Mindfulness and Compassion for Mental Health

Session 4: Forgiveness & the Role of Mindfulness and Compassion

It is easy to see that forgiveness is a part of the human experience since injury, betrayal, jealousy, and more, are also part of the human experience. And if we don’t forgive, it is like walking around with an open wound. Forgiveness is generally accepted as important and at times, necessary, yet it is not well practiced. Often people will say I’ll forgive but I’ll never forget. Like many colloquial sayings, this is misleading. To truly forgive means the balance sheet is zero: nothing owed to or from the other. We let go.


Complete forgiveness is not easy, it is a bumpy road, often painful and it takes a long time. When in the process of forgiving, we begin to see the work it really takes, we may say to ourselves: That’s good enough and we stop, claiming we’ve forgiven. Not so. If we, when remembering the instance(s) or person(s) we intend to forgive, the emotions and memories and pain begin to arise and we’re back in the experience much like a trauma recall, rest assured… we have not yet completed the cycle of forgiveness.


The obstacles to full forgiveness are many. Among them most common are anger, fear, blame, pride, confusion (ambivalence), pain and more. The extend to which we want to achieve a deep sense of wellbeing and to be helpful to those around us will determine how thorough we are in forgiving. If we truly wish to be free, we will need to fully forgive. My favorite definition of forgiveness is Forgiveness is letting go of the pain. I feel it sums up the character and the dynamics of forgiveness, which we will discuss in detail during the session. It is easy to see that mindfulness and compassion skills might be very helpful in the process. That is indeed the case. We will see what the research says and apply mindfulness and compassion exercises to forgiveness to get a taste of the process.

Self-Compassion and Interpersonal Mindfulness as Predictors of Forgiveness in Adulthood (Topçu & Erus, 2023)

Shame and guilt-proneness and self-compassion as predictors of self-forgiveness (Mróz & Sornat, 2022)

Is mindfulness associated with interpersonal forgiveness? (Karremans et al., 2020)

Mindfulness and Self-Compassion were found to be predictors of forgiveness

  • It is easier for us to forgive if we are more aware of the present moment

  • There are three modes of forgiveness

    • Giving forgiveness to others

    • Receiving forgiveness from others

    • Giving forgiveness to oneself

Shame and guilt are distinctly different functions

  • Forgiving oneself is to both accept responsibility for harm done and the resolve to behave differently in the future

  • Self-compassion fosters self-forgiveness

  • Metacognition is defined as awareness or analysis of one’s own learning or thinking processes [Merriam Webster Dictionary]

  • Forgiveness can improve metacognition, which in turn, can increase self-restraint

Mindfulness meditation can increase levels of forgiveness

  •  Mindfulness facilitates perspective taking, which in turn fosters forgiveness

  • Mindfulness induces a reduction in the role of the ego state and be less preoccupied with themselves

  • With mindfulness training, remembering the offending event, people became more likely to focused on why something happened rather than what happened (which could lead to stronger personal identification with the incident and greater resentment)

Metacognition and Mindfulness-the Role of Fringe Consciousness (Norman, 2017)

Self-construal means, basically, our self-concept and there some approaches that feel our self-concept is the central issue in mental health

  • Fringe Consciousness refers to a vague feeling, mood or a generalized contextual response and is also linked with metacognition

  • These above factors are also linked to an increased capacity for forgiveness

    • Karremans, J., van Schie, H., van Dongen, I., Kappen, G., Mori, G., As, S. v., ten Bokkel, I., & van der Wal, R. (2020). Is mindfulness associated with interpersonal forgiveness? 

    • Mróz, J., & Sornat, W. (2022). Shame-and guilt-proneness and self-compassion as predictors of self-forgiveness. 

    • Norman, E. (2017). Metacognition and Mindfulness: the Role of Fringe Consciousness. Mindfulness, 8(1), 95-100. 

    • Topçu, P., & Erus, S. M. (2023). Self Compassion and Interpersonal Mindfulness as Predictors of Forgiveness in Adulthood. International Journal of Psychology and Educational Studies, 10(1), 261-273.