Video Transcript

Emily: This is a picture of your brain. And this is a picture of your brain when you stub your toe. But it’s also a picture of your brain when you remember someone who’s really hurt you emotionally. When we feel emotional pain, in particular, resentment, our brain lights up some of the same areas that processes physical pain.

How do we know this is true? In a 2003 study, researchers asked participants to play a virtual ball-tossing game. The game is simple: you toss a virtual ball back and forth among virtual players. The catch is that the other players are actually computers, programmed to eventually stop throwing the ball to the human participant, and leaving him or her out of the game. When participants begin being excluded during a game of cyberball, functional MRI scans showed increased activity in the regions of the brain that also activate during physical pain. 

The cyberball study was foundational in the field of social neuroscience, helping us understand why rejection, loneliness, or resentment can have such serious effects on us.

This is why unforgiveness—or resentment—can be so difficult to navigate. Your brain is designed to detect threats and avoid harm. So when someone hurts you—especially in a very significant way—a deep and primitive part of your brain records that as a threat to your well-being. This memory gets tagged with high emotional intensity – especially bringing up emotions like fear, anger, and shame.

Your body and brain are setting off alarms to tell you that someone who hurt you could do it again. Not only that, your brain works hard to reinforce that memory and preserve that story.

If the wound runs very deep, we can even begin building our sense of self around this pain. So when we try to think of forgiving the person that hurt us, it can feel like letting go of that protection and identity. It can feel like losing control. Resentment and refusing to forgive, on the other hand, can feel powerful. Every time we refuse to forgive and sit in those negative feelings, it feels like we’re dealing out justice to the one who wronged us. But the truth is, it’s actually a form of emotional captivity. 

The amygdala (your brain’s fear and alarm center) and the prefrontal cortex (your brain’s reasoning center) often battle during forgiveness. Because it involves shutting off the threat alarm, which can feel unsafe. Forgiveness can feel unnatural in this way. But healing begins when we begin to write and believe a new story. It means giving up the illusion that feeling pain is what gives us a moral high ground, or accepting that true healing won’t come through punishing someone who wronged us. 

There is research to suggest that practicing forgiveness—even imagined forgiveness—shows signs of reduced stress, lower cortisol levels, and positive changes in our brain activity. Forgiveness can reduce pain and blood pressure, boost our immune system, and contribute to improving our overall sleep. So forgiveness isn’t just a moral virtue—it’s a physiological shift. 

But what about that threat response and avoiding pain in the future? How do we forgive without putting ourselves back in harm’s way? Well this is one of the most remarkable insights into true forgiveness: forgiving someone doesn’t erase the emotional memory, the way the brain processes that memory changes. If you’ve truly forgiven someone, then recalling the event might still cause sadness or discomfort, but it won’t trigger the same brain activity associated with anger, bitterness, or revenge. 

It’s also important to note that forgiveness is not the same as trust. Trust is something that comes with time and experience of a person being trustworthy. But forgiveness is something we can work to choose—whether or not the other person is open to growth, reconciliation, or building trust. 

So, how do we actually forgive? Can we just think our way into forgiveness? If you’ve ever tried this, you know just how hard it can be. You know you need to forgive, but your body and emotions just keep flaring up anytime you think of that person who hurt you. 

Well, there is increasing scientific and psychological evidence that supports the idea that forgiveness must go deeper than a rational decision. 

Memories of harm are not just stored ideas, they carry intense emotional and bodily responses. Dr. Robert Enright is often referred to as “the father of forgiveness research.” At the heart of Dr. Enright’s research is this truth: Forgiveness is not complete until the person moves emotionally from resentment and pain toward empathy, compassion, and emotional release.

So where do we go when our head is telling us to forgive, but our heart and our emotions are all screaming that we can’t? Just saying “I forgive” or deciding to forgive isn’t enough. In fact, we can’t really choose to forgive fully if we ignore our emotions or rush past them. 

Neuroscience and psychology are beginning to validate what phrases like “forgiveness from the heart” have intuitively expressed for centuries: that true forgiveness involves not just our thoughts, but our emotions, identity, relationships, and even our bodies. And this old wisdom also brings to mind questions about the spiritual implications of forgiveness.

So science is just now catching up to this much more ancient wisdom. And if forgiveness can rewire the brain, what else can it do?