Five years ago, Anita*, a school teacher in Dubai, was bitterly angry with her ex-husband Raj* after their sudden divorce in India. To embark on a new life, she took up a job in Dubai.
“I oscillated between feelings of resentment and anger towards Raj – who
I felt had given up easily on our marriage after just one year – and trying to enjoy my new life,” she says. “Even though I was happy at work, I used to suffer from frequent headaches and even panic attacks at times.”
But when Raj was diagnosed with cancer last year and turned to Anita for emotional support, she was faced with a dilemma. “I was torn between helping him or shutting him out,” she says. She chose, finally, to forgive. “I needed to heal the wounds and forgive him for my own sake more than anything else. I started feeling a lot more at peace with myself when I did, and soon after, the headaches and anxiety I’d been suffering from vanished.”
From big things, like a relationship breakdown, to the petty, like a snub from a colleague, we are all too often faced with situations where we have the option of holding a grudge against someone or forgiving that person. While human nature may have hard-wired us to react with anger and resentment when we feel betrayed, according to Dr Graham Simpson, chief medical officer at Eternity Medicine Institute in Dubai, bearing a grudge is more likely to be the cause of ill health than many of us realise.
How grudges make you ill
Harbouring rancour plays havoc with our hormones, says Dr Simpson. “A lack of forgiveness can create an avalanche of stress hormones, which increases the production of cortisol and epinephrine, leading to changes in heart rate and blood pressure.”
It impacts other key hormones, such as oestrogen and progesterone, too. “Both oestrogen and progesterone are necessary in the female cycle and a balance of both is paramount for optimal health,” he says. “Many women have an imbalance of these hormones, which is further exacerbated by chronic stress.” During times of stress progesterone is also capable of being converted into the stress hormone cortisol, which can lead to weight gain.
“An imbalance of hormones can also contribute to the negativity of bearing grudges and feeling negatively about life,” says Dr Simpson.
Your heart also suffers if you are unforgiving, according to Joseph Neumann, clinical psychologist at East Tennessee State University, in the US. “When I treated patients with cardiovascular disease, I was struck by how many were bitter, angry, and depressed. It clearly affected their health and their ability to heal.”
Internalised hostility and anger can also trigger the body’s ‘fight or flight response’, in which the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline jump-start the heart rate.
Grudges also make us physically more susceptible to colds and flu, as increasing stress in the body can raise levels of catecholamine and CD8, which suppresses the immune system, thereby increasing the risk of viral infection. “This then leads to the release of histamines, which can trigger severe broncho-constriction in people with asthma, and can also cause chemical changes in the body that increase the risk of heart disease,” says Dr Simpson.
And finally, the psychological resources involved in maintaining this state of negativity can take their toll in the form of depression, anxiety, panic, insomnia and tension headaches.
Why forgiveness is good
In forgiving someone you empower yourself – rather than the person who hurt you – to be in charge of your own happiness. This can also benefit your relationships – a study cited by Harvard Women Health Watch found that women who were able to forgive their spouses and feel benevolent toward them resolved conflicts more effectively.
It’s not just your emotional well-being that benefits from you learning to forgive. People who manage their stress are less prone to angina, high blood pressure, irregular heart rhythms, heart attacks and strokes. But more than just preventing the negative effects of grudge-bearing, a growing body of research shows that letting go of resentment can have an actively positive impact on your physical health too.
A US study on people with chronic back pain found that those who practised meditation focusing on converting anger to compassion actually felt less pain and anxiety than those who received regular conventional back-pain care. Another study at the University of Tennessee asked volunteers to tell stories about betrayal and measured their heart rates and blood pressure levels. People who were able to forgive more easily registered lower numbers, and made fewer sickness-induced trips to the doctor than the grudge-prone. “Forgiveness can be a very profound process and for those who have struggled with forgiveness and have succeeded it can be very transforming,” says Dr Eileen Borris, author of Finding Forgiveness (available on Amazon). “We can all learn from one another’s story and inspire each other through our own experiences.”
Forgive not forget
However much you might want to forgive and move on, it’s not always that easy. According to Devika Singh, psychologist at Dubai Herbal and Treatment Centre, “Research indicates it is typical for most people to hold on to a grudge, at least for some time, after any event that has been perceived as a transgression that compromised the individual’s psychological or physical security.”
There are many different shades of forgiveness, coloured by the extent of the hurt resulting from the event, adds Devika. Forgiving the stranger who dangerously cut you off on the highway is easier than forgiving your ex-business partner who emptied out your bank account.
But teaching yourself to forgive is a skill that can be worked on, and it doesn’t mean becoming a martyr or a pushover. “Forgiveness does not minimise the action or the consequences that may have occurred because of the transgression,” explains Dr Raymond Hamden of the Humans Relationships Institute. “It recognises the event for what actually occurred and the feelings that were involved. And it does not negate the need or even the desire for justice involving the situation.”
Eternity Medicine Institute’s Dr Simpson elaborates, “In true forgiveness, the feelings of revenge loosen their grip and this forgiveness brings understanding and an inner peace, which is ultimately beneficial to both mind and body.”
Whatever the act of transgression, the act of forgiving is powerful and all encompassing – it not only restores positive thoughts, feelings and behaviours toward the offending party, but it can spill over into other aspects of life. Devika uses the analogy of a single drop of ink that colours an entire beaker of water to describe how a deeply wedged grudge can affect your entire life.
“The negativity can diffuse into other areas of one’s life or to other relationships, and this grudge against one person can unintentionally be displaced onto other situations or people,” she says.
Forgiveness comes from an understanding of and the subsequent acceptance of a situation or person. As you let go of grudges, you’ll no longer define your life by how you’ve been hurt. To start forgiving, Dr Simpson suggests that mind-body learning can be very helpful.
“Try to make space for the things that matter in life,” he says. “Find time for the people you love and the things that you like doing and don’t waste your energy on negative thinking.”
Five steps to finding forgiveness
Devika Singh, Psychologist and Learning Specialist at Dubai Herbal and Treatment Centre, shares useful advice on learning to let go of a grudge:
- Explore your need to experience a sense of justice in this situation. The inability to forgive is often rooted in the need to assert your feelings of injustice, which can sometimes linger for longer than the shelf-life of the actual anger.
- Try to think back to times when you really wanted to be forgiven for something. What did it feel like, and how would you have liked it to end?
- Sometimes forgiveness is even more difficult without an apology. If that has not happened, then have the courage to ask for one.
- Once you arrive at the decision to forgive it will be easy. However the lead up to this can be difficult. Be realistic in your expectations – it isn’t always a comfortable process, but one that may take you to the point where forgiveness is possible.
- Remind yourself that forgiveness frees you. Ask anyone who has walked the path of forgiveness, sometimes after incredibly traumatic experiences, and they will agree that it is liberating.
Real life
Dedra Stevenson, 45, an author living in Sharjah, shares her story on how she detoxed by forgiving a friend who let her down:
"I’ve never been a person who had a tough time making friends. In fact, due to my talkative nature, it comes rather easily to me, but that wasn’t always the case. When I was little, I was painfully shy and awkward, and that’s why I feel so sorry for anyone who suffers from that awkwardness in adulthood. I made friends with this woman a few years back who seemed a little lonely, and she attached herself to me very quickly.
She was really happy to come everywhere with me and I enjoyed her company. I introduced her to all of my other friends and pretty much invited her to all of our social functions. We went shopping together, out to eat, and even when she said she was too broke to buy groceries for her kids, I showed up at her door with bags of food. Some time after that, I found out that not only did she have money, but a lot of it that she’d kept quiet about. I also discovered that every private thing I told her, she had told to everyone else she knew and laughed about it.
When I found out I was naturally shocked. I never spoke to her again, but I simply concentrated on how many weaknesses this individual must have had at the time and let myself feel sorry for her instead of angry at her. I found it in my heart to forgive her.
This acceptance of her weaknesses helped me to let it go and simply close the door. I even hoped that one day she’d be a better person and realise how wrong she had been and never treat anyone like that again.
Anger is like a fever in your veins and if you keep it feeding on you for long, it will consume you. That’s why, when I finally let it go, it was like a detox. I deserved to be free of that negativity, and now I am.
*Name have been changed
