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Let It Go

Forgiveness Is Key to Good Health

By Laurie L. Dove

(Crown, 2001). Using the acronym REACH, he suggests the following5 steps to reach forgiveness:

1. Recall the Hurt Try to remember the hurt without demonizing the person who hurt you or without thinking of yourself as a victim. "When I decided to apply the lessons from our research, one of the first questions I asked myself was, 'Could I for a moment put my rage on hold and recall the hurt more objectively?'" Worthing says.
2. Empathize with the Person Who Hurt You Empathy means trying to understand the other person's perspective and feeling compassion for the person who hurt us. "When I worked through this, I began to sense the horror that the youth must have felt when they committed the spur-of-the-moment murder," Worthing says.
3. Altruistic Gift of Forgiveness We give this gift of forgiveness when we realize we are not so different from the person who wronged us. We, too, have hurt others in some way.
4. Commit Publicly to Forgive Forgiveness is easiest to hold onto if we go beyond forgiving in the privacy of our hearts. We can say aloud that we forgive or write a letter of forgiveness that we might never send.
5. Hold on to Forgiveness Painful memories can resurface if we see the person again, are reminded of the event, get hurt in a similar way by someone else or even get stressed out. Our natural tendency is to doubt that we have forgiven. Remembering that painful memories are different from lack of forgiveness can help calm doubts about whether one has forgiven.

   For more information about forgiveness, visit the A Campaign for Forgiveness Research Web site.