Hey, everybody, it's me Josh, and I thought for my picks this year, I would kick off twenty twenty six with a very sweet, moving, and also eye opening episode on forgiveness. It turns out all of us have the capacity to forgive, but that's not always the best course of action for any given circumstance. This episode also has a lot of really great stories of amazing acts of
forgiveness by people who forgave others against all odds. It's a good episode and I hope you enjoy it, and I hope your year is going wonderfully so far.
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Hey, you, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you should know. Some philosophical waxing is going to happen in this one. I think it's inevitable. Pull Chuck, that's right, and Don Henley songs Oh yeah, that's a good one too, Heart of the Matter. Mm hmm. You like it sure, all right? That part where he's like, I'm learning to
live with that, dude. No, it stirs my soul every time. Forgiveness. Yeah, you'd have to be dead inside to not be stirred by that part. I agree, it's good, good song, but he really kind of nails it in that because he's talking about forgiveness and the heart of the matter. Sure, and he's he wants forgiveness, he needs forgiveness, even if like it's the end of the relationship.
Yeah, even if she doesn't love him anymore.
Sure. So, on the one hand, that is a certain kind of forgiveness that an individual or person can that's
a path someone can set down. But there's been a lot of research starting starting in the very beginning stages at the middle of the twentieth but really picking up in the nineties, research into forgiveness, like legitimate scientific research, and it's a multidisciplinary thing because there's a lot of different fields disciplines, sure, that have said, hey, this actually, this is something we can study and measure and produce articles and work on. And they have, They've produced some
really good, legitimate work. But what most of them have been focused on is not the Don Henley position of somebody who needs to be redeemed, who needs redemption to feel better, who needs forgiveness, yeah, but rather the person doing the forgiving the person who has originally transgressed against, not the offender, but the offendee. That's where most of the research has been done on forgiveness. Right.
Don Henley is a rock star, so he's writing a song about wanting to be forgiven for a foursome he had in Saint Paul backstage. Sure, even if you don't love me anymore, can you forgive me that?
You know? Can you blame a guy? Is what he's saying. So, yeah, I think that's probably exactly what that song is about. Now that you mentioned that's the subtext. So I think we should start by pointing out something about forgiveness. Is that a lot of people there's a lot of stories about people not forgiving. We call it revenge, and people love revenge, you know, Like think about the revenge movie genre and how many entries there are pretty great? Like
have you ever seen I Saw the Devil? Yeah? Have you ever seen Old Boy? Yeah? Have you ever seen Death Becomes Her? Yeah? Have you ever seen She Devil? Nope? Oh you haven't. With Roseanne Barr and Ed Bigley and Mary Movie, yes, all of them great revenge movies. Can I shout out one of my favorites? Yeah, please do.
Like legitimately, it's kind of a smaller indie movie called Blue Ruin.
Oh yeah, I saw that one.
Great great revenge movie. If you're into revenge movies and I am, I enjoy it. There's a cap arsis involved because I'm a big forgiver, So I think I like seeing movies where revenge happens.
Yeah, and we'll talk a lot about, you know, revenge, because they're virtually two sides of the same coin, and they really interact in some surprising ways that are sensible when you see it laid out, but you might not necessarily be walking around thinking about. But on the other side, if you look up movies about forgiveness, almost all of them were produced by a megachurch somewhere in the South.
Or you've got Magnolia and then the Fisher King are like the two like legitimate contenders for movies about forgiveness.
Well, I don't know, because I think there's a fine line sometimes between redemption stories and forgiveness stories.
Okay, they can kind of go hand in hand. There are plenty of redemption stories. Okay, like what what redemption stories? Yeah, let's hear it. Oh, I mean.
Hoosiers one of the great sports redemption movies.
Okay, I think that's a pretty loose definition of redemption.
Now, former alcoholic coach who who was not working because of some bad deeds gets redeemed by looking a team to a championship. Dennis Hopper gets redeemed as the alcoholic father.
Wait a minute, was was Gene Hackman on the road to redemption? I thought he came in and basically got Dennis Hopper redeemed a double redemption. He was getting redeemed as well. All right, Okay, okay, okay, So plenty.
Of redemption stories, and I think there's a lot of movies that wrestle with the idea of forgiveness and really weighty, heavy ways, like these true stories that you hear about these awful things that happen, whether a family member is accidentally killed by someone or murdered by someone, like, there's a lot of that stuff in movies.
Okay. So my thesis is this, and this is strictly me editorializing here, I think there's some validity to it, and that is that the reason why it's much easier to name revenge movies is because revenge appeals to our baser instincts. It makes sense, it's universally understood. And like you said, you even consider yourself a big time forgiver, and yet you enjoy revenge movies. It's cathartic for you.
There's something to be delivered by a revenge movie. Yep, a movie about forgiveness, it's just more complicated, it's harder. We're not as good and we're not as automatically adept at forgiveness as we may be with revenge. That's why I think there's fewer forgiveness movies. But that's not to say that we're not moved by it, because I think if you hear whenever you hear real life stories of forgiveness,
they just bowl you over. Oh yeah, even when you step back and think about like what the person's actually doing, you're like, yes, legitimately, anybody could do what they just did. It's it's akin to hearing somebody's solo climbing Mount Everest or something like that. It's it makes the news literally when somebody forgives in like a really deep way that the average person might.
Not, yeah, like a big time transgression. A lot of times you'll hear of a courtroom scene where someone has forgiven the person who like murdered their relative or loved one or something, and that man, that stuff is powerful. You're right every time you see these stories. You dug up this one story from Berkeley the Greater Good magazine Science Based Insights for a Meaningful Life out of UC Berkeley of this woman who was a nurse's aide who hit a guy. She had been drinking hit a guy
in her car. He went through the windshield and was stuck there, and she was so impaired she didn't realize it for a while. Eventually realized that got out of the car, could not get the guy out, who was still alive, mind you, and so drove home and parked her car in the garage to let this guy slowly die yeah, in her garage.
Over the course of a couple of days, and like she sobered up, would go out and chuck on him once in a while, but refused to call for help because she was too concerned about getting in trouble, so instead she let him die, had a couple friends come help her hide the body, move the body, and then actually got found out later on because four months later she was at a party and she joked about it to an acquaintance who went and told the cops, and this woman ended up getting fifty years in pre that's
a horrible story, Like that's one of the worst things that a human being could possibly do. There were so many opportunities for this woman to save this man's life. And by the way, everyone involved in that court case who had a medical degree said that had she called the cops, the fire department taken the guy to the hospital,
he almost certainly would have survived those injuries. But given that she didn't for days get him medical aid, he finally did succumb to them, but he probably would have survived, almost certainly would have survived. Like what she did was about as horrific as what a person could do and just so irresponsible with human life. And she rightfully got
a fifty year prison sentence for that crime. And yet despite how horrific that was, what made news just as much as that is that a short time later that man's son, the man who was hit and killed publicly forgave that woman for killing his father.
Yes, at the sentencing said quote, there's no winners in a case like this. Just as we all lost Greg, you all will be losing your daughter to her family. I still want to extend my forgiveness to Chante Mallard was her name, and let her know that the Mallard family is in my prayers. And this is the kind of stuff, like you said, that makes the news where I think it hits everybody because it makes everybody stop for a second and.
Say, could I do that? Yes?
Could I reach that point of forgiveness? And that's a big weighty question because there's all kinds of forgiveness. There's a couple partners together who get in a fight and someone says they're sorry for doing a certain thing, and they're forgiven or not. There are situations at work where people are forgiven. There are friends who maybe betray you
by like cheating on on somebody with someone. I had a situation like that where I had a former friend I felt like cheated with my barely ex girlfriend and I spent quite a few years being upset about that and then forgave him. And it's a powerful thing. So there's like levels. But when you get to this kind of thing where someone caused the death of a loved one and then even laughed about it, like to be able to forgive like that is just that's next level.
It is. It is so much so, Chuck, that a group of convicted murderers who were serving sentences in prison heard about this, and I guess got in touch with one another and raised funds and got a ten thousand dollars scholarship together, Wow, for Brandon Biggs to go to college. The convicted murderer sent the kid to college because this very generous act of public forgiveness of his own father's murderer.
So yeah, it is. It's an astounding thing. And yet everything that like the research that really, like I said, started to take off in earnest in the nineties has shown us is that we're all perfectly capable of doing that. The answer is, yes, yes, you can do that, You totally could do that, but that we don't necessarily fully understand how to. And yet there's a lot of evidence also that it's evolutionarily wired into us to do that. Yeah.
And you know, we'll get into religiosity of it a bit more in detail later, but all religions talk a lot about forgiveness. There's you know, a pretty famous story in the Bible where Peter said to Jesus, lord how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sends against me up.
To seven times?
And Jesus said, I tell you not seven times, but seventy times seven. And Peter said so four hundred and ninety times, and Jesus said, oh, Peter, are always so literal. Yeah, that one's pretty good. But you know, you can read Hindu, you can read the Buddhists talk about it. Like everyone, every religion talks about. Forgiveness is kind of a maybe a cornerstone of the religion in some cases, so.
Much so that when science started looking into forgiveness and just trying to figure it out, generally people is just presumed forgiveness was under the realm and the domain of religion. That's where that's where you went for answers about forgiveness. And science said, oh, we we can top that. Well, surely we can beat that four hundred and ninety number. And that's what they've said about doing Yeah.
I mean, Jesus forgave his crucifiers. It's like one of the few things Jesus said on the cross. According to the Bible, they know not what they do, like forgive them for they know not what they do.
Right. And like you said, it's not just Christianity. Although Christianity gets all the all the accolades for forgiveness, Jainism is a big one. There's a there's a kind of a mantra from Jainism that says, I grant forgiveness to all living beings. They all living beings, grant me forgiveness. My friendship is with all living beings. My enmity is totally non existent. And that's I mean, when you look at that, especially if you're not a Janist, you're you're like, wow,
how would you ever? How would you ever reach that level? And I think the point is it's like you never reach that level. It's an ideal, a goal that you try to achieve, probably on a daily basis if you're a Janis, but it's certainly over a lifetime, you know. Yeah.
And I'd like to read this again, not to pile on the religious stuff, but the Hindu one really spoke to me.
Uh.
This one part in the middle says what can a wicked person do? And to him or into one who carries the saber of forgiveness in his hand? And that one really speaks to me in that it's the it's a powerful tool to forgive, and it's for you as the forgiver. I think a lot of times people think it can clear the conscious of someone who's done something wrong. I guess that certainly happens, But to me, it's really about it's a powerful weapon you have to regain your own strength as a human.
Yes, that seems to be the bulk of what psychology is coming up with as far as studying forgiveness goes that it's really the person who is who has been wronged. That's what forgiveness is more about. That's the psychological aspect of it. Like we said, it's a multidisciplinary investigation, and so you've got evolutionary biologists who like, that's really great psychology, but we found a different reason for forgiveness and it doesn't quite fit that mold. And then like the medical
field says, no, it's even better than that. You can actually like improve your health by genuinely forgiving somebody. So there's all these different inputs that are coming together to create this really like complex, contextualized picture of what forgiveness is and what it does for us and why we have it. That's right. I think it's a great setup.
I agree, you want to take a break, I might just not come back and feel so good about that.
No, we have to finish. We got to complete, all right.
We'll be back in a minute to talk about what I think is probably the most interesting part of this is the evolutionary aspect.
Right after this.
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So this was this, this is the correct forgiveness? Was the Dave Ruse joint.
Oh okay, I thought this was Livia. So yeah, thanks to Dave for this. He did a great job with this research. But the evolutionary aspect of forgiveness is super interesting to me because I think that a lot of people assume that it's what Dave calls a higher virtue, like you know is took took in the gang. We're so base as you know, kind of primitive thinkers, is
that they didn't have the capacity forgive. They would they would smite somebody if if someone punched, took took in the face, took, took punch back, or someone attacked took took, took, took attack back, maybe even harder. And there is quite a bit of evidence that they're not mutually exclusive and that that fighting back and forgiving both have a big evolutionary advantage.
Yeah, So the big evolutionary advantage of revenge is if you live in a social group and somebody takes advantage of you, or they hit you, or they steal your food or whatever, if you don't do something to right that wrong, you're broadcasting to the rest of the group that you are open for exploitation. And that's not good
for you. It's also not good for the chances that you're going to pass along your genes, and so under the auspices of natural selection, it makes sense for you to hit that person that steals your food or who hits you, And that's revenge, and revenge forms that function in a social group. It says to everybody. It signals to the rest of the group you are not to be messed with. This guy tried it, and look what happened to him. Nobody else should try that. Go pick
on somebody else. And there's actually been studies that have showed that not just among apes and primates, but among human cultures, revenge is found pretty much universally. And I saw a study Chuck that said that the mere presence of a person a third party who's witnessing an argument increases the chances that the argument is going to come to blows because you're signaling to the rest of the group and in this case, just that third person you
are not to be messed with. That That's the purpose of revenge is to broadcast that signal.
Yeah, I mean, I would say that any kind of dumb, drunk bar fight, half of it is the fact that someone didn't want to back down in front of other people.
Sure, you know more than have totally.
And that if those two guys were just in an alley somewhere, they may just hug it out.
Yeah, probably not, but you never know. It's possible, or they might talk it out at least.
Yeah, or disagree that it's domb and leave. Yes, but you talked about studies in the animal world. There's a primatologist name Franz Deval who looked at wild chimps recorded three hundred and fifty encounters aggressive encounters between these gymps and then what happened afterward, And in fifty one percent of these encounters, the chimps would literally kind of kiss and make up and touch each other and embrace each other after a fight. We've seen the same thing in
bonabos and great apes. There's sheep, there's dolphins, there's goats. Even hyenas have shown traits of forgiveness. So it's not ubiquitous, but it is all over the animal kingdom. Animals fighting and then animals making up with one another.
Right, So, I mean, the revenge one's pretty easy to understand, but then you're like, okay, well, why would there be the making up part? But that also ties into the fact that these same animals are also living in social tight knit social groups, and so you have a limited amount of people that you can possibly have a dispute or a feud with, and if you're not working together cooperatively in that sense, also your chances of survival are decreased.
So what makes sense is what's called the valuable relationship hypothesis, which says, if somebody hits you, you should hit them back, but then after that you should make up with them. So you're sending that signal you're not to be messed with. But then you're repairing that relationship, that valuable relationship that you depend on to help your survival in the social group. You're repairing it, and then you guys can move forward.
And that that is how revenge and forgiveness are basically two sides of the same coin, or at least work in conjunction with one another to keep the group functioning at its best right.
And that kind of dovetails with a second part of that thing, which is called negative reciprocity, which is if someone hits Tiktook and Tiktook goes c razy and just starts wailing on the other person who just slapped him in the face. Yeah, that's not good either, because everyone's going to go, whoa Tiktook. I'm not sure I trust him now. He's definitely burned that bridge for between him and the other guy. And none of this is very good.
So what they found is negative reciprocity. If you if someone smites you, you smite them back the same amount and then forgive them. Like if someone takes off their glove and slaps you across the face, you don't kick them between the legs and then wail on their face. You slap them back with your glove, and then you
talk about forgiving one another. And everyone sees that you can work with people, You can you can stand your ground, but you can also forgive and work with people, which means you're valuable to the group and you're valuable to have around.
Yeah, and so kind of tie it into what you were saying earlier about you know how, there's this idea that you know, revenge is a base instinct and forgiveness is a higher instinct, rather than realizing that they're both
pretty basic instincts for among the animal kingdom. Is there's this idea that in human society, we have created like these social institutions in these contexts so that the individual doesn't have to carry out revenge and then forgiveness, that they can just focus on forgiveness as long as those social institutions are doing what they're supposed to do, as long as there is like a pursuit of justice, and you can rely on the idea that the person who
transgressed against you by killing your father is going to be caught and punished and sentenced to jail. You don't have to worry about revenge. It's being conducted for you, and then you, the individual in this well functioning society, can just focus on whether you want to forgive or not, and that that's that kind of higher and lower echelon.
Because in the opposite situation where there isn't like a good sense of justice, where it does seem like if you want justice you have to go seek it out yourself, revenge is going to be much more exercised, much more frequently than forgiveness.
Will Yeah, which says a lot about the United States these days, you know. Yeah, I mean, I'm not trying to be cynical even, I mean, that's just sort of what we see around us. I think a lot of people feel like the sense of justice in this country is pretty skewed, and that's why you might see the increases in things like vigilanteism or revenge. And I don't know what societies you look to to do a study like that. I'm kind of curious on the ones that are very well policed and the justice is sort of
fair and equal. But I think that's one of the problems in the in the States these days, for sure. Yeah, without getting two far down that rabbit.
Hole, but also even you know, it's it's kind of eye opening to me because I've never really thought about the courts and the justice system is set up to help individuals move along. Yeah, it should do. You just think of it as punishment. It's a system for punishment, not for redemption necessarily, but it's also to help the victims. I just never saw it that before.
Yeah, it's interesting when you talk about that guy in court, and a lot of times you'll hear the courtroom forgiveness. Sometimes you'll also hear the opposite, and you hear the courtroom like, I will never forgive you for what you did to me, And I think not always, but it seems to be a lot of time tied to whether the transgressor has really acknowledged what they've done and sought forgiveness and said that's the worst thing I've ever done in my life, and I don't think you should ever
forgive me. Like it's an interesting sort of dance that happens there because it's not a one to one thing. It's not like every time a bad criminal that does something really asks for forgiveness and says it was a terrible thing, the other person forgives. So sometimes the person could laugh it off like this lady did and not ask for forgiveness. Any other person could forgive, which I think goes back to the notion that forgiveness comes from the forgiver.
Right, that it's really about the person who's been wrong too. It's about and so yeah, now we've reached the kind of psychologies domain over the concept of forgiveness, which is that it's about you, the individual who suffered a wrong, releasing the pain and the anger and the resentment and all the negative feelings that you're experiencing so that you
can feel better. And that it doesn't matter whether the other person is asking for forgiveness, and that it doesn't even matter if the other person deserves forgiveness or not. That genuine forgiveness psychologically speaking, according to some psychologists, will hear that some disagree, but that genuine, true forgiveness is unconditional, that you forgive the person whether they deserve it or not.
Yeah, And this is to where the language to me is a little I could see people debating this because it is forgiveness in a way, but to me, it's almost more of just a letting go. Yeah, I agree with you, of an anger, it's not. It's so tricky with the definition because when you think of forgiveness, you think I'm saying and it's really not what it is. What you're not saying is it's okay what you did. Okay, so yes, you know what I mean. That's not what That's not a key component of forgiveness.
No, No, it's not. You're that's and that's a very confusing thing for a lot of people too. Is that the idea that if you forgive somebody, you're you're you're condoning their behavior. You're saying it's okay what they do. That's not the point of forgiveness. From from what psychologists who research this are coming up with. They're saying, No, what you're doing when you forgive somebody is to say, I know what you did, you wronged me, and I
can live with that. It doesn't make it any better. Yeah, it doesn't make it any better. It doesn't excuse what you did, right, and it does it certainly doesn't excuse future repeated instances of what you just did. But it's saying, like, I'm willing to let go of the I have associated with this act you did against me, that you this wrong, and I'm going to move forward with my life, and in doing that, I'm willing to let you move forward as well. Well.
Or I think sometimes in a case like this, that kind of forgiveness can make the transgressor suffer worse sometimes yeah, just a guilt, Yeah, and they want to be admonished and hated as part of a punishment. But you know, ts you know, because again, forgiveness is not for you, it's for the person. Dave even makes a great point the person being forgiven is secondary or even unnecessary to the process, and that's sort of the key. You don't even have to tell that person necessarily. We'll get to
later some kind of like how to forgive. Some people say that you should tell someone out loud, like literally tell someone, But you don't necessarily have to tell that person if it's a situation like this, or even if it's like a close personal friend like I think usually you do when it's someone you know, because that's a part of communicating with one another in a healthy way.
But if it's the person who who killed your family, you don't have to tell them to forgive them, and you can still forgive them.
Yes, So some psychologists define forgiveness, like a full forgiveness as including you actually seeking out contact with that person, right, and that if you forgive them but don't tell them, or you still avoid them afterward, where it's like, hey, I forgive you, but good luck with the rest of your life. You're not in my life anymore. That to some psychologists, not all. Some psychologists say that's not genuine forgiveness.
That's akin to what you were saying, which is letting go of anger and moving on, but not really actually forgiving. I still say it's forgiving. I'm not one of the psychologists, sure, and it's very much debated, for sure. But then that also leads to another point too, that if you forgive somebody, it doesn't necessarily mean you forget, and that's not part and parcel to it. Forgiving doesn't mean forgetting. You can forget.
I'm actually really good at that kind of thing, where like I forgive because it just unless it was a really huge wrong, it just kind of phased from my memory fairly easily, and I don't dwell on it, so
it can it can go hand in hand. But if you've been deeply wrong by somebody where you're actually going through the process of forgiving, which we'll talk about, and it is a it's a deliberate step that you're taking toward finding peace with yourself and your life again, then you know very well, what that wrong was, and you're not going to forget it, but eventually the aim is that you will have divorced the emotional attachment from that memory of that wrong to where it becomes akin to
like a movie you saw once or a trip you took once, Like it's not it's just a thing that happened in your life, rather than this, this this crisis that is sucking up your attention and emotions.
Yeah, I really like this definition from Fred Luskin, who is a psychologist and forgiveness expert for what It's worth, director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Projects. And Fred's definition is to forgive is to give up all hope for a better past, And that really lays it out there in this in a very practical sense, that what has
happened has happened. You may not be there yet in your journey to forgiveness or the letting go, but you cannot change what happened, no matter how angry you are, or how much you want someone to pay for it or suffer, or how much revenge you want. So there is no better past that's impossible. So giving up hope for a better pass, it's sort of a blaque definition, but one that I think is pretty instructive.
Yeah, but it's also a realistic definition too if you think about it. Because you can't change the past one way or another. You can only alter how you let the past continue to affect you or not. And the other thing I really want to say here right now, because it can be confusing for me too when I think about forgiveness and anger and stuff like that, is like, this is not No one is talking about a something like throwing a switch or like, rather than feeling anger,
you feel forgiveness. That's actually counterproductive, as we'll see. Like you like, you can't replace anger with forgiveness. Forgiveness is meant to come after anger because you use anger or hurt or resentment or whatever your version of that is to to to protect and guard your own boundaries. So it's unnatural for you to not have some sort of
negative emotion or negative response to being wronged. But you don't want to replace that or try to replace it with forgiveness because you may accidentally trip up the process and you're not really legitimately feeling forgiveness. You're basically just setting yourself up to be wronged again.
Yeah, my deal personally is Emily always talks about what a forgiving person I am because I really crave.
To forgive.
I don't know, I was about to say crave forgiveness. I crave forgiving. I guess it sounds funny, but I just all I need is for someone to say they're sorry for something, and then it's done. Nine times out of ten, that's done for me. And as far as forgetting, like, I'm a pretty good forgetter too. I don't know about like literally forgetting something, but I definitely look back on a lot of relationships, especially with like ex girlfriends that were terrible, and go, oh that was so bad in there.
In that relationship, we.
Were pretty good, right, Sure, No, we weren't pretty good at all. Right, I just have rose colored glasses. And I think you and I are both like as podcasting partners and family and team good about when we have little dust ups for giving one another. If the other person likes says they're sorry, like you and I both get over that stuf pretty quickly. Yeah, which is yeah, it's very key though, you know, like, oh, yeah, you can't.
Forgiveness is like from the heart if you really if you're hanging on to something, then you're not done with it yet.
No, but so and that is so important, Chuck. That's important for the individual to remember that if you if you are unable to forgive, that means that you're you're still hanging on to it. That doesn't mean you'll never forgive, And that also doesn't mean you have to hurry up and forgive. It means you're still in the process and that's reaching the point where you can forgive. It's a deliberate choice. From everything I've seen in the research, you
are making a deliberate choice to forgive somebody. But it's not throwing a switch. It's part of a process. And during that process, while you're on the road to forgiving the person, you're still going to be kind of angry at them. Maybe not the whole time, but every once in a while it might hit you before you've fully forgiven them, and then you're going to be mad about it all over again. That's okay, that's normal, that's natural. You can't really rush it. You can, but it's going
to be detrimental. What you want to do is just kind of let it play out and have faith that if you're on the path of forgiveness, you'll ultimately will forgive the person and things will be good again.
Yeah, and depending on your life and your childhood, like you probably have an inclination or an instinct to forgive or not based on what you saw, what was modeled. There's both nature and nurture involved. But I think people generally have an instinct of revenge or forgiveness, and to do one of the other that is against that instinct requires great effort, especially in the case of forgiveness, because you may not be inclined to be a forgiver at all.
That doesn't mean something's wrong with you. That just means that's probably what you saw growing up, or maybe something happened to you when you were young that makes it harder for you. But it's still possible to get there. It just might be tougher.
Well, what's neat is another thing that the feel of psychology is telling us about forgiveness is that it can be taught. You can learn to forgive. Even if you were raised in an unforgiving environment where you never learned how to do that, you can learn how to do it. And I say we kind of jump to those to how to forgive before we go into physical health because I feel like we're kind of there right now. Yeah, well, let's take a break.
Okay, let's take our final break, and we'll talk about that when we get back, as well as this one sort of interesting study i'd like to hit real quick too.
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So there's this study that Dave dug up that I thought was interesting.
I think it's flawed. But Inreme Social psychology, they took forty six people. They divided them into two groups.
One wrote about a time when they had something some wrong committed against them, but they forgave. The other wrote about a time when they had something wrong committed against them, but they did not forgive. And then they told those people to stand at the bottom of a hill to estimate how steep it was, and also, in a separate part of the study, to jump as high as they could.
The unforgiving group guessed that the incline was five degrees steeper on average than the forgiving, and the forgivers jumped seven centimeters higher. So the takeaway here is is you literally it's more difficult for you. You see the world as being more difficult and steeper, and you can't jump as high and you can't accomplish as much if you're holding on to that all kinds of red flags study,
especially when it comes to the jumping part. Yeah, but I thought it was interesting the guessing the incline of the hill.
There may be something to that. Well, yeah, and I mean it is backed up, Chuck, by the physical the physiological studies of how stress and anger affect you and how releasing those can actually help you. There's a lot of research that shows that you can suffer from chronic stress when you're angry all the time, and that that's tied to everything from high blood pressure to diabetes to
poor cardiovascular outcomes. Just a whole host of chronic conditions can be traced back to chronic stress, and chronic stress can be traced back to chronic anger. And what they're discovering is that forgiveness can actually undo that can actually
reverse that. There was a study that rated people based on the life stresses they'd had, and they apparently recruited participants for the study who'd been through a lot of stress so much so that they were basically always chronically stressed because they have had so many terrible events in their life, and there was one group that actually did not have poor health compared to the rest of the group.
And they found that when they gave them a test of forgiveness of how forgiving they were generally, they found that this subset was actually overall a very forgiving group and that that somehow was battling back the chronic stress or the effects of chronic stress on their health in life.
Yeah, I mean, I think that makes complete sense. If you were someone who really has a problem with forgiving and just holds on to these deep, deep resentments against people, usually against people very close to you in your family, even that just that can't be good for you physically.
I've seen it happen. I don't want to get too personal, but there are people in my family who haven't spoken for twenty plus years over dumb stuff that it's like, you see that kind of like stubbornness coupled with resentment, and it's just, man, that is just no way to live. Yeah, no way to live.
Yeah. So there was another one that another study that Dave turned up that shows that even like in a very short term, thinking about holding a grudge can actually affect you physiologically by activating your sympathetic nervous system, as Dave put to the battle or skidaddle impulse. And they found that this these they cut these two groups into
or they cut the participants into two groups. All of the people had to think about some time when they were deeply wronged in the past, and then one group was taken through an exercise where they learned to forgive the person. The other group, this is so mean, was encouraged to hold a grudge. They were basically taught, they went through an exercise to hold a grudge and be
angry and resentment was resentful about that. And they found that the people who were taught to hold the grudge had elevated skin conductance, which meant their nervous system was aroused, higher arterial blood pressure, not good. They also had muscle tension in the brow area you know when your brows furrowed when you're stressed out or madge, and that they the symptoms. Even after they went through an exercise to
basically de escalate everything, the symptoms persisted. And this was just an exercise where you were just thinking about being wronged and then holding a grudge about it. Just like probably this was like an hour out of their lives and that was the effects. That was the findings of that.
It's pretty clear that yes, anger can affect you physically, and what they haven't we don't have the reams of data that we have supporting it like we do that anger hurts you physically, But there seems to be the opposite of that holds true, which is releasing that anger, which is forgiveness in whatever form it takes, can actually improve your health as well.
Right earlier in the episode, we were talking about religion. All religions talk extensively about forgiveness and when they do studies these days, usually like questionnaires and stuff. Depending on the studies you look at, you would think religiosity does play a role in that people who describe themselves as religious, supposedly in some studies are two and a half times more likely to say that others should be forgiven unconditionally.
But I know you found some studies that found that religiosity does not play as big a role as a lot of people think it does, and that sometimes religious people may be more inclined to say that they are forgiving when they aren't because it's the right thing to do.
Yeah, the study found that when when you ask basically, when you survey them, people who are religious tend to come off as more forgiving. They self report is forgiving, but then if you ask them other certain questions, I guess the in real world situations, they're no more forgiving than other people. But so that would be an interpretation that they think they're more forgiving or tell people they're
more forgiving than they actually are. But there was another way to look at it too, and they went back and followed up on that study and they found that over a longer term, people who are religious actually do tend to be more forgiving in their lives. It wasn't like the most set in stone study, but I found it interesting that they were. They had it harder. The religious people in this study had more difficulty in relating grudges that they're carrying around compared to the control group
of people who weren't religious. Yeah, makes sense. Sure there was some redemption there. Yeah.
As far as how to forgive, like we said, hopefully we've gotten it through that is something you can learn. If you are not an inherent forgiver, you can learn how to through practice. There's a psychologist named Worthington, Everett Worthington, Edward Everett, Everett Worthington, there should be a third after that, if he asked, I.
Mean, totally should be.
And Worthington has developed a reach model which we'll go through. It's an acronym.
Of course.
Recall is the first step, and that's to really recall the event in detail, but in the sort of an objective way, and not necessarily something that was done to you, but just to look at the detail of it, try not to judge yourself or the other person, just simply bring that back to your mind.
Yeah, And the point of that is to feel the feelings like we have. We humans have such a tendency to try to get away from negative feelings and run toward positive feelings. And I think Worthington's position is that we have to feel whatever feelings are associated with it, and that's a huge part of it. That's we have to go through that experience. It's part of the recall.
Right to the E stands for empathy. This is one that is I don't know about controversial, but it's not everyone agrees at all on whether or not you need to actually have empathy to forgive. But empathy can certainly help you forgive. If someone has broken into your home and stolen from you, it might help to forgive them. To empathize and think about where they may be in their life to feel like they needed to do something like that is one example.
Yeah, And he points out also like you're not using their behavior right, you're just thinking about them beyond just a villain or criminal or a person who wronged you, for sure. And actually we should say Everett Worthington had to put his money where his mouth was because his mother was actually murdered by a burglar. Yeah, I think back in nineteen ninety seven, yep. And he put himself through this the Reach method, and he said he came out on the other side better off than he had been.
And I think he was already doing this right. That didn't inspire his career, did it?
No? No, I think he was already doing it. Coincidentally, Wow, the ironies. So the A stands for altruistic gift. And the point of this is that you realize that you were actually giving a gift by forgiving somebody, even I guess if you don't tell them, even if you don't
necessarily empathize with them. But the way you do this, the way you recognize that your forgiveness is an altruistic gift, is to think about times where you've wronged somebody and that they've been forgiven or forgiving, and even if you didn't necessarily deserve it, and what a gift that that was, you're kind of bringing it to mind, which I think is really suspiciously kind of tied in with empathizing.
If you ask me, yeah, I mean he was trying to make the word reach sure, commit to. This is what I mentioned earlier about telling someone else that necessarily have to be the person you're forgiving, although that could help if you want to go that route, but telling someone else, at least in Worthington's mind, makes it, gives it a degree of permanence. Man it basically makes it part of your story, like you're changing the story essentially exactly.
And then hold, and this is very important too that we said earlier you can forgive and it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to forget. So when you do remember that kind of thing, you're still going through the process and you're still angered by it. You're still hurt by it, but you're on the path of forgiveness. You have to hold on to the idea that you're working on for
giving them. That is not an instantaneous thing, So you have to hold the fact that you're forgiving them even in the face of, you know, being triggered by or flooded by this again when you think about the memory of it.
Right, Luskin has a nine step process, which we weren't We're not going to really get into, but step eight is interesting. Just like rim says, living well is the best revenge is the sort of the nuts and bolts of number eight, and there's something to be said for that, but I think it also makes it much harder to forgive and move on if you're not able to live well. And that doesn't mean you know, money and riches and stuff like that, right, that means just living a full life.
But if you were not able to forgive and get past that, I mean, there are plenty of movies of people that have been have some awful thing from their past that they're just wallowing in all these years later, and that's the central plot of the film.
You know, she devil Hoosiers, that's right, but that's I mean, that's the that's the point of forgiveness is too, is to free yourself, to find peace within yourself. And yes, it's great for the person who wronged you if you overtly forgive them and let them know, but you don't
have to. And then also, Chuck, there's a whole school thought in psychology that says, not only do you not have to tell the person that you're forgiving them, you don't have to forgive them right at all, and that there's this this whole almost kind of not culty but really kind of dogmatic idea that if you don't follow these steps and you don't like, genuinely fully forgive somebody, you really haven't worked out of the process. There's something
wrong with you. Maybe you're an unforgiving person and that makes you tacky. That's what psychologists call it. And there's a whole group of psychologists say no, no, no, there's there's way more to this process than just you know, nine steps or the reach method like there, there's it's more nuanced than that, and that you can be a fully functioning, emotionally developed person who says, you know what,
I don't forgive you, I may never forgive you. But I'm still going on with my life, right, And if the point of forgiveness is to achieve peace in yourself, If you can achieve peace in yourself and you do it without forgiving somebody because you don't want to forgive them or you don't feel like you should forgive them, then that's okay too. As long as you're getting inner peace, that's the point.
Yeah, And there is a school of thoughts saying that in cases where like it's a harm has been committed to you that could happen again, you may be more likely to have that harm committed to you again if you do forgive too much. Yeah, there is research about spousal abuse that when you are too or when you're quick to forgive the abuser, then you are victimized more regularly than spouse's who aren't as forgiving, And that's based on operant learning. Basically, you're less likely to engage in
a behavior that has a negative consequence. So they've done plenty of research on that, and a lot of psychologists say, like, yeah, forgiveness is great, but while you shouldn't be bitter, there are a lot of times when you should not forgive somebody and that's okay, Yeah.
There's a whole There's an article from nineteen ninety nine on Psychology Today called Must We Forgive? And it is really interesting. It's fascinating that this psychologist writes about probably half a dozen or more people and they're different individual circumstances and the reasons they chose not to forgive, and she kind of pigeonholes them into like three general categories,
but because psychologists love doing that. But it's a really compelling article and it's definitely worth reading, and it provides this kind of alternative idea that like, no, there's definitely situations where some people don't deserve your forgiveness. One of the chief among them is if you say, like a sibling or a family member of some sort you have a like some sort of falling out with or they've
wronged you, and you choose not to forgive them. You might feel tremendous pressure from the rest of your family to just go ahead and forgive them. That's a terrible
reason to forgive somebody. And if you do forgive them under those circumstances, or say because your religion decrees it, you're like, that's not full forgiveness, and it may actually harm you because you may suffer from a distorted self image or lowered self respect because you basically went back to this person who not only wronged you in the past, is unrepentant about it, but it's just going to continue
the behavior again in the future. So there's definitely instances that where you probably shouldn't forgive, But that doesn't mean that you should be stuck in resentment and anger and letting that person have power over your life. You might just need to move on without them and without forgiving them, and you can make that work as well.
Yeah, I mean, there was one terrible story that you said about the woman who as a child had this terribly bullying and abusive older brother.
And we won't even.
Talk about the awful things this guy did, but the parents were really always pushing like, oh, he just doesn't he doesn't know how to say he loves you, he doesn't know how to talk to you, so he does these things and you really need to forgive him. And that's just that's bonkers. You know, that is a situation where you were doing such great harm as a parent to teach your daughter to accept this kind of behavior.
And not only accept it but forgive it. It's like just setting her up for unless she really therapies through that stuff later in life of just a series of terrible relationships. So exactly, yes, yes he can't. Forgiveness isn't always the thing. I have a friend who had a terrible thing happened to him when he was younger, and we talked a lot about this, and he has forgiven that person in his heart and I was like, well, I haven't, and it's like I'm still angry about it.
And he was like thanks, Like that helps, Like I'm angry and have not forgiven on his behalf. And I thought he was going to say like, no, man, you need to do the same, and he was like brother, he was like thank you man, Yeah, I appreciate that.
Yeah. And I think that's another thing worth pointing out too, is we have this concept of people who forgive others being saintly. Yeah, And it's not necessarily that kind of a thing. It's not necessarily that kind of a process.
Sometimes it is just straight up self preservation. Like you are, that's the way that you're going to get to a point where you can feel peace again in your life and That doesn't mean you're a saint, or you're even feeling saintly or you're conducting yourself in a saintly manner, And that doesn't matter as long as you're feeling inner peace in your life is no longer turmoil and this person who wronged you doesn't have power over you any longer. That's the point of forgiveness.
Yeah, And that was totally the deal in his case, is that was his only way forward to healing himself. But since this wasn't something that happened to me, I was able to not forgive and remain upset about it, and he was okay with that.
Yeah, And still to this day, you won't buy that guy of beers Man. So there's one other thing that has started to kind of come out of the shadows that's just getting picked up by psychology as far as forgiveness goes in it's self forgiveness, And we don't really have room to talk about that here, but it's worth exploring sometime maybe in short stuff. Yeah, that's a big deal.
Just a lot of times when I'm beating up on myself, Emily says, you need to be nicer to my friend.
Oh, I know, you've told that before. I was just in one of the sweetest things I've ever heard. What a kind thing to say. It works. You know who needs to hear that? Don Henley, You got anything else on forgiveness? Yeah, nothing else. This is a good way to eat philosophical discussion. I like these, agreed. Thanks a lot to Dave Bruce for helping us out with this one. And if you want to know more about forgiveness, you should seriously go out and do some reading, especially if
you have something to forgive. It's not something you necessarily can understand just instinctively. It helps to see what the experts say. So maybe go explore that and free yourself. Since I said free yourself, that of course means it's time for listener maw.
I'm gonna call this dental art. Hey, guys, been a listener for a while. I've nearly finished with the sandwiching method. Before I knew it was even cool, we were talking a few shows. You were talking a few shows back before the holidays about putting a kidney stone and Chuck's
replacement tooth. This would be unusual, but people actually get custom in lays and artwork made for their crowns inlayser generally gold or gymstone with a custom artwork, and it's referred to as a tooth tattoo, which is hand painted onto the crown before it gets a final clot of glaze. The most common request here in the Chicago Land area are sports logos.
Oh no, like a little Chicago Cubs logo.
Too, But I've seen names, company logos, even a tiny version of Starry Night on a tooth. While a lot of modern crown in Bridge manufacturing has gone digital, highly leveraging cam, A, CAD and three D printing for most restorations, tooth tattoos are unique manifestation of the relatively unknown artistry of a subset of dental technicians.
Wow.
While I recognize the dentistry as a whole as widely disliked and a pain to endure, I appreciate you guys probably unknowingly helped to destigmatize restorative dental work by openly talking about your dealings with it. Toothware and decay is part of the human condition. No need for shame. After all, we will keep me and my CADRA employed and happily listening to stuff you should know. Many regards that is from Eric Crowley or Crowley probably Crowley.
I'm going with Crowley in park Ridge, Illinois. Very nice. Thanks a lot, Eric, that's awesome. Can you imagine seeing Starry Night on a tooth? I gotta look that up. Wonderful. I'd have this scream that's a good one, and then you could scream whenever you reveal it too. Yeah, just freak people out. And speaking of sports teams, Chuck, I feel like we should congratulate our Georgia Bulldogs for winning the national championship.
Yes, never thought I would see the day. What a great, great game, Just unbelievable feeling. Two championships in three months for this long suffering Atlanta slash Georgia van.
I know, it's amazing.
I don't even know how to reconcile these feelings that I'm having lately.
And they'll be robbed from you next year. Don't worry. I'll show her back to normal. But that is pretty great to go out on a highlight. Probably that was great. Go dogs, Go dogs, indeed. And if you want to get in touch with Chuck and I and Jerry or Frank the Chair or Harry dogg even we can probably pass along emails you send. You can wrap your emails up, spank them on the bottom, and send them off to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should Know
is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts myheart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.