Most people have heard the advice: Forgive and forget.
A significant share of Americans apparently has another idea.
More than one-third of Americans — 38% — believe holding a grudge can be healthy, according to The Harris Poll. The sentiment is even more common among younger adults, with half of Gen Z and Millennials taking that view.
The Harris Poll reported the finding this month as part of its ongoing look at American attitudes and culture.
It raises a question that almost everyone eventually confronts: When someone hurts you, is holding onto the offense a useful form of self-protection — or can the grudge itself become another burden?
Research suggests the distinction may lie between remembering what happened and repeatedly reliving it.
When Remembering Becomes Rumination
There can be practical reasons not to forget an offense.
Betrayal, dishonesty or mistreatment can teach a person whom not to trust, which situations to avoid and where stronger boundaries may be needed.
But researchers have also examined what happens when people repeatedly mentally rehearse the injury.
In one laboratory study of 71 participants, people were asked to recall someone who had hurt them and imagine either nursing the grievance or responding from a more forgiving perspective.
Researchers recorded greater negative emotion and larger changes in heart rate, blood pressure, skin conductance and facial muscle tension when participants focused on unforgiving thoughts.
Another study involving 202 people found that angry rumination initially produced a larger increase in blood pressure than thinking about an offense from a forgiving perspective.
Those experiments do not prove that having a grudge causes heart disease or chronic high blood pressure. They do, however, show that the way people mentally revisit an offense can produce measurable short-term differences in the body’s stress response.
A larger analysis of 103 independent samples involving more than 26,000 participants also found an association between forgiveness and better health outcomes. The relationship was stronger for psychological health than physical health.
Forgiveness Does Not Mean Reconciliation
Part of the resistance to forgiveness may stem from what people think the word requires.
The American Psychological Association defines forgiveness as voluntarily moving away from being dominated by resentment toward someone who caused harm.
It is not the same as reconciliation or excusing what happened.
Forgiving someone does not require trusting that person again. It does not demand restoring a relationship, abandoning consequences or allowing repeated mistreatment.
Someone can stop carrying resentment while still deciding, “You no longer get the same access to my life.”
In that sense, forgiveness and boundaries are not necessarily opposites.
Maybe We Don’t ‘Forgive and Forget’
A study published this year offers another way of thinking about what forgiveness does.
Researchers from Dartmouth College and Columbia University studied 23 people while using neuroimaging to examine how forgiveness affected memories of negative interpersonal experiences.
Participants believed other people had deliberately selected unpleasant images for them. They later received additional information about those people’s behavior and were instructed either to forgive or simply reconsider the experience.
The researchers found that experiences associated with forgiveness were later rated as less negative. Brain activity also suggested that information considered during forgiveness had been incorporated into participants’ memories of what happened.
The researchers described the process as something closer to “forgive and update” than “forgive and forget.”
The study was small and conducted in a controlled setting, so its findings should not be treated as proof of how forgiveness works in every real-life relationship.
Still, the idea raises an intriguing possibility.
Perhaps healing does not require forgetting the betrayal, insult or injustice. Perhaps it means remembering it differently… retaining the lesson without continually carrying the emotional weight.
A Boundary or a Burden?
That may also explain why a grudge can initially feel useful.
Anger can signal that a line was crossed. Remembering what happened can prevent someone from repeating the same mistake. Distance from an untrustworthy person may be entirely appropriate.
The harder question is what happens after the boundary has been established.
A person can remember, “I won’t allow that again,” without mentally returning to the injury every day.
And someone can release resentment without declaring that what happened was acceptable.
Nearly four in 10 Americans say holding a grudge can be healthy.
Maybe the most important question is not whether we should remember what someone did.
It is whether remembering the wrong is helping us move forward or keeping us tied to the moment it happened.
Provided by Dallas Express
