Can a Do-It-Yourself Workbook Help You Forgive?

Holding a grudge is heavy work. We often know, somewhere inside, that letting go would free us, yet forgiveness can feel impossibly out of reach, especially after a real betrayal. So here is a striking question a large international study set out to answer: could a simple, self-guided workbook actually help people forgive, and feel better in the process?

What the researchers wanted to know

The researchers wanted to determine whether a brief, self-directed forgiveness workbook could change three things: how much forgiveness people felt, their depression symptoms, and their anxiety symptoms. The appeal of a workbook is obvious. If something you can work through on your own genuinely helps, it could reach enormous numbers of people who will never sit down with a therapist. The study tested a version of a well-known forgiveness approach designed to be completed independently.

How they studied it

This was a large, multisite, randomized, waitlist-controlled trial, which is a rigorous way to test whether something works. In total, 4,598 participants were included in the analysis, drawn from community samples across five very different places: Colombia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, South Africa, and Ukraine. That global reach is part of what makes the study notable. Recruitment ran from February 2020 to late September 2021, with a diverse group whose median age was 26 and about 73 percent of whom were female. To take part, people needed to be at least 18 and to have experienced an interpersonal transgression, in other words, to have actually been hurt by someone.

The waitlist design is clever and fair. At each site, participants were randomly assigned either to receive the forgiveness workbook right away, or to receive it after a two-week delay. This meant everyone eventually got the workbook, but the immediate group could be compared against the still-waiting group to see whether the intervention made a difference in those two weeks. The main outcomes were unforgiveness, measured with an established inventory of transgression-related motivations, along with depression and anxiety symptoms, all assessed two weeks after people were assigned to their group.

What they found

The workbook made a real difference. Two weeks in, the group that received the workbook immediately reported lower unforgiveness than the group still on the waitlist, and the size of that difference was substantial. Encouragingly, similar patterns showed up for mental health: the immediate group reported lower depression symptoms and lower anxiety symptoms than the delayed group as well.

In plain terms, people who worked through the brief, self-directed forgiveness workbook not only moved toward forgiving the person who hurt them, they also reported feeling less depressed and less anxious than those who had not yet started. The researchers concluded that a brief workbook intervention promoted forgiveness and reduced depression and anxiety symptoms, and that because it is self-directed, it has real potential for widespread dissemination to support mental health around the world.

What this means for you

There are two hopeful messages here. The first is that forgiveness, so often described as a vague spiritual ideal, can be approached as a skill you can actively work on, even through a structured, do-it-yourself format. You do not necessarily need a therapist in the room to begin loosening the grip of an old hurt.

The second is that this kind of inner work was linked not just to more forgiveness but to lighter depression and anxiety. That fits the intuition many of us have that carrying resentment quietly costs us. If there is a grudge weighing on you, this study suggests that intentionally working toward forgiveness, at your own pace, might benefit your peace of mind as well as your relationships. That said, forgiveness is a personal journey, and this is not a directive to excuse harm or to forgive on anyone else's timeline. It is simply evidence that structured tools for letting go can help.

The honest caveats

A few points keep this in perspective. The outcomes were measured two weeks after assignment, so the study offers strong evidence about relatively short-term effects rather than proof that the benefits persist for months or years. The comparison was against a waitlist, meaning people who had not yet received the workbook, which is a fair and common design but different from comparing the workbook to another active practice.

All the outcomes were self-reported, capturing how people said they felt about forgiveness, depression, and anxiety, which can be influenced by expectations. The sample, while impressively large and international, skewed younger and majority female, and everyone had to have experienced an interpersonal hurt, so the exact effects might look different in other groups. It is also worth noting that recruitment spanned a turbulent global period, which is a reminder that people's baseline stress can shift over time.

Even with those caveats, this is a large, well-designed, genuinely global study, and its message is heartening. A simple workbook you can work through yourself helped thousands of people across five countries move toward forgiveness and feel less weighed down. For anyone carrying an old grievance, that is a reason for hope, and a nudge that letting go may be more within reach than it feels.