E — Empathize with the offender
Try to understand the pressures, fears, or story behind what they did — without excusing it.
Key takeaways
- What it is: Try to understand the pressures, fears, or story behind what they did — without excusing it.
- Why it works: Empathy and sympathy are emotionally incompatible with sustained anger — you can rarely hold both toward the same person at once. Constructing a plausible account of why the offender acted (their fear, ignorance, or their own pain) replaces the "monster" narrative that keeps resentment fueled. This is the step Worthington treats as the engine of emotional forgiveness.
- Evidence: Backed by observational / correlational evidence.
- Avoid: Hearing "empathize" as "excuse" and refusing the step on principle. Empathy is for your own release; it never requires calling the harm acceptable.
Why it works
Empathy and sympathy are emotionally incompatible with sustained anger — you can rarely hold both toward the same person at once. Constructing a plausible account of why the offender acted (their fear, ignorance, or their own pain) replaces the "monster" narrative that keeps resentment fueled. This is the step Worthington treats as the engine of emotional forgiveness.
How to do it
- 1Imagine the offender explaining themselves — not to justify, but to be understood.
- 2Consider the pressures or fears that might have driven the behavior.
- 3Hold "this explains it" separate from "this excuses it" — understanding is not approval.
What the evidence says
ObservationalEmpathy is the most consistently emphasized active ingredient across Worthington’s work and forgiveness-intervention research generally. The broader REACH protocol has been tested in randomized trials and meta-analyses showing it raises forgiveness and lowers depression and anxiety.
Honest caveat: Effects are real but modest, and dose matters — more session time predicts more forgiveness; brief exposure does little.
- — Wade, Hoyt, Kidwell & Worthington (2014), meta-analysis of forgiveness interventions, J. Consulting and Clinical Psychology
Common mistake
Hearing "empathize" as "excuse" and refusing the step on principle. Empathy is for your own release; it never requires calling the harm acceptable.
IX Coach guides a structured perspective-take, prompting a plausible account of the offender while explicitly keeping "explains" and "excuses" apart so empathy doesn’t collapse into self-betrayal.
Practice this with IX Coach →