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Welcome to Stories of Impact. I'm your host, Tavia Gilbert, and along with journalist Richard Sergay, every first and third Tuesday of the month, we share conversations about the art and science of human flourishing. Today, we bring you the first of a special two-part series that dives deep into the subject of forgiveness.
As I previewed last week, longtime Stories of Impact listeners will remember our guest, Dr. Everett Worthington, Professor Emeritus at Virginia Commonwealth University, from a powerful episode in Season 4 when he introduced us to his pioneering Reach Forgiveness method.
Dr. Worthington told us in that episode why, for the last three decades, he has been guided by a mission to do all he can to promote forgiveness, as he says, in every willing heart, home, and homeland.
What's at the center of Dr. Worthington's commitment to forgiveness? Forgiveness is close to my heart for a lot of different reasons. One, I really experienced a personal time in which my mother was murdered, and forgiveness meant a lot to me personally.
I've seen it work marvels in the life of couples that were in couple therapy with me. And also, I think it really makes an opportunity to further the likelihood of world peace. So I think it's really important.
For the last several years, Dr. Worthington has been the science director in a worldwide research project studying REACH's effectiveness in facilitating not only individual forgiveness, but community forgiveness, a study that he and several colleagues conducted across six sites, five countries, and four continents.
We'll also hear from two of those research collaborators today, Ukrainian citizens Dr. Lyudmila Shtanko and Dr. Sergei Timchenko, who were in the midst of this forgiveness research project when Russia began to wage war, some have called it a genocide, in their country.
Dr. Stanko and Dr. Timchenko will open up about how they coped with the brutality being inflicted upon them, and how forgiveness played a role in their thinking and planning for a hopefully peaceful and free future.
Let's begin with defining what forgiveness is. Here's Dr. Worthington. Forgiveness is two separate things. One is a decision about how I intend to treat someone who's harmed me or offended me. We call that decisional forgiveness.
The other type of forgiveness is an emotional change in which I experience different feelings toward a person because I can empathize with them or feel compassion or even love toward them. That's called emotional forgiveness. That means that I see the person as a person and not just a personified evil. So often when we've been deeply hurt,
we treat the other person or think of the other person as just kind of the personification of evil. But if I kind of change my heart toward them and I see them as a person, as a valued and valuable person,
That really shifts the whole way that I want to deal with them. The two can be interrelated, but most of the time they're fairly separate. They can occur in either order. You can have one without the other, and it doesn't matter which one you have. Recognizing the humanity of the young man who violently took his mother's life helped Dr. Worthington find the emotional transformation of forgiveness.
Emotional forgiveness is replacing negative, unforgiving emotions like resentment and bitterness and hostility and hate and depression, maybe, or anxiety with positive, other-oriented emotions. That doesn't mean that in any way I downplay the amount of harm that was done. It doesn't mean that I
am not willing to seek a just solution to our interaction. Dr. Worthington underscores that forgiving someone doesn't necessarily demand that the forgiver continue a relationship with whomever has hurt them.
Forgiveness is often confused with a lot of things. It's confused with condoning and saying, oh, it was okay that you hurt me. It's confused with reconciling, which is a restoration of trust in the relationship. If the other person's not going to be trustworthy, you're not going to restore trust. So forgiveness happens internally.
Whether forgiveness is accompanied by reconciliation or not, forgiveness benefits the forgiver. Forgiveness starts in people's hearts, but it soon spills out into their relationships and then into relationships among people. So I think it can really influence us at every level. Forgiveness has been of increasing interest by scientific researchers, says Dr. Worthington.
There is a science of forgiveness that is quite well developed. We understand quite a lot about forgiveness now, and we're starting to develop a real body of knowledge about how to help people forgive also. There are many ways to help people forgive. There are ways that have been developed through philosophy and through religion, and that have been used for
2,000 or more years. But as scientists have got into this, we have developed interventions that can help people forgive more or less efficiently. Is religious belief necessarily a part of the REACH method? This workbook is intended to be a secular approach to forgiveness. The REACH forgiveness model has been tested in over 35 randomized controlled trials
It has been done with Christians, with people who are not religious at all, with Muslims, with Hindus. It has been done with people in collectivistic cultures. It's been done with people in individualistic cultures. So it is something that is applicable across the board.
For decades, Dr. Worthington has seen the healing and emotional freedom individual users have been able to achieve with REACH, even those who used it to find forgiveness after an anguishing loss, such as the doctor and his family experienced. REACH is a free, downloadable, and self-guided process, and it takes just two or three hours to work through. What are the steps to forgiveness in the REACH method? REACH is an acronym for
that cues people's memory for five different steps. So these are steps to emotional forgiveness. So R, recall the hurt. People can't forgive if they don't admit that they've been hurt. E, empathize with the person or at least use some kind of positive emotion to replace that negative resentment and bitterness.
A, give an altruistic gift of forgiveness. It's altruistic because no one deserves to be forgiven because they've hurt me. So if I give them this gift of forgiveness, this is altruism. And then C, commit to the forgiveness that you experience. And the reason why people do that is so that H, they hold on to that forgiveness when they doubt.
recall, empathize, altruistic gift, commit, hold on.
The worldwide study of REACH grew out of Dr. Worthington's desire to investigate if REACH could be proven to promote not just the personal healing of individuals who had suffered from harm, but societal healing. If I knew how to really foster forgiveness across entire societies, I probably would have a Nobel Prize. But I have some ideas about it. I think that
A key is to realize that forgiveness does not have to do all of the heavy lifting when we're hurt, that we have a lot of good responses. And I think if we as a society realize that there are a lot of good options, forgiveness being one of them, that I think is where a more peaceful society will come about.
Nearly 4,600 people signed up for the study, more participants than had ever before been involved in scientific research on forgiveness, and there were multiple innovative aspects to the investigation. Not only was it by far the largest randomized scientific trial of forgiveness to date,
The Reach Guide was translated into multiple languages, including Spanish, Mandarin, Russian, Ukrainian, and Indonesian, which meant that two-thirds of the world's population could access it,
And the study sites were centered in areas of the world that had experienced a high degree of conflict, including Hong Kong, which had a history of political and social unrest, Indonesia, which had coped with religious tensions, particularly between Muslims and Christians, Colombia, where there had been a 60-year legacy of civil war and which had only negotiated peace in 2016, and South Africa, which had an ugly history of apartheid.
Two other sites for the forgiveness study were in Ukraine, including one location in the heart of the capital city, Kyiv. And another key aspect of this research project set it apart from previous studies. It takes into consideration anything people want to try to forgive, whereas many of the other studies are local, small, and targeted at one type of hurt. So what were the results of the forgiveness study?
According to Dr. Worthington, the research firmly established that REACH was effective across all international sites and by all participants, regardless of religion, sex, age or ethnicity. We also showed that substantial depression was eased and anxiety was eased and people's measures of flourishing were much better.
Forgiveness may have huge benefits for a person and for their relationships, even their community, but the study also showed that it takes work and consistent practice. I look at this as being like, you know, taking medication for something that ails me. That may help me in the short term,
If I develop a new case, then I have to take the medication again. So we look at this as like we're giving people a tool that doesn't take much time, that doesn't take much energy, that will help them forgive and make them better in terms of being a trait forgiver. But it is not going to cure every bit of pain
anxiety and depression and hurt and anger and resentment that they have. And if they get hurt again months from now, of course, they're going to be angry and hurt and they are going to have to work through this again. I would say forgiveness is hard and life is hard.
And forgiveness is part of that. How do I deal with this dark underbelly of life in a way that is healthy, in a way that can promote better relationships?
And so I think forgiveness is something that people can learn to be better at as they try to do it and that they can really change their lives, make their lives more meaningful, make their lives more mentally healthy.
But there are also relational benefits in which our relationship just works better, especially in decisional forgiveness. If I make a decision to treat the other person differently, they see that quickly. And then as I feel emotional forgiveness, that changes my behavior toward them too. So relational benefits accrue.
In addition, there are and can be spiritual benefits in which the person feels more of a sense of purpose and less meaninglessness in their life. And then in the long term, especially, there are physical benefits to forgiving. So forgiving lowers the amount of cortisol in people's blood, which over the long term
can mean that it affects every system in their body, from the size of their brain to their sexual functioning to the cardiovascular risk, the immune system, the gastrointestinal functioning. So it really helps the person physically, especially in the long term. The data showed that all sorts of harms could be forgiven using the REACH Guide, from small slights to grievous harms.
But is there any limit to what the guide can do? And are there some things that are simply unforgivable? Researchers Lyudmila Shtanko and Sergei Timchenko had to ask themselves these hard questions.
They were in the midst of partnering with Dr. Worthington on the forgiveness study on the ground in Kyiv and Bucha, Ukraine, when Russia attacked the democratic nation on February 24, 2022. And both Drs. Shtchenko and Timchenko, their families and their communities, faced brutality at the hands of violent aggressors. The war forced them to confront their own ability and willingness to forgive.
Before the war began, Dr. Timchenko, a Christian pastor and president of Realis Christian Center, a research and education center and humanitarian organization located close to Kiev, was working on the forgiveness study with Ukrainians who had suffered Russia's earlier attacks in eastern Ukraine. That was hard work, and then things got even harder.
I don't know how it would work in Ukraine when immediately after this research we face the situation when most people probably had much more hard situation as offense that they experienced ever before. Maybe with some exceptions because we worked with people who went through the war already in the East. But it was, again, at least from my perspective where I am in Kyiv,
It was very hard, but it was not as bad as it is now. Dr. Shtenko, professor in the Department of Economic, Cybernetics, Finance and Management at the Ukrainian Institute of Arts and Sciences, had already seen the impact of REACH in the lives of those study participants who had endured Russia's attacks in years past. We have...
different participants, for example, one group of people, especially young people, because we had many students of different universities of Ukraine. And at first, when we started this campaign, very often young people told us, "We don't need this topic because we don't feel that we couldn't forgive." But when we started,
information campaign and continue. Many young people told us, yes, we understood this real important in our life. Second group is people who live in this part of Ukraine where war started in 2014 and they have had a different hard situation in their life.
They understood why need forgiveness when some family used workbook on this project. After them, they told us it's real effect, good effect for them because they can forgive.
Understand where is their problem. They live with some difficult problem in our life and couldn't understand what is real problem. But this workbook can help them to understand this. Even as the violence of the war came to her own home, Dr. Shtenko maintained a belief in the importance of forgiveness. She knew that she and her country would need it.
When war started, we live in Bucha because I work in a private university in Bucha and my family and me live in campus.
I have a husband and son, 25 years old, and daughter, 16 years old. And we saw this terrible picture in our windows when war started because we live very close and we have more action in our windows.
And we very quickly sit down in our cars and go away from Bucha in the west part of Ukraine, in Zakarpattia, because we have some friends who open their house for us.
We stayed in Zakarpattia for two weeks and we hoped that after two weeks we can come back home. But Bucha was occupied and we understood that we need to go to Europe because our university in Bucha has an apartment in Germany.
And the vice president of this university in Germany called me and told me, "We invite you and your students to our campus." And I took my students and went to the border in Germany.
When the occupation of Bucha ends, my husband and son came back to Bucha and they still stay in Bucha now. And many, many families live right now, like my family, separate. It's a very tragic situation for us. And I cannot think about my future, about future of my children, because I don't understand where the war stopped.
It's a very terrible situation, but more problem for me that people who stay in Germany, Ukrainians, who stay in Ukraine, they really hate Russian people. I think it's not normal, but we have many friends in Russia, and I think this project about forgiveness helps us because we really need help right now.
For Dr. Shtenko, forgiveness was not just an action, but a path to understanding. I think forgiveness is understanding that each of us, each of people, not perfect person, but forgiveness is the way
to understand each other, to understand our problem. Because if people can live better, it's a better way for development. Dr. Timchenko also recognized that forgiveness could offer him valuable perspective that might help him understand a war that made no sense. I think it is ability to understand war
bigger picture, not just your own struggles, but struggles of other people. It goes very deep in what each person struggles with internally, but also trying to understand life in all its complexity. So it is not only reaction to conflict, whether ability to forgive or non-ability to forgive,
which is so important in our relationships. And relationships, of course, are what most people most of the time think about. But also it helps when you think about your own struggle. It helps to understand yourself personally and connects you with something that we intuitively see as the essence of life itself. It's supposed to be one way. It goes wrong way. So how you react to this wrongness
and why it is so hard to make reasonable, useful, helpful decisions. It's those kind of questions that I think every person in one way or another struggles with.
But Dr. Timchenko also recognized why choosing not to forgive could feel powerful, and why people not only under siege but suffering from any harm might decide not to do the hard work of letting go of their hurt. It is very hard to let go of something that you feel is almost the only way to keep yourself not falling down. So...
When you don't forgive, you feel that you have some leverage, something that you can hold on. And people instinctively afraid that if a person will lose this leverage, then everything goes wrong. But when I'm saying hard work, it means that it is hard emotionally. It's not hard technically, mechanically. Whatever happens, I will not forgive. And it brought some comfort because at least you...
If you don't forgive another one, then at least you feel more, well, maybe in some way righteous, maybe more strong because you will not forgive. Now you face the situation when you have to be honest with your feeling and recognize that this is not because you are good, but because you are weak and you cannot forgive.
I think it's rather hard work that leads to virtue, that leads to something that eventually becomes part of what you understand as your advantage, in fact. Not only something that you sacrifice, but something with which you
feel better. Russian soldiers are not the only ones who have inflicted pain on Ukrainian citizens. If and when Ukrainians can begin to forgive the suffering they've been caused, they'll be looking to their own friends and family as well. I have an uncle in Moscow, in Russia, and we live separate. But my uncle in Moscow said, oh, it's good you live in Germany.
They don't understand our problem, our situation, our feeling. It's a real problem. Dr. Timchenko experienced a similar disconnect. Probably the very first question that comes to my head, and I'm pretty sure to many other people's heads, sounds strange, but it's very real. And this is precisely the question: Is it real? I know those people. I know them.
quite well. So why? What happened? I mean, I don't know personally the killers, but I know when I see their faces, I can recall I spent a number of years living in Moscow and traveling to Russia where many of my relatives live. I think about many people who are
not even silence, but give signs that they support these atrocities, this war. And so then I'm trying to find escape from this, trying to find opportunity to understand how it could be that person, living person, human being can be so evil.
and so heartless. When I cannot escape the answer on the first question that yes, those people who are involved in this, they are precisely those that I knew, many of them at least, being in many ways good friends, good companions, funny, kind, smart. They are good family people.
They have traveled around the world, and yet they either are involved in this war, or they support this war, or they try not to think about what's going on when for sure they don't have a right to do it. Even if they know that I and many people like myself experience this day to day, then immediate second question would be, so how can I forgive them?
So how can I go through this hard time when I need to face them and to tell them what I experienced, but then be ready to forgive? Now I know that if I will just stay kind of neutral, I will not be able to continue to develop a relationship with people, not even with Russian people, with aggressors, but with other people.
Because now I know that almost anyone, given some set of circumstances, can become this offender. I also feel that I'm almost in a disadvantaged situation comparing to many of my compatriots, people who are my neighbors with whom I live together. For many of them it is easy just to say, I will never forgive, we will never forgive.
and go with this and just think that all people who are behind of their front line or borderline they are zombies or whatever but I don't have this escape so I know it will be hard but I have to reach forgiveness one day not now probably not tomorrow but one day
It is not yet time for Dr. Timchenko to forgive, and he certainly cannot forget. Well, I cannot forget because I'm involved almost in daily work of seeing people suffer. Those 80-plus rockets that hit Ukraine means people who were killed and people who lost their dear ones. But then in the next few days, we'll have
meeting with some people from several villages that are almost constantly, almost every day under the shelling. And there are many children who live there. And those children, more and more of them now need psychiatric help. And when I talk to their parents,
It is impossible to talk with them about forgiveness now. So yes, this is not the time about this. But this is the time to keep gathering it in my heart. And I only hope and pray that I will have enough space for everyone. And I do cry about it. But another dimension is just I feel I need to give myself time
to give myself a break and just stand aside and tell myself, let me deal with this later. I cannot do so much at once. Dr. Shtenko also hopes that eventually, when there is peace, the time for forgiveness will come and that she will find peace in her country and in her heart. My own hope is
I hope my daughter and my mom continue to pray about Russian people and don't have an aggressive feeling against Russian people. Because my daughter, for example, speaks with many children from Ukraine.
And we know the situation in their family. Many children, many teenagers, young people feel a real strong depressive feeling. And my daughter tried to help them. And it's real hope for me that my family will
can stay normal people who can understand another people, who can forgive, who can continue to provide relationship with another people. And I hope we can stop this war and we can build a new relationship with Russia, with Russian people. It's my hope.
In the meantime, it's important for Dr. Shtenko to nurture not only her own ability to forgive, but to help others do the same. Some people ask me, you must, for example, to pray for Putin. I answer, yes, I think, yes. We must pray for all of people in Russia, because sometimes people...
don't understand what real situation, don't understand truth because then use every day tell them another information and people think, yes, maybe it's true. But if we have forgiveness in our heart,
I think we can help each other to understand what is real truth. Maybe Ukrainian people who understand what is true, who understand what is real freedom life, because we live in freedom in Ukraine.
not like Russians. Maybe we feel in a better situation and we can help other people to understand what is a better way to live for them. I worry about that this situation continues for a long, long time. I think it's a problem for the next generation.
for Ukrainian and for Russian. And I tried to forgive, but sometimes people answer me, "Oh, if your, for example, your husband dies in this war, what you told after them?" You will continue told you must forgive or no. But I believe that
Forgiveness is a better way in all situations in our life. When we stay in Germany, we try to help other people from Ukraine.
To understand the situation, to understand your future, we organize some special meetings for young people, for other students, because I'm teaching, I can provide some trainings, another thing. And this is our activity when we help other people to forgive.
It's a better way for me because my life became maybe easier for me because I can give for them understanding this situation and understanding what forgiveness can help in this situation. But Dr. Shtenko and Dr. Temchenko both worry that the longer the war goes on, the harder it will be for Ukrainians to forgive.
The issue of forgiveness became especially important in the situation in Ukraine when the war started. I think in the first months of when the war started, I hoped that the end of this situation is really close. But now we have one year of this war and one year of this terrible situation for my family, for my friends.
and other people from Ukraine. And I only hope. I'm not sure that it will be quickly, but I'm really hopeful.
And I'm very, very worried about the situation in Ukraine because many people really hate Russian people. And some parents teach their children to hate other people. I think maybe this can lead to one or two generations living with enmity.
It's very horrible. Forgiveness is important not only for all our country, but for each of people. And I think these people couldn't feel a real happiness in our life, a real freedom in our life. I have to admit that it is a sense, at least a general sense,
that it will be very, very hard to forgive in this generation, in the conceivable future. I understand that for each person here, his problem with forgiveness probably feels the worst one. But when you, almost every day,
get more and more pain when you realize that this is not the end. It continues and you never know when and if it will end at all. And it is very difficult to think even about forgiveness. But I also feel privileged because we just finished this research project, so I am almost constantly
compare what I learned during this research generally about forgiveness working together with other teams and at the same time trying to analyze myself how I react to what's going on around me. It's almost like the surgery that's supposed to be under the you know sleeping mode but somehow you you're not under the effect of anesthesia and you you realize what's going on.
So this is my feeling. I think I do know that. I do know it from research. I do know it as a pastor from the Bible. And yet I, at the same time, almost see no light how to come to this answer at the end. At this point, I have to almost go to that zone where I have to switch off my emotions. Because when I think about an older woman, probably of my age or older,
who is talking and telling her story how she was raped and how she was asking those Russian soldiers not to do it, but they didn't listen. When I remember her face, when I remember the face of a 13-year-old girl from my church,
whom I heard so many times when she was quoting, when she was citing Christian poetry or Bible verses, how innocent she was. And then just she was killed, she and her mother in Bucha here near Kiev. Of course, when I have those pictures in my mind, now it's impossible to forgive. Then I'm thinking about something that probably is
in a way distinct for me as a Christian pastor. And this is to think about one person who was able to forgive all of that, but also me. And to be honest about myself and compare myself with my friends whom I knew from young years, I'm asking myself these tough questions. Am I sure that given all the circumstances,
where those people are, I will be so innocent. I want to say yes. I want to say no. I never could do this. But I know about myself other things that make me to feel shameful and very, very uneasy. Thinking about it from perspective where I know myself and I know what my Savior has done for me, then it helps me
to make this leap of faith and say, yes, I hope I will be able to forgive. I know I need to reach forgiveness. For Dr. Timchenko, will the REACH workbook someday be resource enough for him to find forgiveness for this horrific war? He's not sure. Well, one of the questions is precisely, is it enough to go through that REACH forgiveness book
when you deal with the offense of this big scale for so long time. Because even working with people who came out of the war zone, most of the offenses that those people were sharing with Rich Book were their personal offenses. Now almost everyone is talking about this unthinkable and unspeakable
There's something that no one would ever expect that may happen among us. And so, yes, this is probably the most important question. Is it enough? Is it enough for this level of offense to go through those steps that we learned during the research?
We, in Reales, people who were engaged in this project before, several times tried to answer these or similar questions. We gathered together, we're coming to conclusion that we cannot answer for now. And probably this is not the right time even to try. Now it's the time when we are going through together with other people
through the struggle of being offended. Now it's time to fight, to be strong, to encourage each other. The old Book of Wisdom says that there are different times. There is time for gathering stones, but then there is time for throwing them away. So this is probably the best answer I can give for now.
When I script episodes, I like to end on a high note, a neat summary that ties things together. But there's no end in sight to the war and to the pain of the Ukrainians, and it would be unfair and unrealistic to artificially and definitively conclude anything when Dr. Timchenko and Dr. Shtenko cannot yet answer all of their own questions. What I'll say is that I admire deeply the strength of both of these researchers and of Dr. Worthington,
All three have kept their hearts open, and all three have held the possibility of forgiveness during the worst imaginable pain of their lives. I hope there is peace ahead for Dr. Timchenko, for Dr. Shtenko, for the Ukrainians, and for the Russians as well.
In Part 2 of our Forgiveness series, we'll meet several more of Dr. Worthington's research project collaborators, including those study partners who led the worldwide forgiveness study in Hong Kong, South Africa, Colombia, and elsewhere. They'll share their own stories about why their forgiveness study matters and how forgiveness has changed their lives and the lives of the study participants. I hope you'll come back for the second part of our conversation. ♪
This has been the Stories of Impact podcast with Richard Sergay and Tavia Gilbert. Written and produced by TalkBox Productions and Tavia Gilbert with senior producer Katie Flood. Music by Alexander Filipiak. Mix and master by Kayla Elrod. Executive producer Michelle Cobb. The Stories of Impact podcast is generously supported by Templeton World Charity Foundation.