Since the beginning of President Biden’s term in January 2021, a federal mask mandate for public transportation has been in place, affecting everything from local bus routes to transcontinental flights. On Monday, the federal mask mandate for public transportation was struck down by Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle. While the Justice Department has appealed this ruling by Mizelle — who, at the time of her appointment by Donald Trump in 2020, was declared “not qualified” by the American Bar Association — it hasn’t sought or received a stay, meaning the mask mandate will not be in effect while the decision is appealed. 

The CDC still recommends people wear masks on public transportation, but ultimately it’s now up to airlines, transit authorities, and ride-hailing companies to decide whether to require masking — and it’s up to individuals to figure out, in the absence of those requirements, what they should do to protect themselves and others. 

“I would certainly still wear masks on public transit,” said Katelyn Jetelina, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and the author of the Your Local Epidemiologist newsletter. “Not just for individual-level risks, but also to help those that are much higher risk, and for those vulnerable pockets in the community.”

Here’s why you should continue to mask on transit — even in the absence of a mandate — along with some expert tips for protecting yourself and others when you’re commuting or traveling. 

The science still supports masking on transportation

It’s important to know that Health Freedom Defense Fund v. Biden, the case that led to the ruling striking down the travel mask mandate, was strictly about whether or not the federal government had the authority to implement the mandate; it was not about whether masking on transit is currently legitimate or useful from a public health standpoint. 

But the idea that the CDC doesn’t have this authority is also bogus. As my colleague Ian Millhiser wrote on Tuesday, Mizelle’s opinion in this case “is so poorly reasoned that it is difficult not to suspect that it was written in bad faith.” He continues: “The most likely reading of her opinion is that she simply disagreed with the Biden administration’s masking policy, and concocted a justification for striking it down.” 

The fact that the mandate was struck down is not a sign that masking on transit or planes lacks scientific merit. The evidence shows that masks work and are an important Covid-19 mitigation measure when indoors in public. 

“We know that Covid-19 is airborne and spreads via an aerosol that builds up in enclosed spaces,” said Matthew Cortland, a senior fellow working on disability and health care at the think tank Data for Progress. “The less Covid-19 that’s in the air around us, the safer we are. Masks reduce the amount of that infectious aerosol. The science is very clear.”

While it’s true that cases have dropped dramatically across the US since the winter omicron surge, the numbers are starting to go back up. According to the New York Times, “Cases have increased in a majority of states and territories during the past two weeks, but the inclines are sharpest in the Northeast and Midwest. In Washington, DC, Michigan, and New Hampshire, cases have more than doubled since the start of the month.” This may also be an undercount, given the widespread use of at-home antigen tests whose results are not officially recorded. 

Hospitalizations thankfully remain relatively low at present, but there are still plenty of good reasons to want to avoid infection, and to actively avoid passing the virus to others. “Every one of the 462 deaths caused by Covid-19 is a tragedy,” Cortland said, referring to the deaths on April 19, the day of our interview. “But preventing tragic deaths is not the only reason to prevent the spread of Covid-19. Even in people who are fully up to date on their vaccinations, Covid-19 can still cause long-term, serious health complications. Yes, long Covid, but Covid-19 also raises the risk of diabetes, abnormal heart rhythms, heart muscle inflammation, blood clots, strokes, myocardial infarction, and heart failure.” 

Beyond this, the more the virus spreads, the more likely we are to get new variants, which have the ability to prolong this pandemic even more. 

If you want to protect yourself, one-way masking definitely helps

One-way masking, or wearing a mask to protect yourself from the people around you who are unmasked, is fairly effective. “One-way masking helps a lot,” Jetelina said. “This is especially true when you have a well-filtered, well-fit mask like an N95, KN95, or KN94. They do a really great job at protecting the wearer. I feel very confident when I’m wearing one.” 

Cortland also emphasized the importance of wearing high-quality and well-fitting masks indoors, and suggested that people who are relying on one-way masking to stay safe should perform a seal check (a few tutorials here, here, and here) to ensure their mask is as protective as it can possibly be. “To be clear, it is not a replacement for a professional seal check,” Cortland said. “It is better than nothing, which is what the CDC and the rest of the federal government is offering.” 

But keep in mind that one-way masking is not a panacea, especially when community transmission is high. Emergency medicine physician Jeremy Faust recently did statistical modeling to determine when a KN95 or N95 would be enough to protect a severely immunocompromised person if they were the only person wearing one. Faust determined that once a community surpasses a weekly average of 50 cases per 100,000 people, one-way masking becomes unlikely to be enough to ensure very strong protection. While a lot of factors are at play here, including an individual’s risk status, vaccine status, and mask fit, it’s helpful to know that one-way masking can only take us so far. The more people who wear masks in public spaces, the better. 

Your mask also protects everyone who can’t opt out of using transit

Even if you feel okay about your personal risk, wearing a mask in public is key to protecting others, including unvaccinated kids and the immunocompromised. People who are worried about getting Covid-19 cannot, and should not have to, stay home if they aren’t comfortable entering mask-optional public spaces. High-risk people (just like lower-risk people!) need to be able to access essential public spaces — hospitals, pharmacies, grocery stores, and, yes, public transportation — to meet their basic needs and earn a living. 

“CDC’s mask requirement applied to airplanes; it also applied to subways, trains, buses, ferries, taxis, and ride-shares,” Cortland said. And a lot of people in the US are reliant on those forms of transportation, they pointed out; in 2019, Americans took 9.9 billion trips on public transit and 14.3 percent of workers commuted to work by public transportation in the Northeast.

“We use the subway to get to the grocery store, the bus to get to the pharmacy, ride-shares to get to work,” they continued. “To exclude tens and tens of millions of Americans from public transit — by making these conveyances unsafe — is not good for public health, it is not good for our economy, it is not good for our country.”

Jetelina said that she’s particularly concerned with people not wearing masks on trains and buses, which have terrible ventilation systems compared to planes. “My biggest fear with this is that there are going to be health equity concerns linked with this, and communities are going to be disproportionately impacted,” she said. “And with that, they will have even more mortality and morbidity, so it becomes this very dangerous revolving door.”

If you’re traveling by plane, ventilation alone won’t keep you (or others) safe

“Filtration and ventilation are incredibly useful on airplanes,” Jetelina said. “And they’re very powerful, especially if we compare it to other spaces. But they’re not perfect.”

Jetelina said one problem is that a plane’s ventilation and filtration systems aren’t actually on for the entirety of a trip — for example, they often aren’t running when the plane is sitting at the gate. This, coupled with the fact that airports are often crowded and don’t have the same highly effective ventilation system that a plane does, could mean significant time spent without these layers of protection. At minimum, you should wear a high-quality, well-fitting mask when you’re taking transit to the airport, in the airport, boarding the plane, taxiing on the runway, and disembarking the plane. 

Another problem on the plane itself is that the ventilation and filtration systems are highly effective for removing Covid-19 aerosols from the air, but less so for the larger and heavier droplets that can also transmit the virus. That means if you’re sitting near an unmasked Covid-positive stranger who coughs or sneezes, their droplets could reach you before ever getting picked up by the ventilation and filtration system. “While [ventilation] is a really great layer of protection, the masks help pick up the slack,” Jetelina said. 

“What we’re seeing in the science is that this proximity matters — a two-row diameter around you is where droplets could reach you from,” Jetelina said. “That’s quite a few people around you if you’re in the center of a plane.” 

Finally, more masking on planes will help prevent community transmission when folks reach their destinations. Even if the number of individuals who are infected on the flight is low, each can then go on to infect a much bigger number of people. “Transmission on planes can really impact propagation within the community, and even across the nation,” Jetelina said. “And so, again, thinking about your individual level of protection is important, but also, the community-level protection that you have when you wear a mask on a plane.” 

Jetelina said she doesn’t think people need to necessarily cancel flights now that masks are no longer required. “I think that if you wear a really nice N95 and if you’re boosted — or now it’s the second booster, so you’ve had four shots,” she explained, “there’s never no risk, but the risk is smaller with the layers of protection.”

Remember that you don’t need a mask mandate to wear a mask

When I recently interviewed biostatistician Lucy D’Agostino McGowan for an article about Covid-19 safety, she offered a helpful analogy she credited to her colleague Justin Lessler: When it comes to car safety, there are certain measures the government implements, like requiring that we all drive on the right side of the road and setting speed limits.

“They’re a minimum necessary requirement in order to keep our society functioning and allow people to get around in automobiles,” D’Agostino McGowan said. “And then there’s things you can layer on top of it, that will help your individual risk — both in terms of keeping you safe and keeping the people around you safe.” That might look like buying a car with a high safety rating, making sure your tires and brakes are in good shape, and cutting down on distractions like having a pet in your lap. It would be helpful for everyone if people thought of Covid-19 measures in a similar way and treated masks like something worth doing even if no one is forcing you to. 

“What I’m afraid of is that when mandates are lost, the normalization is also lost,” Jetelina said. “And so I hope that people feel confident in wearing masks, even if there isn’t a mandate there. Because it is truly best for their health with these rising cases.” 

The staggering winter omicron surge has receded in the US, but this pandemic isn’t over. Nearly 700 Americans, on average, are still dying of Covid-19 every single day, and cases recently spiked in Europe due to the BA.2 variant. This means a lot of people are, once again, unsure of the best way to proceed in their personal lives. Is it a bad idea to do indoor dining where you live right now? Visit with elderly relatives? Get on a plane to take the trip you booked last summer? If you have to show up at work every day, should you still be wearing a high-quality mask around your coworkers?

It can be frustratingly difficult to get straight answers. Much of the pandemic behavioral advice that does exist is still centered on assessing one’s personal risk, and the idea that once you’re vaccinated and boosted, you have nothing to worry about. “The communication around this has been abysmal,” Katelyn Jetelina, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and the author of the Your Local Epidemiologist newsletter, tells Vox. “There’s no top-down guidance at all.” 

There’s an even more significant dearth of information if you’re not young and healthy, or if you’re concerned about your personal impact on high-risk loved ones, exhausted health care workers, or strained hospitals. It’s not always clear how we might meaningfully protect the vulnerable folks in our communities, though immunocompromised people, people who are 65 and older, and people with disabilities remain at higher risk of complications and death even if they are vaccinated and boosted. 

While we absolutely need federal and state governments to do more to keep us safe (please, we’re literally begging you to upgrade schools’ ventilation systems, buy extra doses of antiviral pills and fund coronavirus aid, make it easier for people to access Paxlovid and Evusheld, and help vaccinate the world), we also can’t wait around for those structural changes to come through. We want and need to make smart personal choices, and also acknowledge that personal choices play a huge role in public health. 

Jetelina says the best time to adjust your behavior is before hospitals start to feel a strain. “It’s all about level of transmission in the community,” Jetelina says. “If the virus is circulating at really high rates, then the odds of you bringing the virus to your work or community is much higher than if the transmission in the community is low. Behaviors should reflect those transmission levels.”

So what, exactly, counts as a “high” rate of spread? Here’s how, specifically, to think about pandemic safety and precautions based on Covid-19 data in the coming months. 

How to think about the latest CDC guidance 

At the end of February, the CDC announced new guidelines for mask mandates that incorporated three data points: new Covid-19 hospital admissions over the previous week, percentage of hospital beds occupied by Covid-19 patients, and new Covid-19 cases per 100,000 people over the previous week. Prior to these new guidelines, the CDC recommended masking indoors once weekly cases were at or above 50 per 100,000 people. Now, masking isn’t recommended until weekly cases reach 200 or more per 100,000. This change meant much of the country was immediately recategorized as a “low” transmission zone, where masks and social distancing were no longer deemed necessary. 

While some people were no doubt thrilled to be given “official” permission, at long last, to unmask indoors in public, the experts who spoke to Vox for this story provided additional context for the new CDC metrics, and said there is still reason for caution. First, they explained, hospitalizations, which now make up two-thirds of the data points, are really about preventing system collapse versus mitigating personal Covid-19 risk or the threat that we as individuals pose to others. 

The specifics of the CDC’s guidance change have received some strong pushback. “I very much disagree with the CDC threshold for transmission,” Jetelina says. “I think that there’s a really big distinction that people are missing: The CDC guidance uses 200 cases per 100,000 as a metric that people can take their masks off. But that’s people that can take their masks off because hospitals are not surging. That’s very different than people taking their masks off because the likelihood of infection is reduced. And that nuance — that small distinction — is being lost among the public. I very much think that 200 cases per 100,000 is too high to protect at an individual level.” 

As emergency medicine physician Jeremy Faust puts it, the CDC “didn’t really show us their work on how [the new guidelines] protect the immunocompromised.” 

“[Cases] are a better measure for returning to protections like mask mandates because we can see cases increasing earlier than we see the downstream effects on hospitals,” says Tara C. Smith, a professor of epidemiology at Kent State University College of Public Health. 

To be clear, weekly cases per 100,000 people isn’t a perfect metric. “The data on community transmission is based on lab-reported cases,” says Syra Madad, the senior director of the system-wide special pathogens program at NYC Health + Hospitals. “With widely accessible and highly used rapid at-home tests now, the numbers don’t reflect the whole picture.” (One thing to keep in mind is that local case counts could be a lot higher than what is reflected in health department data.) 

“From my perspective, different metrics are useful for different purposes,” says David Dowdy, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “If the goal is to say, ‘What is the burden of Covid right now, how big of a problem is it, how should it be prompting national action?’ then hospitalizations are the right metric. We care about people getting really sick; we don’t care about people getting the equivalent of a sore throat. If the question is about your risk of getting infected at any given time, then local case counts and counts per 100,000 or per population are probably more informative.”

The number of Covid-19 cases in your community can help you assess personal risk and the danger you may pose to others

When community spread is high, says biostatistician Lucy D’Agostino McGowan, “your probability of encountering it is much higher, which then in turn makes your overall probability of a bad outcome higher. When people compare this to the flu, we’ve never had flu seasons where so many people are all sick at the same time.” She says this is significant from both a systems perspective — the hospital can only handle so many patients at a given time — and an individual perspective: If you’re highly likely to encounter Covid-19 when you’re out and about, then the risk of transmitting it to someone else is higher, as is the risk of you getting seriously ill. 

Jetelina says that individuals can look at total new cases per 100,000 residents in the past seven days to determine the level of community transmission and to decide what activities they’ll engage in. 

One easy way to get these numbers is to use the CDC’s Covid-19 integrated county view. (Note: Many trackers, like the New York Times’s county Covid tracker, show a daily average of cases per 100,000; the advice in this article is based on the weekly number.) Select your state and county from the dropdown menu and the page will update. Under the big bold “COVID-19 Community Level” — which, remember, is calculated using a combination of different metrics — you’ll be able to see the weekly case rate per 100,000.

Once you have your county data, here’s how Jetelina suggests thinking about your behavior and precautions if you’re vaccinated and boosted.

100 or more weekly cases per 100,000 people: high transmission 

• Wear a high-quality mask indoors in public
• Avoid crowded indoor spaces where people are unmasked and/or where proof of vaccination isn’t required
• Avoid flying on planes, if possible (Jetelina says the airport, versus the plane itself, is the main source of concern: “You will be walking through clouds of SARS-CoV-2 during a high transmission time,” she says.) 
• Avoid indoor dining
• Consider crowded private gatherings (like house parties) a high-risk event
• Be hypervigilant around higher-risk people
• If you’re symptomatic, it’s probably safe to trust positive results on an antigen test, but if you get a negative antigen test you should test again in 24 hours 

50–99.99 cases per 100,000: substantial transmission 

• Wear a high-quality mask indoors in public
• Avoid crowded indoor spaces where fewer than 75 percent of people are masked and/or where proof of vaccination isn’t required
• Flying on a plane and doing indoor dining is okay, though ultimately dependent on your personal risk tolerance
• Consider crowded private gatherings, like house parties, a high-risk event
• Be vigilant around higher-risk people
• If you’re symptomatic, trust positive results on an antigen test, but test again in 24 hours if you get a negative antigen test 

10–49.99 cases per 100,000: moderate transmission

• You can be unmasked in public if you’re comfortable with it and aren’t experiencing symptoms or don’t have a known exposure
• Unvaccinated companions (like, say, children under 5 who are not yet eligible for shots) should wear a high-quality mask in public indoor settings if possible
• Flying and indoor dining is okay, though ultimately dependent on your personal risk tolerance
• Be vigilant around higher-risk people
• If you’re symptomatic, test again in 24 hours if you get a positive test or a negative test

Less than 10 cases per 100,000: low transmission

• Unvaccinated companions (like, say, your children) should wear a high-quality mask in public indoor settings if possible, but you can be unmasked if you’re comfortable with it and aren’t experiencing symptoms or don’t have a known exposure 
• No restrictions on activities
• If you’re symptomatic, trust negative results on an antigen test. If you get a positive antigen test, test again in 24 hours

If you live with a young child who can’t be vaccinated, Jetelina says it might make sense to behave as though your county transmission is one level worse than it actually is — e.g., when you’re in the moderate zone, take precautions as though it’s substantial, and when you’re in the high transmission zone, be extremely vigilant. 

If all of the above feels overwhelming, one metric Faust suggests — 50 cases per 100,000 — is worth committing to memory. Faust recently did statistical modeling to determine when one-way KN95 or N95 masking would be enough to protect the severely immunocompromised — that is, when people who have zero protection from the vaccines would be fairly safe if they were the only people masked in a public setting. The number he landed on is 50 per 100,000, meaning you may want to mask in public and start making small changes to your behavior (more on that below) to protect others once your community reaches that threshold.  

Faust designed his model with the most vulnerable people in mind, meaning the folks with some protection (that is, the vaccines gave them some antibody response, even if it wasn’t as strong as it would be in other people) or who are higher-risk for other reasons will also benefit from others’ precautions. Faust’s article, “When will one-way masking be safe enough for everyone?,” is really worth a read, especially if you’re curious about his methodology and the limitations of this model, but the tl;dr is this: Once your community reaches a weekly average of 50 cases or more per 100,000 people, it’s a good idea to start masking again in public if you want to protect yourself and others.  

To protect vulnerable people, take additional precautions in the days following your higher-risk activities

While it’s too soon to declare victory over Covid-19, we know a lot more about mitigation than we did in March 2020, when staying home was the main tool we had. As we enter the third year of this pandemic, high-quality masks, outdoor activities, good indoor ventilation, at-home testing, and limiting contact when you’re symptomatic or have tested positive are crucial aspects of the “Swiss cheese model” of pandemic precautions, which is all about layering multiple safety measures. This approach also gives individuals wiggle room to do some of the things that bring them joy and connection (and a paycheck), while still reducing the risk to others.

When your county is firmly in the highest risk zone — meaning Jetelina recommends not doing things like indoor dining, unmasked choir rehearsal, etc. — and you still really want (or need) to do something that goes outside of the above guidance, you can make decisions that lower your risk and help protect those around you, especially in public spaces.

According to analysis from 2020, nearly four in 10 adults in the US over the age of 18 have a higher risk of developing serious illness if they are infected with Covid-19. Four in 10 is a lot of people, and good reason to simply assume you’re going to encounter high-risk people every time you’re in public.

D’Agostino McGowan says mitigation isn’t solely about limiting the activities you engage in on the front end; your “downstream” behavior matters a lot too. For example, she says if you attend a dinner party when community transmission is high, “over the next several days, you want to be more cautious if you’re going to be in an environment where you could pass it on.” 

“It doesn’t mean that you can’t do things that you enjoy, that bring you joy,” she continues. “It’s that when you’re doing them, you’re keeping who might be in the room in mind.” Keeping omicron’s shorter incubation period in mind, if you’re going to dinner indoors and a concert on a Thursday night, you should plan to mask up for church on Sunday (or to just watch the service via Zoom) and at the grocery store on Monday, and then take an antigen test on Tuesday.

Make antigen tests part of your pandemic routine

Jetelina and D’Agostino McGowan both say that rapid antigen tests are especially useful. “Rapid tests are pretty readily available now,” D’Agostino McGowan says. “So if you engage in something riskier and then you’re going to go into an environment where you don’t know the risk status of everybody, you could take a rapid test before going.” 

“I don’t think enough people utilize antigen tests,” Jetelina says. “If you come back from a business trip, do an antigen test. If you go to the nursing home, certainly take an antigen test that morning before you visit. I think that’s one of the most underutilized tools of our pandemic, and I really want people to see that as a really easy tool to use to break transmission chains.” In the US, you can order free antigen tests through covidtests.gov and some state health departments, or by calling 1-800-232-0233. If you’re insured, you can seek reimbursement (up to $12 per test) from your insurer for up to eight tests per covered individual per month.

If you do utilize rapid tests, just keep in mind that they don’t always detect infections, especially in their earliest stages, and a negative test shouldn’t be treated as a license to drop all other precautions. False positives are rare, and “if you have really high transmission rates in the community, you can trust you’re positive” based on a positive result, Jetelina says. But if you’re symptomatic and testing negative in a county with high transmission, test again in 24 hours. 

Instead of basing plans around calendar dates, use Covid-19 data to determine what’s safe to do

Since the beginning of the pandemic, public health officials have called on government and business leaders to avoid saying that Covid-19 restrictions will be eased on specific dates, and instead use data to determine when it’s safe to remove restrictions (and what might lead to re-implementing mandates). “There’s nothing that says ‘three weeks from now is going to be better than today,’” D’Agostino McGowan says, “other than the hope that things will just keep coming down. Rather than choosing a calendar date to change policy, it seems sensible to instead use meaningful metrics.” 

Individuals, too, could manage their own expectations — and that of friends and family — by letting data inform their activities. For example, instead of planning a big indoor family gathering for a birthday in May, you could instead say that you’ll have the party once the CDC reports weekly cases at 25 per 100,000 people. If you can’t totally avoid choosing a date right now, you could instead come up with some contingency plans — booking flights that can be refunded or rescheduled, for example, and agreeing as a group that you’ll cancel if cases are more than 50 per 100,000 in the two weeks leading up to the event or there’s a new, swift-moving variant.

Doing this requires accepting that life is still not “normal” or fully within our control, which can be really, really difficult. But the more we resist that reality, the longer this pandemic will go on, and the more lives will be lost. “It’s incredibly exhausting, these last few years, and I get the frustration,” Jetelina says, “but the virus doesn’t care about how tired we are. In fact, it gives the virus an advantage if everyone’s ‘over it.’” 

Think of local mandates as a starting point, not an ending point

D’Agostino McGowan uses an analogy she credits to her colleague Justin Lessler: When it comes to car safety, there are certain measures the government implements, like requiring that we all drive on the right side of the road and setting speed limits. “They’re a minimum necessary requirement in order to keep our society functioning and allow people to get around in automobiles,” she says. “And then there’s things you can layer on top of it, that will help your individual risk — both in terms of keeping you safe and keeping the people around you safe.”

That might look like buying a car with a high safety rating, making sure your tires and brakes are in good shape, and cutting down on distractions like having a pet in your lap. We should think of Covid-19 measures in a similar way. 

“Sometimes I feel like when there’s a public health recommendation, like a mask mandate, it gets viewed as sufficient, or like it’s the top thing,” D’Agostino McGowan says. “Those should be viewed as the baseline to keep things going. There’s always extra things that you can do.” 

“At high transmission rates, even if there is not a mask mandate, that doesn’t mean you should not have a mask on,” Jetelina says. “If you have your mask on, it will help reduce transmission to some extent. I wouldn’t underestimate the power of individual behavior. Everything helps at this point.”

Part of our series on America’s struggle for forgiveness.

Forgiveness is often viewed as the “happily ever after” ending in a story of wrongdoing or injustice. Someone enacts harm, the typical arc goes, but eventually sees the error of their ways and offers a heartfelt apology. “Can you ever forgive me?” Then you, the hurt person, are faced with a choice: Show them mercy — granting yourself peace in the process — or hold a grudge forever. The choice is yours, and it’s one many of us assume starts with remorse and a plea for grace. 

It’s reasonable to expect an apology when you’re the one who has been hurt or betrayed. But that’s not how it works in practice. In fact, therapist Harriet Lerner writes in her book Why Won’t You Apologize?: Healing Big Betrayals and Everyday Hurts, the worse the offense, the more difficult it can be to get an apology from the person who harmed you. In those instances, Lerner writes, “Their shame leads to denial and self-deception that overrides their ability to orient toward reality.” And beyond this, there are other reasons you might be unable to get the apology you deserve. Maybe the other person isn’t aware of the harm they did to you, or they’ve disappeared, making contact impossible, or they’ve died. 

Unfortunately, that puts you in a tough spot. How do you forgive someone who isn’t all that sorry, or who you can’t actually engage with? 

To answer this question, Vox spoke to two experts: Robert Enright, a professor of education psychology at the University of Wisconsin Madison and a leader in the scientific study of forgiveness, and Laura Davis, the author of several books about estrangement and reconciliation, including The Burning Light of Two Stars: A Mother-Daughter Story. Both have worked extensively with people who have experienced serious personal injustice, including survivors of child sexual abuse and gender-based violence. Enright and Davis say that forgiving someone who is unrepentant is absolutely possible; here’s how to approach it. 

Expand your view of what forgiveness is

In some ways, it’s easier to define forgiveness by what it isn’t. “Forgiveness is not excusing what the other did; that behavior was wrong, is wrong, and will always be wrong,” Enright says.

Both Enright and Davis say that forgiveness exists separately from reconciliation, and also from accountability — which is why forgiving someone doesn’t require an apology or even their participation. “Reconciliation is a negotiation strategy between two or more people trying to make their way back together to mutual trust,” explains Enright, whereas forgiveness is a one-way endeavor. Put another way: Forgiveness might be a step on the path to reconciliation, but you don’t have to traverse the full route if you’d prefer not to.

Enright also points out that while forgiveness is separate from accountability, it’s not at odds with seeking justice. “Many people think it’s either/or, rather than both,” he says. Forgiving someone can help you take a more clear-eyed approach to justice because you’re no longer, as he put it, “seething with rage.” 

Perhaps most importantly, forgiveness doesn’t require you to pretend the hurt didn’t happen, to forgive and forget, or to ever speak to the person again. “When you forgive someone, it doesn’t mean you have to have any kind of ongoing relationship with them,” Davis says. “It’s an internal shift, where you’re no longer carrying the wound in the same way.”

Enright defines forgiveness as a moral virtue. Moral virtues (like kindness, honesty, and patience) are typically focused on how they benefit others; these are things you do primarily for another person’s sake, regardless of whether or not they have “earned” it.

“Forgiveness is a special kind of moral virtue that always and without exception occurs when the other person has been unfair to you,” Enright says. “When that person is unfair to you and you willingly choose to forgive — it’s not forced upon you — you are basically good to the one who was not good to you. You’re deliberately trying to get rid of the resentment and offer goodness of some kind: respect, kindness, anything that is good for the other person.” 

Think of forgiveness as something you’re doing primarily for yourself

Because forgiveness is defined as offering goodness to another person, it can be hard, mentally, to want to get there — after all, you were the one who was wronged, so why do you have to now give them something? But it can be helpful to consider that you don’t have to literally give them anything, or even tell them you forgive them. Forgiveness doesn’t have to exist anywhere outside of you. 

America’s struggle for forgiveness

“Forgiveness is what we call a paradox,” Enright says. “It appears to be a contradiction but is not. It looks like you as the forgiver are doing all of the giving, and the other is doing all of the getting.” That mindset, he says, overlooks all of the benefits that you as the forgiver will likely experience. According to Enright’s research (which includes several meta-analyses of other forgiveness studies), people who have gone through the process of forgiving someone experience “characteristically, a reduction in the clinical variables of anger, anxiety, and depression, and increase in self-esteem and hope for the future.” 

“Forgiveness is my safety valve against the kind of toxic anger that could kill me,” Enright says. “Waiting for the apology is to misunderstand your free will, and it’s to misunderstand the medicine that is forgiveness, that you should be able to take freely, whatever you want.” 

Once you remove reconciliation as a goal, it’s easier to see how forgiveness will benefit you as much as — if not more than — the other person, giving you an opportunity to fully cut your mental connection to them. “Forgiveness begins to help you sever that connection so that you can be free,” Davis says. “I think it’s essential for people to eventually let go of their anger, their rage, their hurt, so that they can move on in their own lives.” 

Don’t let fear of “losing” stand in the way of forgiving someone 

Being willing to let go of the anger and hurt can be one of the hardest aspects of forgiving someone, especially someone who isn’t sorry or who hasn’t apologized. In these instances, it can sometimes feel like your wound is all you have: It serves as proof that an awful thing happened to you and really was as terrible as it felt. Forgiving someone, then, can feel like you’re capitulating — like you’re acquiescing to their view of events, when you know in your heart they did something wrong. 

Enright says it’s reasonable to want to tend to your anger when someone has hurt you. “You can hang on to anger for a short time because it shows you’re a person of worth and dignity, and no one should treat you this way,” he says. “But then my question would be, if you hang on to that anger, what is it doing to you? Yes, it will empower you for a while. But characteristically over time, it brings us down with fatigue, rumination, becoming far more pessimistic in life.” 

There’s real work involved in forgiving, and it takes time

Enright has studied forgiveness extensively. He says his research group at the University of Wisconsin Madison was the first to publish a scientific study on forgiveness, in 1989; in 1993, they became the first to publish a scientific study of forgiveness therapy. Their research has led to the development of a step-by-step process for forgiveness, which can happen in therapy (ideally with someone who is trained in forgiveness therapy), or through a self-guided process using his workbook. 

He says that forgiving someone via this process happens in four major phases.

1) The uncovering phase. The person who has been treated unfairly focuses on the effects of the injustice in their life. These effects might be things like monetary costs, lost time, ongoing anxiety, depression, anger, sleep problems, or a more pessimistic worldview. In a lot of instances, Enright says, people don’t even realize how much the injustice is still impacting their life.

In this stage, you’re also asked to think about what solutions you’ve already tried for these problems and the extent to which they’ve led to meaningful improvements or change. “We say, ‘If nothing satisfying has worked, how about trying forgiveness?’” Enright says.

2) The decision phase. This is where you’ll determine whether you want to try to forgive the person who hurt you. And the answer might be no! Maybe it’s too soon and the pain is too fresh, or you just know you’re not ready to let go of the anger. That’s okay; this is a process you can always return to, and, eventually, you might find that you want to forgive.

It’s also important to be sure you’re attempting to forgive because you want to, not because you’re being pressured into it by, say, friends or family who are tired of having to navigate the fallout and just want everyone involved to move on. “We have to be drawn to the idea of forgiveness ourselves, and never be coerced into it,” Enright says.

If you decide you want to work toward forgiveness, Enright says the next step is a homework assignment: Try to do no harm to the person who wronged you. You don’t have to feel positively about them, but you should try your best not to disparage them, and don’t seek revenge. If even that feels impossible, you might not be ready to forgive them yet.

3) The work phase. At this point, you’ll aim to broaden your narrative about the other person and develop empathy for them. So you might think about how they were raised, what difficult things happened in their life that led them to this point, and the ways in which that person is vulnerable. “You widen the story,” Enright says. “As you start telling that story to yourself, over and over, we see a little bit of empathy, a little tiny bit of compassion, a little bit of softening of the heart. That takes time, and definitely can’t be engineered through therapy; it has to emerge.” 

The next part of the work phase, Enright says, is “standing in the pain.” He says one way to do this is to think of your pain on a scale of 1–10, and to visualize that amount of pain in a heavy sack that you are holding on your back. “Acknowledge that it’s there, be aware of it, and stay with it,” Enright says. “Don’t try to run away from it. Don’t try to take anything out of it. Just let it be. What we find is, when people do that, that sack tends to shrink. As I deliberately say yes to the pain and stand in it, the pain begins to lessen.” He says that this part of the process can also help you rebuild self-esteem because it’s a reminder of what you’re capable of.

4) The discovery phase. This is when you’ll reflect on the meaning you’ve found in your life from this experience. “What we tend to find a lot of times is people become much more attuned to the wounds within other people,” Enright says. You may realize that you’ve become more patient with strangers, or less judgmental of coworkers or friends, because you have a newfound understanding of how they might also be struggling.

Going through this might also have made you feel more connected to other people, as you realize you’re not alone in the injustice you suffered. Or it may have given you a sense of purpose by inspiring you to help others who might have experienced something similar, or who are at risk of being wronged in the same way you were. 

Don’t be too hard on yourself if you’re struggling to forgive someone

Being ready to forgive someone who hurt you takes time, as does the work of forgiving them. It’s impossible to know when — or if — you’ll ever be ready. If now doesn’t seem to be the time, that’s okay. “We’re in relationships with many people over the course of a whole lifetime,” Davis says. “Things can shift in surprising and sometimes dramatic ways just with the passage of time.” Many of the people she’s interviewed have spoken about their feelings changing when they entered a different life stage; for example, a person who isn’t ready to forgive a parent might start to see the situation differently after they have kids of their own. (It can also have the opposite effect, making them feel even more hurt by their parent’s behavior.) 

“These things evolve over a lifetime,” she says. “If you had told me when I was in my late 20s and deeply estranged from my mother that I would end up taking care of her at the end of her life, I would have looked at you like you were completely crazy. Yet that’s what I chose and wanted to do.”

“I think that forgiveness is something that comes at the end of a long process of healing,” Davis says. “In my personal experience, it was a gift. I didn’t see it as the end goal of resolving an injury. I did my own work, and naturally, feelings of forgiveness arose.”

If you’re reading this, you probably already know that you need to adopt better work-life boundaries. 

Perhaps you feel like your brain is constantly on fire with thoughts about work and you’re beginning to suspect there’s a better way to live. Maybe you — and I’m spitballing here — just received yet another Sunday morning “Hey, just sent you an email” text from a coworker about a deeply not urgent email and you’d love to figure out how to tell them, “Hey, cut that shit out,” in a professional way. Perhaps you — again, spitballing — worked 60 hours a week for the past year and still aren’t getting a raise, or you recently watched the Layoff Angel of Death sweep through your company and realized that being available at all hours of the day didn’t save anyone’s job. 

There are physical and emotional effects when you work this much. One 2017 study in Portugal concluded that workers who put in more than 48 hours per week had poorer-quality sleep and increased symptoms of anxiety and depression compared to their counterparts who worked less. A UK study of data from hundreds of thousands of workers found that those who put in more than 55 hours per week had a higher risk of stroke — and had a significantly elevated risk of heart attack if they were also of a lower socioeconomic status. 

If you’re ready to reclaim your weekends and weeknights but aren’t exactly great at setting or enforcing boundaries in your work, you’re not alone. It’s hard, especially if you’ve worked in toxic environments or if you’ve had to be obsessive about work (or school) to get to this point in your career. And, of course, we’re all operating in a deeply broken system where many Americans are working nonstop as a matter of survival; systemic and policy changes must address that, not individuals. But if you have a bit more privilege and flexibility with your work and suspect you could do more to protect your time and energy, read on for some tips. 

Recognize the signs of burnout 

“If we don’t stop and take care of ourselves, we risk burnout,” says California-based therapist Ryan Howes, who specializes in helping people feel empowered and gain independence in their lives. “Burnout has been recognized as an official disorder by the World Health Organization. It affects your ability to work [and] your emotions about work.” But it’s easy to lose sight of what a healthy and normal workload looks like, particularly if you’ve been grinding for a while. Here are signs from Howes that you may be burned out or need better work-life boundaries: 

• You dread going to work in the morning.
• You show up late or find reasons to leave early.
• You feel bored or don’t want to engage with the work when you’re there.
• You’re complaining about work a lot (even though you’re not typically a complainer).
• The first thing you do in the morning and the last thing you do before you fall asleep at night is check your work email.
• You plan all your vacations around work (e.g., not traveling too far from work in case they suddenly need you). 
• You’re having frequent work dreams and nightmares.

(You could also use my personal metric: If you’re regularly jealous of your dog because it gets to stay home and do nothing all day, that’s a bad sign.) 

Once you recognize that something needs to change, start with your mindset. It’s not enough to believe in logging off on weekends in theory. 

“The biggest thing is a mental reframing. You’ve got to really believe that it’s okay to disengage from work and that you won’t look like a slacker for doing so,” says Alison Green, author of Ask a Manager: How to Navigate Clueless Colleagues, Lunch-Stealing Bosses, and the Rest of Your Life at Work (and the excellent work advice blog Ask a Manager). 

A lot of people struggle to set boundaries or say no at work because they want to be liked, Howes says, but that strategy might not be helpful in the long run. “There’s a difference between being liked and being respected,” he says. “Sometimes people like you because they can walk all over you. Saying no teaches people to respect you and respect your time … to think, ‘Let me only ask for this if I really need it.’” 

He suggests taking an honest look at your motivation for doing so much extra work. “Is it coming from a place of excitement?” he says. “Or is it coming from a place of anxiety and fear?”

Don’t let your work friends become your only friends

It’s worth considering whether your relationships with your coworkers are playing a role in how much you’re working (or just thinking about work). “I always say be friendly with people but have other friends,” Howes says. After all, if your only friends are your work friends, it’ll be much harder to avoid work on evenings, weekends, or vacations.

And if your coworkers do happen to be your close friends, it’s not a bad idea to set some boundaries around shop talk. You are absolutely allowed to say, “Hey, can we put a moratorium on work convos [for the rest of the day/in the evenings/at this birthday party]? I’m finding that talking about it so much is stressing me out and making it harder to relax and recharge.” Your coworker pals may even appreciate this. 

Howes also suggests not engaging in gossip or getting drawn into office drama, which increases the time you spend talking and thinking about work and is just toxic. Complaining might feel good in the moment, but it’s incredibly draining and unproductive (particularly if you’re venting on the side via IMs all day), and it brings everyone else down too. 

Don’t be a hero. Speak up when your workload is too much.

Setting boundaries at work doesn’t have to be a huge to-do. “Sometimes all you have to do is stop saying yes to everything,” Green says. In fact, she says, your boss might be expecting you to tell them when you’re stretched too thin. 

Green says you should think about what you can reasonably get done in a week and then say something to your manager like, “I can’t have this by Tuesday, but I could get it to you by Friday,” or, “I can do X, but it will mean delaying Y and Z. Should we talk about how to prioritize those?” 

“In other cases, you do need to have an explicit conversation with your boss where you say something like, ‘I’m regularly working 60-hour weeks, and that’s not sustainable. I want to talk to you about how to best structure my time and make sure we’re on the same page about what to prioritize,’” she says. And Howes recommends heading into these conversations with a few potential solutions in mind. 

Howes adds that phrasing like, “I’ve been doing a lot, but I don’t think I’ve been doing it well,” can be particularly effective. “If you can say, ‘I don’t think I’m doing my best-quality work,’ that’s a good selling point,” he says.  

It’s not just managers: We’ve all had coworkers who work nonstop and expect us to do the same. But you don’t actually have to engage! If you need to set a boundary with a pushy colleague, try one of these scripts from Green:

“I’ve got to stay focused on X this week — sorry I can’t help!”

“I’m juggling a lot of projects right now, so typically I’ll need three days’ turnaround time on something like this. If it’s ever an emergency, let me know and I’ll see what I can do, but I’ve got to balance it against requests that came in earlier.”

“I’m [out sick/on vacation/taking PTO] today, but I’ll look at this when I’m back in the office.” 

And if you tend to have a hard time saying no, Howes recommends just not responding immediately. “Try to work on that impulse to say yes to everything,” he says. “Take a second and say, ‘Let me get back to you,’ or, ‘Let me think about that.’” 

Log off. (No, really.)

If you know that logging off would help but you can’t seem to kick the habit, here are a few ways to start: 

• Use separate apps for work email and personal email (such as the native Mail app for one and the Gmail app for the other), so you don’t inadvertently see work emails on weekends when you’re, say, reading your favorite newsletter.
• Move your email app and Slack off your home screen — and perhaps into a harder-to-access folder — so you don’t open them out of habit. (It’s kind of astonishing how much of a difference this makes.) 
• If you can’t resist working in your off-hours, consider waiting to send non-urgent emails until working hours when your coworkers are back online too. Every message you send creates more work — for the recipient, for you when they reply, etc. — and contributes to a workplace culture where everyone is always on. By waiting to hit send (or scheduling your emails), you do everyone a favor.

And if you’re planning to reset your work-life balance after months or even years of being hyper-available, Green says it can help to be explicit about the change so your colleagues can adjust their expectations. She suggests saying something like, “I know historically I’ve been on email most of the night, but I’m going to be more disciplined about disconnecting in the evenings from now on. I’ll still get back to you by the next day in most cases, but it might take a little longer than it traditionally has.” 

If your work-life balance issues are ongoing, consider leaving

If the relentless nature of your industry is giving you daily panic attacks or if you’re putting in miserable 80-hour weeks and are still struggling to complete all your work, it might be a sign that this isn’t the job or the company or the career for you. And that’s fine!

“I don’t think people should be afraid to say, ‘I’m having a hard time keeping up,’” Howes says. He recommends thinking about what you want your life to look like in a year or five years. How would you feel if nothing about your current workload or work-life balance had changed? Howes says it’s not unusual or shameful to change jobs or career paths — he had a client in his 50s who did so recently because, the man said, “I’ve been fulfilling the dreams of the 15-year-old version of me.” 

If you do start job hunting, Green says you can ask about work-life balance during the interview process. “Say, ‘Can you tell me what hours the person in this role typically works?’” she says. “Don’t just ask the hiring manager. You’ll sometimes get a more realistic answer from peers of the role or others in the company.” 

When it’s all too much, do this to feel human again

Setting boundaries isn’t just about saying no; it’s also about saying yes. When your brain is on fire after a long day of work, remember to say yes to the activities that contribute to your overall well-being. Instead of flopping down and scrolling on your phone endlessly after a long day, maybe eat something vaguely nourishing, move your body, put clean sheets on your bed, make a cup of tea, take a bath, do a puzzle — anything that helps ground you and makes you feel a little bit more human. 

And even when you’re really overwhelmed at work, do your best not to isolate yourself. “Reach out to your people: your family, your friends,” Howes says. “Let them know you’re struggling.” He also suggests seeking support online from other people who work in your industry. These colleagues can give you a sense of whether your workload or your boss’s demands are normal, offer coping tips, and help you figure out whether this is all really worth it for you. 

Rachel Wilkerson Miller is a former senior lifestyle editor at BuzzFeed and the author of Dot Journaling: A Practical Guide.