Forgiveness just might save your life.

Nathaniel Wade, assistant professor of psychology, recently completed research on forgiveness, and although he isn’t releasing the results as of now, he said the benefits for forgiving a person included a reduction in anxiety and depression and improvements in physiological responses, such as lowered blood pressure and heart rate.

Marty Martinez, staff psychologist at Student Counseling Services, said he has seen the power of forgiveness in his clients and knows most psychologists recognize forgiveness as the best way for people to get over past hurts.

“[Not forgiving] creates a lot of tension,” he said. “It hurts self-esteem and future relationships. It’s not a default response to forgive. Deep inside us, there is a need to be forgiven; the more you forgive, the more you feel you can be forgiven.”

Wade said there have been approximately 15 studies published that look at only one type of forgiveness, inducing therapy and a type of method-finding workshop called explicit forgiveness interventions.

“A forgiveness intervention is a workshop or interactive, discussion-oriented material to find techniques for forgiveness,” Wade said. “At the end of the workshop, some people run through [forgiving someone].”

The problem with these studies, he said, is they haven’t looked at whether the forgiveness interventions were more effective than other bona fide paths toward forgiveness.

Wade’s forgiveness study looked at the difference in the effectiveness of treatments between being wait-listed, which means not being helped at all, traditional psychotherapy and forgiveness intervention.

The study brought in approximately 35 people from the community to go through a forgiveness intervention.

Wade stressed the importance of letting people forgive in their own time.

“No good therapist would come in with an agenda and say, ‘You have to forgive [this person],'” he said.

Wade said the best definition he has for unforgiveness is a motivation to avoid or to seek revenge for a hurt a person has received.

Conversely, forgiveness does not necessarily require reconciliation or pardoning the person for what they did. Martinez said the difference between forgiveness and reconciliation is an important one. He said a person can forgive without restarting the relationship with the person.

“If you choose, you can rebuild the relationship with [the person you forgave], but sometimes is not healthy or recommended,” he said.