Psychologists generally define forgiveness as a conscious, deliberate decision to release feelings of resentment or vengeance toward a person or group who has harmed you, regardless of whether they deserve your forgiveness.
Forgiveness brings the forgiver peace of mind and frees him or her from corrosive anger. While there is some debate over whether true forgiveness requires positive feelings toward the offender, experts agree that it at least involves letting go of deeply held negative feelings. In that way, it empowers you to recognize the pain you suffered without letting that pain define you, enabling you to heal and move on with your life.
The forgiveness can be seen to involve a process of transformation of understanding that is akin to the spirituality of death and resurrection. On this account, forgiveness is paradoxical and resistant to thought not because it involves a simple suspension of, or opposition to reasoned forms of judgment, but because it involves a way of holding together attitudes, concerns, and insights that do not easily cohere. In this sense forgiveness is an expression of a love that both hopes all things and bears all things; a way of accepting the worst whilst desiring the best.