Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it. – Mark Twain.

Forgiveness can be defined as a coping mechanism which may be relevant for individuals, communities, and nations (Toussaint et al., 2020). Forgiveness can be conceptualized as a trait and a state (Ripley et al., 2018). Specifically, the trait refers to a global tendency to forgive over time, relationships, and situations, while the state denotes forgiving a specific transgression. Furthermore, there are intrapersonal forgiveness and interpersonal forgiveness (Worthington, 2020a). The former refers to a person’s internal process of forgiveness, while the latter is forgiveness that occurs in interaction with other people. Researchers agree that forgiveness is not about forgetting, pardoning, justifying, or reconciling (Enright et al., 2016). Forgiving requires honesty (Witvliet, 2020) and remembering (Misztal, 2011), which are not possible if one tries to deny offense and its consequences.

Ruminating on the offense may make it hard to let go of it (Siedlecka et al., 2015), although studies’ findings related to forgiveness and rumination are mixed (McCullough et al., 2007; Wenzel et al., 2010). It could be that rumination may aid or disturb forgiving depending on whether it is constructive or destructive (Nolen-Hoeksema et al., 2008; Treynor et al., 2003; Watkins, 2008). Destructive rumination, for example, is immersive, self-absorbing, brooding, and uncontrollable repetitive thinking with worries, depressive mood, anxiety, and stress. One might try to solve problems with destructive rumination, but because of the stress, depressed mood, and anxiety, the problem solving might not be successful. Constructive rumination includes, for example, actively taking different perspectives, self-reflection, favorable future orientation, proactive goal setting, and creating positive meanings (Watkins, 2008; Yun et al., 2023).

Destructive rumination probably strengthens anger towards the transgressor and may make it difficult to let go of the pain. On the contrary, it may be that constructive rumination allows one to view the transgression more adaptively from various angles, helps to focus on oneself instead of the transgressor, encourages to make healthy choices related to well-being, and helps to find new and favorable meanings for the transgression and the self and eventually forgive (see Wenzel et al., 2010). Furthermore, when one forgives, the memory of the hurt may take a new form, which might be less painful (Enright et al., 2016; Noreen & MacLeod, 2021).

Forgiveness might promote better mental health and well-being (Long et al., 2020; Toussaint et al., 2016). Forgiving helps to remove a barrier from a relationship (Fincham, 2000) and supports maintaining it after the hurt (Young et al., 2013). Forgiveness may bring many emotions, such as happiness, joy, inner peace, love, calmness, compassion, and an overall pleasant affect (Akhtar et al., 2017; Kim et al., 2022).

Worthington (2020a) identifies two main categories regarding how people forgive: decisional and emotional forgiveness. Decisional forgiveness describes behaviors that not to seek revenge and, if possible, treat transgressors with benevolence. Emotional forgiveness is defined as replacing unpleasant feelings with pleasant feelings towards the offender. Worthington (2020b) has also created the REACH Forgiveness model, which includes Recall the hurt, Emotionally replace unpleasant emotions with pleasant emotions, Altruistic gift of forgiveness, Commitment to the forgiveness, and Hold onto forgiveness when doubts arise. In addition, McCullough (2000) has created the motivational model of forgiveness, which is based on the idea that forgiveness is a prosocial act in which the individuals’ motivation to avoid or avenge diminishes and the motivation to be benevolent increases. In addition, there is the process model (Enright & Coyle, 1998) where one’s thoughts and emotions towards the transgressor gradually change from unpleasant to pleasant and one feels empathy and compassion for the transgressor. In this model, forgiveness is understood as a moral gift to the transgressor and it is not “a self-seeking activity, but one that focuses morally on the offending person” (Enright & Coyle, 1998, p. 147).

Although some studies investigated the links between forgiveness and physical health, there is still little understanding about causality and how forgiveness may affect to the body (Toussaint et al., 2020). However, in laboratory settings, more forgiveness is related to smiling, slower heartbeat, lower blood pressure, calmer physiology, increased activity of parasympathetic nervous system, and more relaxed facial muscles (da Silva et al., 2017; Lawler-Row et al., 2011; Witvliet et al., 2010, 2011, 2015). The present study contributes to the field of forgiveness research and social psychology by approaching forgiveness as a multifaceted, embodied emotional narrative process. Previous studies on the emotions and embodiment of forgiveness are predominantly quantitative in design and based on theoretical assumptions and correlations. The current study, with its qualitative design, offers an empirical, in-depth, unique, and novel approach to how exactly the forgiveness process from the transgression to forgiveness is felt and embodied, and how this process is narrated.

Embodied Emotions and Forgiveness

Emotions are dynamic and progressive processes in nature (Verduyn, 2021). One component of emotions is that they cause physical reactions (Mendes, 2016) and they are thoroughly embodied (Wu et al., 2020). Another component in emotions is the transformation process of being present in the world and in one’s body (Lindsay-Hartz et al., 1995). Indeed, emotions are presumably involved in all psychological processes (Kuppens et al., 2013). Embodiment may be defined as the way in which individuals’ emotions, thoughts, and behaviors are based on bodily interplay with the world (Meier et al., 2012). Embodiment connects bodily experiences with psychological processes and links them together. People make sense of their embodied experiences and perceptions depending on the social and cultural resources they have in their environment (Martikainen & Sakki, 2023).

Individuals use their lived experiences to make sense of who they are and what their life story is (McAdams & Dunlop, 2022). Usually, people remember emotional memories well (McGaugh, 2004). With time and experience, emotions become more nuanced and differentiated (Carstensen et al., 2000), which may partially explain why older people might forgive more easily than young people do (Kaleta & Mróz, 2018). Nevertheless, forgiveness may not be easy, because transgressions can arouse many emotions, like anger (Stackhouse et al., 2016) and a need for revenge (Young et al., 2013). Forgiving may not always lessen resentment (Bankard et al., 2022); however, forgiveness and revenge may sometimes occur simultaneously and be intertwined (Haikola, 2023).

One way to navigate through transgressions is to forgive, which may help to broaden one’s perspective (Gall & Bilodeau, 2021), deal with stress (Toussaint et al., 2016), decrease the experience of victimization (Quintana-Orts et al., 2021), lessen emotional exhaustion (Costa & Neves, 2017), reduce unpleasant emotion (Zhang et al., 2020), and increase pleasant emotion (Green et al., 2012). While much attention has been paid to forgiveness as an emotional process (Worthington, 2020a) that causes bodily reactions (Witvliet et al., 2015), many studies have failed to investigate emotions and embodiment related to the forgiveness process using real-life transgressions that have been forgiven and investigating the process from transgression to forgiveness. Although it is important that we study forgiveness in laboratory settings and gain interesting results from it, laboratory studies may not always correlate with the everyday phenomena and complex world in which people live (Leib et al., 2021). Regarding forgiveness, the literature predominantly focused on exploring the links between emotions and bodily reactions (e.g., Crowley et al., 2021; Witvliet, 2020; Worthington & Scherer, 2004) rather than looking at it holistically, from different angles and from transgression to forgiveness to capture the whole process and the many factors involved. How this emotional embodied process exactly manifests remains unknown. Social psychological research and narrative inquiry can shed light on how forgiveness happens on an embodied, sensory, and emotional level. The use of qualitative method makes it possible to contextualize embodied experiences of forgiveness, to mobilize the unique perspectives of participants, and to foster the agency of the forgivers. These embodied and individual points of view may not be captured when the forgiveness process is studied, for example, through surveys and correlations. By using real-life transgressions and asking people to describe forgiveness in their own words, rather than just checking off the ready-made options on surveys, we get closer to the question of how forgiveness is experienced and embodied. Therefore, this study aims to address the underexplored relation between forgiveness and embodiment.

In this article, I approach forgiveness as an embodied emotional narrative process. Specifically, I focus on answering the following question: How embodiment and emotions are used to make sense of the narrative forgiveness process? Given the identified knowledge gap regarding the emotions and embodiment of forgiveness, I chose to concentrate on how forgiveness is constructed and narrated on an embodied emotional level.

Method

Procedure

The researcher recruited 23 participants. They were enlisted via an ad on public social media channels (i.e., Facebook) and through open ads in public spaces. The only criterion was being an adult with one forgiveness experience. One interview was excluded from the analysis since the participant’s transgressor was abusive; they were in an unhealthy relationship and forgave the abuser repeatedly. I guided this participant to seek professional help from their occupational health care. Before the interviews, I emailed the interview questions and the writing tasks to the participants and called them to ask where they were in their forgiveness process, how psychologically safe they felt to disclose transgression and forgiveness, and whether they were suffering from any trauma that might be activated during the interview. One participant preferred email to phone, so we went through the same questions by email. All felt safe to disclose. Participation was voluntary and participants were informed that they could withdraw from the study at any time without giving a reason. Before and after the interviews, participants had the opportunity to ask questions about the research process, reflect on their emotions about the interview, and speak freely about any issues they wished to share. I encouraged them to contact me if they had anything important to add or share after the interviews.

I applied the McAdams’s life story interview as a semistructured thematic interview (McAdams, 1985). The McAdams’s life story interview can be used to investigate the whole life story or just some parts of it (Adler et al., 2017). It aims to capture an individual’s life in detail, memories, relationships, values, and the personal meanings one has about their life experiences. The procedure encourages the participant to imagine that life is like a book with many chapters and to ponder what kind of important chapters their own life story would include. The interview method was applied to concern participants’ one particular forgiveness experience. It provided a coherent way to delve into the participants’ narratives with emotional, embodied, and sensory content. There were six themes in the interview: life situation, values, and worldviews; transgression; forgiveness process; relationship with the offender; meaning of forgiveness; and wishes for forgiveness in the future. Participants were asked to describe the emotions they felt during their forgiveness process.

In addition, the interview method contained a writing task: participants wrote a story or chapter titles regarding their forgiveness process like they would write a (short) story. They were asked to imagine that their forgiveness experience was like a book with different chapters and to consider what central chapters their own forgiveness story would contain. This is a powerful and useful method as people naturally put their experiences into a story form with themselves as the protagonist (McAdams & Dunlop, 2022). By using this method, it is possible to gain a deeper understanding of individual agency and personal meanings in relation to forgiveness. The McAdams’s life story interview was applied by using open-ended questions and questions related to the thoughts, emotions, embodiment, and turning points of forgiveness; low and high points of the process; meaningful episodes; narrated causal events; important people related to the process, ideal role models of forgiveness; values related to forgiveness; and wishes for forgiveness in the future. First, I asked questions about their life situation, values, worldviews, and transgressions. Then, I asked them to write a story about their forgiveness process. After asking them to write, the participants presented the writing task verbally. When they finished, I asked additional questions related to their story (e.g., emotions, thoughts, and embodiment). Then, we moved on to other topics (relationship with the transgressor; meaning of forgiveness; and wishes for forgiveness in the future) as in the usual interview manner.

This article is focused on the narratives of 22 participants. I noted that the process of forgiveness was described emotionally and in an embodied way. These emotions and embodiment could be investigated thoroughly and in more detail via the narrative method. I concentrated on the narratives of emotions and embodiment and the metaphors which bind forgiveness and embodiment together. Due to the restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic, participants chose the setting of the interview: three wished to take part only by writing, seven interviews were conducted face to face in eastern and southern Finland, and 12 via the university’s secured video connection. Different interview settings had no effect on the disclosure of personal, emotional, and sensitive topics, although those who participated only by writing provided more compact answers compared to oral interviews. The interviews were altogether 1626 min. On average, one interview was about 86 min; the longest was 140 and the shortest, 49 min. I asked the participants for authorization to record and transcribe all interviews. The analysis material consisted of 314 transcribed pages of interview responses, 18 pages of written responses, and 27 pages of writing tasks.

Participants

Forgiveness research is an emerging and young field of study (Worthington, 2020a) and the nature of qualitative research is not to generalize results (Willig, 2022). Therefore, I chose not to collect specific background information, as the only meaningful criterion for my research was being an adult with an experience of forgiveness. My research task was not to compare relationships between forgiveness and gender, age, etc. Participants were given the choice of what personal information they wanted to share. They mostly did so at the beginning of the interview when I asked them to describe themselves, their current life situation, their values, and their worldviews. All participants were Finns from eastern and southern Finland. Those who voluntarily shared their age ranged from 26 to 62. Nine of the participants identified as religious, three as spiritual, and three as atheists, and the remaining seven could not categorize their worldview or recognize that it included some elements of religion, spirituality, or agnosticism. Participants’ transgressions related to, for example, abusive or neglectful (step)parents or partners, being abandoned by a romantic partner or friend, infidelity, betrayals by friends and relatives, threats to end employment contract by manager, bullying in the workplace, and relatives’ decision not to be in contact anymore.

Analysis

My understanding of the concept of narrative is based upon that of Bruner (1987): (1) individuals form their narratives in an interpretive way, (2) there is no “life itself” outside the narrative, (3) narratives are culturally shaped, and (4) people became the narratives they are forming. Therefore, the narrative may take many forms and manifest broadly, not only in the traditional form of beginning–middle–end. My aim is not to analyze only “big stories,” but also “small stories,” which construct the everyday life people live and the identity content individuals provide about their selves (Bamberg & Georgakopoulou, 2008). In the field of narrative research, the understanding of narratives has expanded and their complexity has been acknowledged (Hyvärinen et al., 2010). In the analysis below, narratives serve as functions of personal coping (see Murray, 2000). Individuals use lived experiences, sensory information, and perceptions, which are stored in emotional memories. They become alive and reconstructed through narratives and sensemaking of transgressions in the interviews. Individual well-being is less about what happened than whether individuals can construct a coherent, logical, and meaningful narrative and bind it to their life story (McAdams & Dunlop, 2022).

I chose to approach the material through thematic narrative analysis (Riessman, 2008). I read the material a few times and then again, making highlights and notes in the papers and a notebook. I interpreted interviews separately as individual narratives, but noticing commonalities and discrepancies. I focused on forgiveness narratives that contained embodied, sensory, and/or emotional content. I read narratives again and again from the perspective of analysis levels and pondered the content, meaning, and what participants wished to express. After that, I formed an interpretation of embodied emotional forgiveness. Then, I shifted the material to the ATLAS.ti software and started coding according to the highlighting and notes. Codes were sorted by themes and included one or several sentences. There was some overlap in the codes (some of the same points had more than one code) because of the rich and multilayered material with many meanings. I moved to writing analysis and formed themes based on the coding. The themes that were formed in the data-driven analysis process concentrated on emotions and embodiment pertaining to forgiveness processes. In the analysis, participants are referred to by codes (P1 is Participant 1 and so on). All quotations are translated into English by the author. Re-reading and revising were present in every phase, and I kept a research diary throughout the process to reflect on my understanding of the participants’ stories.

Results

Forgiveness as Empowerment and Painful Transformation

The results are organized into five subthemes: (1) forgiveness as a liberation, (2) forgiveness as a relief from a burden, (3) forgiveness as releasing energy, (4) forgiveness through vulnerability, and (5) forgiveness through hate. Empowerment and pain were connective, overarching themes which bind all the subthemes together. Next, I go through the five subthemes and give verbatim extracts. Some material extracts may represent more than one subtheme. Some overlap is inevitable due to the qualitative nature of the material (see Hänninen & Koski-Jännes, 2023), the new and unique research field which is less studied and understood, and the impossibility of categorizing some narratives under only one subtheme because of the overarching themes (compare Hydén, 2021).

Participants described forgiveness in terms of power and how forgiveness made them stronger. I asked participants to describe forgiveness with one word. The most common words were freedom or liberating and peace or inner peace. Other emotional or somatic words in order from common to least common were grace, lightness, light feeling, relief, compassion, letting go, and calmness. They described the process as emotional: emotions had many layers which changed and occurred in various cycles. In addition, they described forgiveness in embodied and sensory language. The process was not just empowering; it was also painful. In the analysis, empowerment and pain are overarching themes which repeat. In this section, there is also an analysis of unforgiveness, as participants described it at the same time as they narrated forgiveness.

Forgiveness as a Liberation (13 Participants)

Freedom or liberation was very common, and was mingled with empowerment. The narrators described forgiveness as a positive power which brings goodness to one’s life. Forgiveness seemed to happen relatively fast in some of these narratives, like a thunderbolt or hurricane. Narratives emphasized the sensory level: they described forgiveness in terms of sensory information and embodied senses. Forgiveness was something amazing, wonderful, and splendid which fulfilled individuals and surprised them with its power and magnitude. It seemed that this kind of state was so extraordinary and almighty; it was unlike anything they had ever experienced in their entire lives. There was nothing that could be compared to liberating forgiveness. P10 narrated how forgiveness affected them on an emotional, embodiment, and sensory level immediately after they received an apology message:

It was so amazing and empowering. I felt like I wanted to hug the whole world. It was exciting [...] It was not a decision, it did not happen by thinking. I was sitting in front of my computer screen at work. It was, you know, like the weight just fell off my shoulders [when I read the apology email]. It was completely emotional. It had nothing to do with reason. When I think about this whole process, it’s been driven by emotions. It was instantaneous when I saw the email. [...] I used to think I couldn’t see colors, but then I saw colors. I saw a kind of freedom and light. I was empowered, but I also felt very strong. I was so happy and excited. Even in a physical way, like oh yeah this is so cool and I’m out of control. It was so physical.

This participant’s shoulders dropped, and they saw light and freedom. The feeling was ecstatic and eager. Forgiveness was positively associated with visual perception and seeing colors in the world. This could be interpreted as forgiveness broadened their perspective and visual perception. There was not just black and white, but a wonderful and free world with all the shades that could be fully felt and embodied. Another participant (P18) narrated forgiveness as eye-opening: both for them and the transgressor. In addition, P1 described forgiveness as “opening a door and windows to the outside world” and P20 as “seeing into the future.” Opening eyes, doors, or windows meant seeing reality, individuals’ differences, and the situation as it was, facing it without defenses or embellishments. These metaphors suggest that forgiveness was an eye-opening experience that was positively embodied and felt. Forgiveness brought them the security to be present in the world, new possibilities, a sense of belonging, and interaction with the world. For the participants, the result of forgiveness was marvelous sensations, a positive expectation of a future full of hope, honesty, happiness, peace of mind, and satisfying relationships. Participants narrated the embodiment of forgiveness in different ways. P11 narrated the body parts where unforgiveness and forgiveness were sensed in their perspective:

I think that hate and bitterness or being hurt is also felt on a physical level. Often like a belt around the chest, tension in the jaw. Sometimes hate can be felt as a headache. forgiveness may liberate and relax the body and this belt and tension I described disappears. Warmth inside me spread out from my chest.

This participant described how being hurt is an embodied state that includes hate and bitterness. Unforgiveness was described as a tension in the jaw or chest area and as a headache. Forgiveness brought release and drove out the unforgiveness from the body. Forgiveness may be interpreted as an operator or a power which settles down inside the chest and starts to spread warmness. Forgiveness expelled hate and bitterness from the body through its power and released the individual from the burden. After this expulsion, the body was in balance and harmony.

In sum, forgiveness was framed as the end of the victim’s story. Someone who is no longer a victim can take control of their life and have power. The empowerment that followed forgiveness enabled them to fully live the life they wanted on an emotional, embodied, and sensory level.

Forgiveness as a Relief from a Burden (12 Participants)

Participants constructed unforgiveness as chains or a heavy burden which one carried in one’s body and mind. Unforgiveness caused painful and horrible effects that they wanted to avoid. Sometime after the transgression, they understood that they needed to get rid of unforgiveness, because it destroyed and possessed them. A central image within this subtheme was that forgiveness was referred to as a dropping weight, and it was described as a concrete, physical phenomenon. The description of emotions was also a clear sign of this subtheme: emotions told participants the truth about whether or not forgiveness had taken place. If participants felt mostly grudge, bitterness, and anger, they considered that they had not forgiven. If they did not feel these emotions so strongly and instead felt more forgiveness than before, they concluded that they had forgiven. For a few participants, the sign of forgiveness was simply not actively feeling hatred, even if the feeling of forgiveness was not described. It is noteworthy that when participants narrated forgiveness as an emotional process, it was also equally described as quite neutrally and calmly, with very little emotion, and it was even referenced as a “boring state” (P15). This seemed to be the case when the process happened a long time ago. So, it was not as emotionally charged as it was described when forgiveness happened.

P21 constructed forgiveness as “a stone which falls away from the heart.” Some participants described how unforgiveness was eating them inside. But forgiveness allowed for lightness and balance, like P14 narrated: “My overall physical and emotional state becomes lighter. The heavy weight on my shoulders transforms into wistfulness somewhere near my heart.” What distinguished this subtheme from forgiveness as a liberation was the participants’ narration of how something unpleasant and negative left them. That enabled the embodied sense of relief and alleviation of the pain. Liberation seemed to be more an intense and empowering state than relief. It was as if something went inside them and emancipated them.

Participants narrated the differences between unforgiveness and forgiveness. All of them constructed forgiveness as a state they wished for and could hold on to. They narrated the negative effects of unforgiveness on physical and psychological health, like bitterness and grudge. Participants described a need to protect themselves from the results of unforgiveness. They narrated that it is important to forgive in order to get rid of difficult feelings that unforgiveness contains. The idea was to let go of bitterness and hate. Bitterness or grudge was conceptualized as a poisonous power (“drinking tar” or a “bogey monster” as P15 described) that restricts one’s life, makes one ill, causes insomnia, induces anxiety, destroys one’s mind and soul, and is a barrier to personal goals. One participant described how they carried unforgiveness in their heart for 20 years and how relieving it was to let go of the unforgiveness by forgiving (P6). P11 narrated forgiveness as a mindful state:

That transgressor will leave my mind [when I forgive]. If I don’t forgive, then I feel like that shit stays inside me in a different way. Usually I allow myself to be angry for a while because I feel it is also important for me. Usually forgiveness can happen on its own. I notice that aha, okay, now I don’t feel so bad or this doesn’t hurt me. That’s when I realize that forgiveness has happened.

This participant described the benefits of forgiveness: forgiveness allowed the transgressor to be removed from one’s mind. If they did not forgive, all the unpleasantness of unforgiveness would have stayed inside. They stated that it is important to sometimes let oneself to be angry. This was a common experience for the participants. Being angry meant that they were acknowledging their pain and getting in touch with it. Without this phase, forgiveness was not possible for them. This narrative illustrates how forgiveness was a relief, and it may have happened suddenly and passively without conscious effort. Spontaneous forgiveness was reported by nine participants, although almost all were trying to forgive or process the transgression. Despite this work, forgiveness was a spontaneous result. They simply noticed at some point that they no longer felt unforgiveness and concluded that they had forgiven. Honest emotions were an important part of their process. P10 described how they recognized that they had not forgiven some people because of how they felt:

It was a meaningful situation when I forgave. I thought that, if I can forgive this person, I can also forgive another person. That [experience of forgiveness] fulfilled itself and I wanted to forgive more because it was such a wonderful feeling. So I can say that I haven’t been able to forgive some people completely because it doesn’t feel the same. There’s no freedom.

This participant narrated the conditions of forgiveness in terms of emotions. They described how one particular forgiveness experience enlarged their perspective: if they could forgive one transgressor, they could also forgive another. The embodiment of forgiveness was described as freedom and a wonderful feeling that one always desires more, like something sweet to eat or a feeling of being in love. They described the self-perpetuating cycle of forgiveness. Some participants narrated that they realized when they had not forgiven some people because it did not feel the same and they had not reached the state of freedom. For almost all participants, emotions seemed to dominate their forgiveness, and anger and grudge hindered forgiveness. Many described that they had difficulties to affect their emotions, although they tried to deal with them. Through this emotional work, participants created space for forgiveness. P1 described how they had not forgiven some transgressions due to a lack of embodied work, and how they wished that “the transgression would come out of my body or go through my body and mind.” P11, in their words, needed to process the unforgiveness out of their body by running and hitting a punching bag.

Participants recognized their forgiveness when the emotions and embodiment of unforgiveness were gone or mostly gone and when they were able to find peace. Some realized that they still needed to work on some other transgressions because of the absence of relief that they experienced after forgiving. For them, emotional and embodied relief was the sign of forgiveness.

Forgiveness as Releasing Energy (Seven Participants)

Forgiveness and unforgiveness were narrated as invisible energies or forces that flowed through participants’ bodies. These forces affected them on many levels, which highlights why the core of this subtheme was about releasing energy. The central feature was the word “energy” and the emotional and embodied meanings related to it. In this subtheme, unforgiveness was like life energy that was stuck and burdensome, but forgiveness empowered individuals to be free again and continue life without that extra burden. Forgiveness energy mitigated unforgiveness and enabled one to push away the bitterness and anxiety. Participants stated that forgiveness should clearly be carried along in life; it cleanses the mind and body internally and gives energy to life. It is notable that they literally constructed unforgiveness as something to carry, like a heavy coat or a suitcase. In addition, unforgiveness was also a detrimental energy which caused them harm. Shedding this weight gave participants new energy through forgiveness. P18 described forgiveness in terms of freedom:

[Forgiveness] releases from bad things… Also inside, in my own head… And with other people. It feels like there’s a clean table. New possibilities, hope, love benevolence, peace. I guess [forgiveness] also affects mental health. Stressful situations are when I’ve hurt someone, or I’ve been hurt. Until there’s forgiveness, it’s like living under spiritual pressure. [...] Forgiveness is a deliverance from… dark, heavy slime [laughs]. This slime, of course, sometimes fuels people in a sick way. That’s why people tend to hold grudges for so long. Maybe they can’t help it, but it’s also like in Star Wars. Darth Vader says that this dark side is very enjoyable [laughs]. Raw power. Raw energy. If they can live with that, the angry person might not feel bad.

This participant narrated the practices of unforgiveness and forgiveness. They highlighted that forgiveness does not only affect the forgiver but also the other people around them. They used a metaphor of a clean table, which means that conflict was over, transgression is processed, and people may move on to the bright, hopeful, and loving future. Before forgiveness, nearly all participants reported their lives were under pressure on a spiritual and mental health level, which they considered unhealthy. Unforgiveness was illustrated as a palpable, heavy, and dark slime which filled people. Unforgiveness was narrated as a dark side of human nature through Darth Vader from Star Wars. This side was constructed enjoyable and powerful which easily seduces individuals and takes control over them. P18 stated that when an individual embodies Darth Vader, they do not want to forgive but only hold a grudge and live from that raw and angry energy. Being powerful like Darth Vader was framed as so tempting that one may not even feel bad but may cause harm to others.

Nearly all participants narrated forgiveness as a hard and long process. Few participants considered that their every forgiveness process is individual and unique; it is not the same every time. The duration of the process varied from view months to years. But when they were able to forgive, it was worth all the pain. P19 narrated forgiveness as a result of a burdensome process:

I think that [forgiveness] is specifically an alleviation. I feel that energy is released, that I don’t have to be angry all the time. [...] How that feels, good question, I have never thought about that. I guess I have energy to spend on other things. It is a burdensome process. When you can put it to an end, you get a deliverance from that transgression.

This participant described forgiveness in the context of relief. Forgiving released the participant to live a life which that individual enjoys. Being angry all the time was detrimental and stressful. Anger used up the individual’s energy and caused a feeling of heaviness. This quote illustrates how there was some amount of energy in the participant, and how unforgiveness imbalanced energy levels. This was a common narrated experience with participants. Forgiveness restored that balance and enabled participants to reach stability again. Participants described how unforgiveness took away their energy capacity. This emotional narrative is based on the idea that there was emotional energy inside one’s body that needs to get out and be purged in order for one to be free.

Participants narrated hate as a very strong embodiment state. Hate possessed them, filled them, drained their resources, and was described as “coming from deep within” (P2). Sadness was mingled with rage at injustice, both of which were discharged from the body through crying. These participants wished to pursue forgiveness to get back the resources and power which hate controls. Some participants noticed their forgiveness state as the end of hatred and bitterness. This state was narrated mostly as neutral and living without a grudge. For instance, P12 narrated that forgiveness feels like “having some distance, receiving oxygen.”

Overall, this subtheme suggests that forgiveness and unforgiveness were constructed in terms of energy. Participants made sense of forgiveness and unforgiveness due to their embodied energy states and levels. This energy state told them whether they have forgiven or not.

Forgiveness Through Vulnerability (14 Participants)

In this subtheme, participants narrated forgiveness in terms of fear, weakness, and vulnerability. Courage was needed to forgive and live through scary and unpredictable emotions. The process was harder than they expected, and it was narrated as having a “heart split into two parts” (P16). Participants narrated how forgiveness was a difficult and painful process. Some participants experienced that transgressions were related to traumatic incidents, which made the process even more complex and hard. They described pain and fear and how they struggled with these difficult and complex emotions. They also needed to work with these emotions physically, and this vocabulary was embodied. For example, one participant described how the transgression shook the core of their identity (P20). They also used other embodied descriptions and metaphors. P9 narrated forgiveness with the metaphor of a fishhook:

There’s a metaphor that says you are on a fishhook with your transgressor. I can’t get out of it unless I push my mother off the hook first. Only after that I can remove the hook that is piercing me. This forgiveness process of forgiveness represents that I have to let go of the transgressor before I can get out… I experienced this at the beginning of the forgiveness process… first there was fear, when I pushed her out of it, but later there was relief when I realized that I could get out too.

This participant used the fishhook metaphor very vividly. This participant and their mother, the transgressor, were stuck on the fishhook. The only way for the participant to get free of was to push their mother out from it. Only after that could they release themselves. The metaphor was embodied and strong in a sense that unforgiveness was like a limited space, a prison, where the victim was forced to live with the transgressor. Being pierced by the fishhook was painful and bloody. The victim held the key to freedom, but first, they needed to liberate the transgressor. This process was narrated as scary, but it changed to relief when the participant realized that they too were able to get off the fishhook. This extract resembles the experience of surrender and letting go and also the contrary experience of an emotion changing into its opposite. Many pleasant and unpleasant feelings, such as gratitude and anger, were present simultaneously in participants’ stories. P10 narrated the polarity between feeling strong and weak:

I don’t feel strong and I don’t need to be strong. I’m rather weak. If I would face a new transgression, the best thing I could do would be to cry immediately and say ‘you really hurt me’. And then I would move on. But I’m allowed my feelings, I have a right to show them.

This participant described how they do not need to be mentally tough. They stated that the transgression they had experienced changed them: if a new transgression were to happen in the future, they would not act strong but weak. Weakness was constructed as a wise choice without submission. Weakness allowed this individual to be loyal to and respect their emotions. That state enabled the individual to be in contact with their emotions, process them, and move on. This seemed to be the key to forgiveness for almost all the participants. Without being in touch with their vulnerability, they could not have recognized that they were wounded and that they needed to heal it and forgive. It seemed that acting tough would only prolong the pain, but embracing weakness and vulnerability was how wounds would heal.

Overall, participants embraced their vulnerability, and it helped them to forgive. Being vulnerable and weak was an important part of the process to really surrender and deal with the transgression. Without vulnerability, they would not have met their needs and expressed their emotions. Forgiveness through vulnerability was authentic and real.

Forgiveness Through Hate (19 Participants)

Participants described hate as part of the forgiveness process. Hate was an intense emotion during the process, and they needed to face and deal with it. Moreover, the emotion needed to be actually felt and processed bodily. It seemed that hate was built into the forgiveness process, and they needed to acknowledge that. Otherwise, hate could have turned into bitterness and would ruin their lives. These narratives were formed around stress, mental health, and well-being. This subtheme contained negotiations between pleasant and unpleasant emotions. However, there were indications of mixed pleasant and unpleasant emotions: P1 narrated how “The result is the worst and the best. Personal development hurts and it’s amazing.” Half of the participants expressed feelings of pride, joy, satisfaction, and peace when they were able to undo their intensive hate and finally forgive. They were delighted that they had developed themselves on a mental level. Forgiveness seemed to happen slowly and gradually in these narratives with hate. P6 narrated the cyclic process of emotions:

It was the hate and the pain. They went hand in hand. Or well, maybe first I experienced the pain. After that I experienced awful hate. I felt hate, but then I felt pain. When I had screamed and cried my eyes out, then there was a growing willingness to forgive.

This participant described hate and pain when they were processing a traumatizing transgression. Hate and pain occurred together: side by side and sequentially. This narrative contains strong embodied practices, in which bodily work helped them to process pain and hate. The body needed to scream and cry the transgression out. Eventually, this embodied work led to a motivation of forgiveness. P6 processed their anger and was able to release it. Overall, the majority of participants considered that staying with the hate phase would sap their energies and poison them inside. Participants who felt hate also understood that they suffered the most and that is why they wished to pursue forgiveness. At some point, hate turned into compassion and forgiveness.

When I asked participants to write a story about their process, many considered dealing with the transgression and unforgiveness as part of it. Some narrated that some forgiveness happened during this process of dealing with the transgression, when they still felt unforgiveness. This means that forgiveness and unforgiveness may not always be opposites: they may be intertwined and exist at the same time. Hate may be part of forgiveness and this hate may come back sometimes. The boundaries between forgiveness and unforgiveness may not be so black and white: in fact, they may overlap. For example, P15 interestingly placed joy at the top, forgiveness in the middle, and hate and bitterness at the bottom. They narrated that these aspects are intertwined and interact with each other, and the best solution was to live in the middle and up, in joy and forgiveness. They described that they were currently living mostly in the baseline, in joy and forgiveness, but still occasionally, they sank back to the bitterness and hate. But because of the forgiveness process, they could quickly lift themselves up from there. In addition, P11 described similarly that forgiveness and hate are like the same package, and they are side by side. They stated that when they decided to forgive, at first, it did not feel good and there were feelings of hate. But as the process continued, the package was reversed; hate diminished and forgiveness increased. Nevertheless, they stated that hate did not vanish completely, and this may be the case in the future as well.

P8 described how hate was the very starting point of forgiveness:

I hope that my forgiveness process would not start like a bomb exploding on my emotional side [laughs]. That it would not always have to go that far. But I hope that I could react reasonably to transgressions from the beginning and start the forgiveness process without this overwhelming emotional turmoil. That it would not have to go to extremes and then I would eventually come down. [...] I immediately go to extremes to deal with my forgiveness process through hate.

This participant narrated their forgiveness process through the metaphor of a bomb exploding. Hate was the bomb which exploded on a mental level. The explosion was the starting point of forgiveness which goes up and eventually descends and settles down. The participant described a wish that they could be rational in the future and less emotional. This was a common desire among participants, though they were not sure if would it be possible not to take transgressions so personally and seriously. This narrative represented the forgiveness process as a volcano, a natural force, that ultimately cools down. The participant described the polarity between uncontrollable emotions and calm rationality. They highlighted hate as an important starter for forgiveness; hate was the ground where the process could begin. Traditionally, hate is understood as part of unforgiveness, but the results imply that hate may be part of forgiveness, too. Some participants used hate to cope with the transgression and their goal was to pursue forgiveness.

To summarize, forgiveness was a very emotional and embodied process for participants, and they needed to face and feel those embodied emotions and states to go through that process. Forgiveness did not happen step by step, but rather like a natural phenomenon or gradually. In many narratives, unforgiveness was not a separate aspect: it was part of forgiveness, and there were implications that feelings of unforgiveness may come back in the future, but it was taken as a natural part of human life.

Discussion

This study was conducted to explore the embodied emotional narrative process of forgiveness by asking how embodiment and emotions are used to make sense of the narrative process of forgiveness. Participants made sense of forgiveness and unforgiveness through narrations concerning emotions, senses, and embodiment. Data-driven analysis revealed five subthemes: (1) forgiveness as a liberation, (2) forgiveness as a relief from a burden, (3) forgiveness as releasing energy, (4) forgiveness through vulnerability, and (5) forgiveness through hate. Empowerment and pain bound these subthemes together. These two overarching themes represented the split between participants’ narration of forgiveness, which repeated. In a way, forgiveness was empowering to them, but also included difficult emotions and the embodiment of emotional pain. For most participants, forgiveness was not easy, and it required embodied emotional work with the transgression. However, when the process was dealt with, participants were empowered.

Previous research has confirmed that forgiveness can empower forgivers (Akhtar et al., 2017; Wenzel & Okimoto, 2010), which was also demonstrated in the current study. Akhtar et al. (2017) found that study participants experienced forgiveness as making them stronger and how pleased they were when they were able to undo their anger with the transgressor and cultivate it to forgiveness. Participants in the current study narrated the same phenomena. Further, Akhtar et al. (2017) and Singh et al. (2022) found that unforgiveness made participants feel powerless and how unforgiveness negatively affected on the victims’ energy levels, similar to the current study as participants narrated forgiveness and unforgiveness in terms of energy and power. Forgiveness energy could be some kind of inner resource, which an individual needs to harness in order to use it and activate the self (compare Maranges & Baumeister, 2016). Unforgiveness may lower the individual’s energy capacity (Slepian et al., 2012; Zheng et al., 2015), like the participants in the current study described.

It is notable that participants narrated unforgiveness as a weight. Zheng et al. (2015) also researched how unforgiveness may be sensed as a physical burden and how forgiving may lighten this burden. They found that forgiving may potentially affect jumping height and perception, which is similar to what the participants in this study narrated. There were narrations of how forgiveness affected their visual perception and gave them energy. Pleasant emotions may broaden attention and perspective (Fredrickson & Branigan, 2005), which is consistent with the current results. In addition, participants described the heaviness of unforgiveness and the relief of forgiveness, which supports the findings of Zheng et al. (2015). As a consequence, it is possible that embodied forgiveness can change one’s being and interaction with the world. It has been suggested that forgiveness can release the person from an emotional burden (Strelan, 2020), which is in line with the current results. Participants described how unforgiveness was a burden and forgiveness helped them to get rid of that burden. In addition, earlier results regarding how forgiveness is related to calmer physiology (Witvliet et al., 2015) and the possible reduction of unpleasant emotion (Zhang et al., 2020) and stress (Toussaint et al., 2016) confirm current findings. Almost all participants narrated the importance of forgiveness for their mental health and how forgiving diminished their stress and enabled them to calm down the intensive embodied state of unforgiveness.

The present study gives us a deeper and novel understanding of the whole embodied emotional process from transgression to forgiveness, which has been scarcely investigated and comprehended. The unique findings shed light on the idea that the forgiveness process is individual, versatile, and dynamic, and it may take many forms. Results add to the literature on the real-life parallelism in metaphors of feelings and embodiment, like participants’ descriptions of shoulders dropping due to pleasant emotions and a stone which falls off from the heart. Previous research has found that positive aspects are experienced as above and negative aspects as below (Meier & Robinson, 2004), which was also narrated in this study by placing joy at the top, forgiveness in the middle, and hate and bitterness at the bottom. People use metaphors to make sense of their embodied experiences (Gibbs, 2021), which is in line with the current findings. Participants made sense of forgiveness by narrating it as a vulnerable and physical process. Forgiveness was not something that happened only in one’s mind but also in one’s body. Making references to the body helped participants to create concrete meanings and to understand the forgiveness process. They needed to be vulnerable, surrender, and let go in order to forgive (compare Røgild-Müller & Robinson, 2022).

Even though participants perceived forgiveness as empowering, it seemed that the emotional and bodily narrations of unforgiveness were stronger than forgiveness in many cases. There might be several explanations for this. First, unpleasant emotions generally affect people more intensely than pleasant ones: individuals process unpleasant emotions in more detail and for longer than pleasant emotions (Baumeister et al., 2001; Brosschot & Thayer, 2003). Pleasant emotions may not always undo stress and unpleasant emotions (Behnke et al., 2023). Also, there are more unpleasant emotion labels than pleasant ones (Schrauf & Sanchez, 2004). It is possible that it may be harder to describe good experiences than difficult ones systematically if there is not as much vocabulary to do so as there is for difficult and painful experiences. People tend to concentrate on unpleasant instead of pleasant emotions, even though people experience predominantly pleasant emotions (Trampe et al., 2015). Despite this, forgiveness seemed to offer participants something special and spectacular, which was partially difficult to put into words. For some participants, it even represented an abnormal phenomenon, in a positive sense (compare Garcia-Romeu et al., 2015). Fredrickson (2001) has argued that positive emotions build personal, social, physical, and psychological resources: good creates more good. This seemed to be the case with participants’ empowering experience with forgiveness.

The present findings do not support earlier suggestions of forgiveness as a decision or replacing unpleasant emotions with pleasant emotions (Worthington, 2020a). Participants’ narratives in this study were richer than that and could not be categorized and simplified according to these earlier models. All stories were emotional, even among those participants who highlighted forgiveness as a decision. Most of them considered that their forgiveness included decision and emotions, as well as something more that they could not put into words. For some, forgiveness was a process which would continue for the rest of their lives. Some of them described feelings of anger and bitterness occurring sometimes, despite forgiveness, which is the opposite of the result that hate is traditionally understood as part of unforgiveness (Stackhouse et al., 2016). Almost half of them did not try to pursue forgiveness; they only wished to get rid of difficult emotions, and later realized they had forgiven. This kind of spontaneous forgiveness has been demonstrated before (Karremans & Van Lange, 2008). Not all could answer whether their forgiveness was a decision or an emotional change. For some participants in the current study, forgiveness originated from a state of will or God (see also Haikola, 2023).

Further, the REACH Forgiveness model (Worthington, 2020b) did not fully correspond with the results. Even though many of the participants narrated diminished anger and grudge and an increased sense of forgiveness, there were indications that anger was not fully replaced by pleasant emotions. They described forgiveness and unforgiveness happening at the same time. This confirms earlier findings that pleasant and unpleasant emotions are not opposites: individuals regard basic emotions simultaneously positively and negatively, and pleasant and unpleasant emotions occur simultaneously (An et al., 2017; Trampe et al., 2015). The idea of “altruistic gift of forgiveness to the transgressor” was not the participants’ experience. None of them forgave because of the transgressor; they wanted to forgive because of themselves and their emotional and embodied well-being or to strengthen their sense of being a good person or Christian. In addition, there was a partially negative finding with the process model (Enright & Coyle, 1998) in the sense that forgiveness was not a moral gift to the transgressor in the participants’ narrations. This is in line with Field et al. (2013) results, where they found that the only reason why victims of violent crimes forgave was their own need to get rid of psychological distress. In addition, McCullough’s motivational model (2000) was not appropriate for comparison with the study’s results because the participants mostly described an intrapersonal process of forgiveness rather than an interpersonal (Worthington, 2020a), even though some of them received an apology from the transgressor.

The current results may be used in health care, clinical settings, counseling settings, and pastoral care. Clinicians and other professionals could benefit from these results to understand the complex and embodied process of forgiveness. Patience is needed to go through what is usually a long process. Professionals could support individuals who are trying to forgive by using methods that strengthen the mind–body connection and consciousness of embodied experiences. These might include mindfulness, yoga, breathing techniques, guided imagery, relaxation, and movement therapy. People might need to physically work through their transgressions, and the professionals could help them to find methods that suit for them. Moreover, the professionals should be aware of the intensity of hate (see also Fischer et al., 2018) and unforgiveness and support individuals to accept these emotions and learn to cope with them. It would be helpful to emphasize that the forgiveness can be understood as a healthy act for themselves and their well-being, not necessarily for the transgressor, if the victim is struggling with the idea of “altruistic forgiveness.”

It is also important to acknowledge the possibility that unforgiveness and forgiveness may not always be opposites, but they can sometimes occur together and be intertwined. Then, the goal for therapeutic practice may not necessarily be “total forgiveness without any unforgiveness” since this may not be realistic. Forgiveness may have different meanings depending on individual and the professionals could explore and be curious about what forgiveness means to the person. It is wise to respect these different meanings, although it is good to point out that forgiveness is not, for example, accepting the transgression and immorality. When we begin to listen laypersons’ meanings of forgiveness, we can broaden our understanding of the multidimensional nature of forgiveness, advance research of forgiveness and develop various science-based methods for forgivers.

Limitations and Further Studies

A limitation of the study is the limited number of participants. However, the sample size in qualitative research is not the same as in quantitative research (Hennink & Kaiser, 2022; Sim et al., 2018). Approximately one to three participants are sufficient for a narrative study, and the reporting of the themes creates a broad analysis (Creswell, 2007). The narrative approach provides a perspective on individuals’ experiences (Riessman, 1993), in this case embodied and emotional forgiveness, which is important to understand when exploring complex and understudied phenomena.

Qualitative research methods aim to delve deeply into the meanings and experiences of what is it like to be human in certain situations (Willig, 2022). Applied thematic narrative analysis (Riessman, 2008) was a coherent method to analyze participants’ individual experiences with the whole forgiveness process from the transgression to forgiveness, which is less studied in the field of forgiveness research. Criteria of qualitative research have been followed by reflexivity and sensitivity to participants throughout the process, describing the sample, documenting the phases of the research process, presenting the analysis section in a coherent form, answering the research task, forming the report around the research task, comparing the results to earlier research, providing examples of where results do and do not align with earlier studies and theories, expanding the understanding about the nature of embodied emotional narrative process, and providing practical and clinical implications that the study offers (Willig, 2008, 2022). With McAdams’s (1985) life story interview method, I vividly captured the narrative, emotional, embodied, and sensory content of individuals’ experiences. It proved to be a useful method to investigate “big” and “small” stories at the same time (Breen et al., 2021). Big forgiveness stories in this study included lessons learned and breakthrough moments experienced by participants; small stories reflected descriptions of how forgiveness feels on many levels.

It is possible that the interview questions led participants to highlight the emotional and embodied aspects of the process. However, emotions are probably present in all psychological experiences (Kuppens et al., 2013), so participants might have narrated those even without asking, and most of them did it voluntarily without asking. Further studies could investigate the whole forgiveness process from real-life transgressions using different methods (mixing interviews, psychophysiological measurements, and surveys) to gain a wider understanding of forgiveness. Researchers could also approach forgiveness from a narrative and phenomenological perspective rather than a categorical one since it has been argued that forgiveness experiences in practice may not match the theorists’ views (Exline et al., 2003). Forgiveness research is a young and burgeoning area, and we do not know much about how people actually forgive in real life (Worthington, 2020a).

The two overarching themes, empowerment and pain, represented a split in participants’ embodied narration of forgiveness, which was homogenous in the way it was described in the themes in this study. This degree of homogeneity raises the question of whether (although the forgiveness process is verbally described differently) individuals share some common embodied experiences of forgiveness (see Nummenmaa, et al., 2014). The results give a hint of this direction according to the themes of the study, but future studies could explore this more. This could be done, for example, by mixing interviews, psychophysiological measurements, and surveys, as mentioned earlier.

Even though I have argued that unforgiveness and forgiveness may not always be opposites but may be mingled, the interview setting may have influenced participants’ accounts of their experiences. I asked participants to describe their experienced transgression before the forgiveness process, which could have influenced participants’ narrations of forgiveness. Nevertheless, not providing an opportunity to reflect on the transgression and unforgiveness in detail could have been unethical and could have felt uncomfortable for participants. It may be hard to describe the forgiveness process without any mentions of transgression and unforgiveness. Also, the literature shows that forgiveness is not a linear process (Abrahamson et al., 2012). Researchers could study forgiveness and unforgiveness at the same time and find out do they gain similar or dissimilar results as in the current study. Future studies could investigate the phases and turning points in forgiveness stories to capture the complexity and dimensionality of the whole process by using narrative methods.

Researcher Description

It is important that qualitative researchers reflect on how they might have influenced the participants and interpretations of participants’ statements. I am a licensed psychologist who is doing a PhD in the field of social psychology. Psychology and social psychology research many of the same topics, although they are different fields. My education has taught me to perceive the world from the perspective of psychology, although my former studies on social psychology and PhD studies have strengthened my social psychological thinking. I am also a freelance science journalist, and before starting my research career, I wrote a popular science article about forgiveness. It might have given me some assumptions about forgiveness. These might have affected the methodology of my study and the interpretation of participants’ narrations. Nevertheless, my training has taught me to actively listen to people and respect their individual experiences, which are not the same as mine. Also, the researcher position continuously encourages me to question the choices that have been made and give arguments to the whole research process. It is a sign of rigorous qualitative research if other researchers can understand and accept these arguments.

Conclusions

Forgiveness was a complex phenomenon for the participants, occurring on a sensory, embodied, and emotional level. For some participants, forgiveness came quickly, but for most, the process took time. Traditionally, unforgiveness and forgiveness have been seen as separate processes, but the current findings suggest that they may overlap and occur together. Categorical boundaries of unforgiveness and forgiveness may not correspond to the multilayered and messy reality in which individuals live. Human life is emotional, and so is the nature of forgiveness. By acknowledging this, we may move to a better understanding of forgiveness as a multifaceted, embodied emotional process and support individuals who are trying to forgive.