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Forgiveness Therapy - This is answers to the
work.
Integration of Spiritualty and Counseling (Liberty University)
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Journal Article Review 1
Journal Article Review
Liberty University
COUC: 506
John Petko
01/18/2023
Forgiveness Therapy
It can be hard to forgive someone who has done wrong by you or even caused you harm
and it may seem even harder to forgive yourself when you’ve made a terrible mistake. Forgiving
others and ourselves is a critical part of healing and being able to move on. As a counselor,
helping clients to execute forgiveness can put them on track toward self healing and self
empowerment. Forgiveness is defined as the process of letting go of anger at someone who has
done harm to you or caused you pain ( Schultz Psy.D., 2022). It is more about having a sense of
freedom for the injured person so they are not burdened by the pain.
Summary
For my article review, I chose to focus on the Forgiveness therapy article by Barabara A.
Elliot. Elliot discussed that there is a link between people who have chronic illnesses and using
forgiveness interventions for therapy and treatment. There was a study found that showed a client
having an early exposure to hardships such as abuse both physical and emotional, childhood
trauma, living with someone in the household who is abusing alcohol or drugs, living with
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someone in the household who has a mental illness, and much more which resulted in the patient
having a lifespan affected by chronic illness and mental illness. Elliot explains two hypotheses,
the first one suggests that the early hardships are seen as a stressor that accumulates as time goes
on, which results in being destructive to the body (Elliot, 2011). Her second hypothesis explains
that when hardships happen during an important developmental point such as childhood or even
before birth, the hardships then become combined into the individual’s brain (Elliot, 2011).
Forgiveness in health settings is beneficial for patients because forgiveness therapy is an
effective method used to end the cycles of anger and even hatred (Elliot, 2011). Therapists,
psychologists, and counselors use this method of therapy to help clients who live with
dysfunction in their everyday lives. When it comes to forgiveness therapy, there are steps that a
client must go through in order for forgiveness to be achieved. One of the steps that Elliot states
is that the client must try to get rid of believing that they are unable to forgive. In order to
forgive, the patient cannot hold on to the uncomfortable feeling they have towards whatever or
whomever has caused them harm. Throughout this article I learned that there are different forms
of forgiveness. The forms of forgiveness are decisional, which is forgiving who has harmed you
without being able to change the emotion of resentment you have towards who has harmed you
(Elliot, 2011). Another form is emotional forgiveness which is having an emotional change
towards who has harmed you (Elliot, 20122). In therapy sessions, emotional forgiveness is
shown to be the most effective as far as patients being able to heal.
Not only does forgiveness affect people, but not being able to forgive also has an impact.
Holding on to the pain you have suffered and the burden of not forgiving over a long time can
result in affecting your body and brain. Your adrenaline productions are affected which triggers a
person's fight or flight response (Elliot, 2011). A person could even start having high levels of
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stress when they are not forgiving. The high levels will then lead to long term chronic illness
(Elliot, 2011).
Interaction
I found this whole article to be very insightful and interesting. It actually hit home a bit
for me because I find myself to be someone who struggles with forgiveness towards others and
myself. Once a person has caused me harm I do not like to think about it and in the end, I hold a
grudge against the person. I chose this article because I wanted to read about how chronic illness
and forgiveness are linked. The articles provided a lot of detailed information that backed up a
lot of claims. The article’s main purpose was to discuss forgiveness as an effective way of
therapy when it comes to forgiving others. I was expecting the article to provide ways on how
forgiveness therapy is effective when it comes to forgiving ourselves and the mistakes we have
made. Making a mistake that one considers to be a big one can cause trauma just like someone
causing harm to you does. According to the ACA Counseling Center, forgiveness is important to
supporting healthy family relationships. There are benefits to forgiveness such as improved
mental and physical health and restored sense of personal power (ACA Counseling Corner ). As
a future counselor, I found forgiveness therapy to be insightful and I plan to research more on it
to hopefully add it into my sessions.
Application
I am a counselor, and a new client has come to me with experiences of depression. My
client is twenty-five years old who identifies as female with the pronouns She/Her. She has
explained to me that she was originally born male but has been transitioning since she was
twenty-one years old. She continued to explain to me that ever since her transition, none of her
family and friends started supporting her and that is when her depressive symptoms started
coming into play. Her family and friends have stopped speaking to her and have made her feel
as
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if she is making the biggest mistake of her life. She is staying true to who she is but she struggles
with moving on from how her loved ones have treated her and practically abandoned her
throughout her journey. She described her symptoms as self-isolating, lack of motivation to do
daily activities, poor hygiene because she has no motivation to take care of herself everyday,
consistent crying, having feelings of self doubt in herself, and having negative thoughts such as
not wanting to be here. When I asked her if her negative thoughts are similar to her wanting to
harm herself in any way she responded with no. From this scenario, the presenting problem is
that the client is suffering from depression. The client is experiencing these problems because
she has no support from her loved ones, she has hurt feelings, negative emotions, and being
unable to forgive. After reading the article Elliot, 2011 as a counselor, my goal for my client will
be forgiveness therapy. The first step my client must do is work on getting rid of these negative
thoughts and self-doubt that she has. We will then work towards her being able to forgive her
loved ones, not for them but for herself. Holding on to this dislike she has for them is taking an
emotional toll on herself, which is manifesting into depression. I will explain to my client what
the forms of forgiveness are and how she will benefit from the emotional form. Forgiveness
therapy and other counseling methods combined will help my client be able to gain healing and
start to live her life depression free. Our sessions will be based on conversations on forgiveness
and the plan that God has for her. I will assure her that God loves her and that he has placed
great value over her. The plan will be to start off with having sessions over the span of 8 weeks
for an hour and a half. Placing God in our forgiveness sessions will result in great changes for
my client as talks about God can provide additional forgiveness support. It will not be an easy
journey, and it will take a lot of patience on both of our ends, but I will assure my client that
there is no giving up and that I am with her every step of the way. “Bear with each other and
forgive one another if
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any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you” (Colossians 3:13).
References
Schultz Psy.D., J. (2022). Forgiveness therapy: 6+ techniques to help clients forgive.
PositivePsychology.com. From https://positivepsychology.com/forgiveness-in-therapy/
Elliott, B. (2011). Forgiveness Therapy: A Clinical Intervention for Chronic Disease. Journal of
Religion and Health, 50(2), 240-247. From http://www.jstor.org/stable/41349784
Aca Counseling Corner . ACA(WEBusage). (n.d.). Retrieved from
https://www.counseling.org/news/aca-blogs/aca-counseling-corner/aca-member-
blogs/2018/04/25/forgiveness-and-trust
Official king James Bible online. King James Bible Online. (n.d.)., from
https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/
