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Excerpt from the first part of the article:

New research reveals how harboring resentment can undermine our health, leading to chronic stress, inflammation, and many serious diseases (Aghakhani and colleagues, 2026). Yet research also shows how forgiveness can relieve these effects, leading to greater peace of mind, recovery, and renewal (Almeida and Cunha, 2025).

The negative effects of resentment. A recent study on resentment and forgiveness in older adults (Almeida and Cunha, 2025) found that when painful feelings are not processed, we may feel lasting resentment, continued pain, dysfunction, and emotional injury. Resentment from old hurtful experiences can stay with us for years, buried deep in our memory. What the researchers call “lasting, ruinous, painful resentment” can produce a range of emotions from aggression to apathy that can block us from meeting our fundamental needs and undermine our relationships (Almeida and Cunha, p. 1191). We can feel unsafe, victimized, caught up in chronic survival mode as our amygdala, the brain’s alarm center, continually sends messages of threat throughout our bodies (Van Der Kolk, 2015). Then, if we’re triggered by some current event, active resentment and anger can emerge, further compromising our immune systems (vanOyen Witvliet and colleagues, 2001).

Excerpt from the first part of the article:

I’m a full professor and the chair of the psychology department at my university, which means I frequently give hour-and-a-half-long lectures for classes and conferences, and even more frequently sit through such lectures. But even though I’ve been at this for years, I can’t for the life of me pay attention through an entire session. My mind wanders to other things I have to do that day, what I’m making for dinner that night, or how many emails I’m going to inevitably have to deal with when I get back to my office. I’ve tried practicing mindfulness to be more present and live in the moment, but it’s not easy to sit and concentrate on my breathing for several minutes without my mind wandering off. I can’t even concentrate on a task at work long enough that I’m not glancing at my phone every few minutes. Why can’t I just pay attention?