Aging and Forgiveness: What Difficulties do Older Adults Face in the Process of Forgiving?

AbstractForgiveness is a process in which individuals may experience different emotions, motivations, and interpretations in response to an interpersonal offense. This process seeks to promote personal and social well-being as its ultimate goal. The present study explores the main difficulties that people over 65 years old face in this process. We used the life story technique as primary research material to address our research question: What difficulties do older adults face in the process of forgiving? Thematic content analysis allowed identifying a set of meanings from the data. Our participants (<italic>N</italic> = 20) report five main difficulties in the process of forgiving: self-conflicts; avoidance of the painful experience by being purely conceptual; overwhelming vulnerability; assignment of forgiveness responsibility to an Other; avoidance by suppression of the painful experience. We explore—through the theory of the dialogical self—the way in which these difficulties imply the experience of forgiving. The difficulties experienced underscore the importance of exploring facilitative therapeutic strategies to assist individuals over 65 years old who are willing to forgive those who have offended them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]