morally, you know, with where we are, it's a continual practice. If we live in any kind of community, you know, people being what they are, we're going to have wonderful opportunities [Dacher laughs] to practice forgiveness.
DACHER KELTNER: Thank you for doing such inspiring work and for so much good in the world. It has made a difference. So thanks for being on our show too.
EVERETTE WORTHINGTON: Thank you. Thanks for inviting me
DACHER KELTNER: Up next. Neuroscientist Emiliana Simon Thomas shares what areas of the brain light up when we forgive, and the consequences of holding on to resentment.
EMILIANA SIMON-THOMAS: If you're holding a grudge towards a person that is likely having an impact on how you interact with anyone.
DACHER KELTNER: Welcome back to The Science of Happiness. I'm Dacher Keltner. Today we're exploring forgiveness. Emiliana Simon-Thomas is an expert on the neuroscience and psychology of compassion, kindness and gratitude and other essential skills for living a fulfilling life. She says, the practice of forgiveness engages areas of our brain that help us exercise these essential skills.
EMILIANA SIMON-THOMAS: We're exercising these areas in the insula, in the midline of the brain, which is the area between your two hemispheres, in a way that makes us better at understanding our own feelings, being tuned into them, and also registering feelings that other people might have, and you might ask, well, why do you want to be better at that? Well, it helps you everywhere else in your social relationships, to be more empathetic.
DACHER KELTNER: Another pathway involves the structures that help us make decisions.
EMILIANA SIMON-THOMAS: And this involves using structures and pathways in your brain that establish value, that enable you to assess the degree to which any choice or decision aligns with what is most important to you. And this is the orbital frontal cortex, the medial prefrontal cortex. They're kind of holding on to associations between what is rewarding to you, and maybe what is not, if you're using these pathways, these structures in the brain, you're probably more likely to be doing that rather than making decisions based on a reflex or a very quick decision that maybe you'll regret later, using these prefrontal areas that are important for reevaluating a situation, and that's basically the essence of emotion regulation.
DACHER KELTNER: Holding onto grudges takes our attention away from positive feelings, and it takes energy.
EMILIANA SIMON-THOMAS: All of these areas are involved in tracking where your attention is, deciding in some degree in combination with the other structures that I've described, where to allocate attention, what to focus on, what is our brain going to give the most oxygen and glucose to these prefrontal regions are in charge of that. And so in this context of forgiveness, there's this exercise of deciding to prioritize your own welfare over a grudge.
DACHER KELTNER: The costs can creep into our lives involuntarily.
EMILIANA SIMON-THOMAS: Our bodies hold those conflicts in ways that maybe our minds, if we try to ignore them, don't really take into consideration. If you're holding a grudge and you're experiencing kind of repeated incidents of kind of a physiologically traumatic response, like a cortisol activation when you see a person who looks like the person who might have harmed you, or some other reminder happens in your life, the more you're activating those pathways and strengthening those pathways, the more spontaneously they're going to present themselves in your consciousness at any minute, and that's how you're gonna feel.
DACHER KELTNER: Forgiving is a process, but it can also be an act of agency, a way to orient ourselves towards our highest good.
EMILIANA SIMON-THOMAS: It's really about getting a new perspective on an experience that's in the past that you really have no, absolutely no ability to go back and change. And what we know scientifically is that harboring enduring feelings of unpleasantness about something that you have no control over in perpetuity is actually really deleterious to your health and well being.
DACHER KELTNER: It's also true that many of us experience injustices beyond our control. It happens to all of us, but in very different ways and degrees. How can we think about forgiveness in this context?
EMILIANA SIMON-THOMAS: Anger, super important. I would never suggest that people shouldn't feel that way, fear, hurt, grief, shame, embarrassment, all of those feelings are totally adaptive and functional. When they become harmful is when people hold on to them and perpetuate them into many more situations than they were intended or than they belong. And so forgiveness is basically an exercise in briefing or diminishing or shortening those unpleasant emotional experiences that are part of a social context, right? Instead of letting them go on and on and again, play a filter into so many other aspects of, of our identity and our potential as a person, forgiveness leaves space or opens the door for our own more rich and promising sense of self to drive our experiences and behaviors moving forward.
DACHER KELTNER: What happens when we set the intention to do something nice for someone else?
DAVID CREGG: Humans have three basic psychological needs, a sense of autonomy, a sense that you're competent and good at things in life, and then social connections, intimacy with other people, and doing high in action seems to tap into all three of those basic psychological needs.
DACHER KELTNER: We explore the science of doing good for others on our next episode of The Science of Happiness.
Thanks for joining us on The Science of Happiness. Our research assistants are Emily Brower and Dasha Zerboni. Our producer is Truc Nguyen. Our sound designer is Jennie Cataldo of Accompany Studios. Our executive producer is Shuka Kalantari. I'm Dacher Keltner. Have a great day.
Comments