After Jesus speaks of His impending betrayal at the Last Supper, the apostles ask uneasily among themselves, “Surely it is not I?”
“It is not the question of the innocent, but of the disciple who discovers himself to be fragile. It is not the cry of the guilty, but the whisper of him who, while wanting to love, is aware of being able to do harm.” —Pope Leo XIV, Wednesday Audience, August 13, 2025.
Christ was very clear about the necessity of forgiving others. When Peter asked how often he should forgive his neighbor, the reply was seventy times seven! We are told not only to love our neighbor but to love our enemies and do good to those who persecute us. Jesus even reminds us of the importance of forgiving others when asking for forgiveness for ourselves. The Our Father contains the all-important phrase: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
Can Science Tell Us Anything About Forgiveness?
One might want to dismiss the input of science when it comes to forgiveness, but many “spiritual” matters cannot be separated from the human person with all the biology and psychology appropriate to the species. Or as Dr. Emiliana Simon-Thomas, a neuroscientist from UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, put it:
"As a neuroscientist, I am always looking for the biological underpinnings of mental processes—not as an effort to distill mystery into molecules, but to understand rich and complex psychological experiences as combinations of simpler building blocks."
Building blocks that can help to understand what is going on!
So let’s take a brief look at the science of forgiveness before diving into self-forgiveness.
Forgiveness
Perhaps not surprisingly, forgiveness studies became more prevalent after World War II, during which so much harm and violence was suffered and inflicted. There are many good reasons in our own time to clarify our understanding of forgiveness. Its importance is highlighted in a recent study:
Forgiveness―a shift in motivation away from retaliation and avoidance towards increased goodwill for the perceived wrongdoer―plays a vital role in restoring social relationships, and positively impacts personal wellbeing and society at large.
Dr. Everett Worthington holds a significant place in the study of forgiveness. With over 40 years of experience studying the nature of forgiveness and its role in repairing relationships, he is considered a leading expert in the field. With several of his graduate students, Dr. Worthington developed a 5-step program to forgiveness, using the acronym REACH.
What About Forgiving Yourself
There is no doubt that each of us has caused harm in small or large ways, even to those we love. In some way, it might be said that we ourselves can be traumatised by our own moral failures. How can we learn to forgive?
Again, science reveals helpful details.
The first distinction made in the introduction to this study is that self-forgiveness, like forgiveness, is not letting anyone “off the hook” for harm done. It is a process of taking responsibility for one’s actions and their consequences, which is the cognitive component.
Alongside the cognitive component “taking responsibility,” however, is the equally powerful emotional component of “releasing negative feelings about the self.” In stronger terms, these negative feelings may be described as “self-hatred.” The authors identify the tension between these two poles as the core challenge of self-forgiveness.
The participants in the study were divided into two groups: those who were able to move forward after wrongs committed and those who were “stuck.” Several interesting distinctions were identified. The first is that those who felt stuck kept reliving the details of their wrongful action as if it were in the present. Their strategy to avoid the distressing emotions this brought out was to avoid thinking about their moral failure. Unfortunately, this strategy seemed to make matters worse.
Active suppression or avoidance of distressing thoughts can (counter-intuitively) lead to the emotions or thoughts re-occurring rather than dissipating. Indeed, research on shame and guilt suggests that these emotions are most problematic when they are associated with avoidance responses. (Cibich et al., 2016)
Those who were moving forward recognized themselves as fallible and focused on the future. They recommitted themselves to the values they had violated and “worked through” their wrongdoing. According to the authors:
"Throughout, we use the term “working through” to describe this active process of moral and emotional engagement that involves acknowledging one’s responsibility, sitting with distressing emotions, and reconciling one’s actions, values, and sense of self.
The decision to let go and move on only followed a period of reckoning–particularly reckoning with one’s responsibility, learning to accept oneself, and learning how to recognize and manage one’s emotions."
In the Discussion section of the study, the authors made the following observation about the relative perception of agency:
"People struggling to self-forgive at times seem to experience a heightened sense of agency (that one should have or could have acted differently), while concurrently presenting defensively (e.g., deflecting responsibility), with one thought negating the other, going back and forth. In contrast, participants who were able to forgive themselves seemed to accept their personal responsibility (i.e., agency), but also expressed an awareness of their personal limitations (i.e., events that were outside of their control)."
In other words, self-forgiveness requires a form of “both/and” thinking, an ability to tolerate a certain amount of contradiction–that one can be both responsible for what happened and the recognition that certain elements were beyond one’s control.
Examining the details of the experiences of these two groups should be helpful to both individuals struggling with the aftermath of wrongful actions and those who counsel them.
Self-forgiveness: What Does God Have To Do With It?
But there is more to the story of self-forgiveness.
Various departments at Harvard University recently collaborated on a study that explored the relationship between self-forgiveness and Divine forgiveness. According to the authors, both types of forgiveness are experienced by offenders and require a “twofold recognition” of self as a moral agent, 1) who has failed; and 2) who still has a capacity to change.
In their considerations, they point to multiple studies that confirm that “feeling forgiven” by a higher power increases both self-forgiveness and forgiveness of others and can decrease associated psychological distress. Apparently, even simply having a positive view of the “sacred” can lead to greater ability to forgive oneself. The authors summarized the relationship this way:
In this view, divine forgiveness might be understood as that which restores a person and brings him or her into a renewed relationship with God/higher power, while self-forgiveness may promote the desire for a good or flourishing life and internally, a unified relationship with oneself.
How To Move Forward
Dr. Worthington recognized the importance of self-forgiveness. In his book Moving Forward, he outlines six steps to self-forgiveness:
- Receive God’s forgiveness
- Repair relationships
- Rethink ruminations
- REACH emotional self-forgiveness
- Rebuild self-acceptance
- Resolve to live virtuously
This should sound familiar to Catholics and Christians alike. Recognizing that Christ took on our sins and paid the price for their harmful consequences is surely a life-giving thought. Or as Pope Leo recently reminded us:
"With God nothing is impossible, life triumphs over death and grace over sin: let us live intensely the sacrament of reconciliation so that our relationship with Him may be alive beyond our betrayals. May divine forgiveness make us in turn merciful to our brothers and sisters." —Pope Leo XIV, August 13, 2025
