ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on increasing well-being by embracing forgiveness. Forgiveness leads to better health and well-being than holding grudges and seeking revenge. It also prevents tit-for-tat battles that make people trust each other less. Worthingtons’s five-step REACH forgiveness programme is described. The steps are as follows. Recall the hurt, focusing more on its effects on you, and less on blame. Empathise with the offender, by imagining what it was like to be them. Give the Altruistic gift of forgiveness. Make a Commitment to being forgiving by making the private experience public. Hold onto forgiveness when doubts occur, by referring back to the commitment to forgive and planning to deal with triggers for unforgiving thoughts, feelings and behaviours. In this programme there is a movement from decisional forgiveness to emotional forgiveness. The former is a cognitive process. The latter is an affective process which involves experiencing less negative and more positive feelings towards the transgressor.
