FORGIVENESS THERAPY 2
The Effects of Forgiveness Therapy On Women Suffering From Emotional Abuse
Summary
Spousal emotional abuse is common and reported in 35% of women (Reed & Enright,
2006). 72% reported emotional abuse being worse than physical abuse (Reed & Enright, 2006).
The effects are similar to that of physical abuse, including depression, PTSD, anxiety, low self-
esteem, learned self-esteem, and ongoing resentment of the abuser- all going beyond the end of
the relationship. (Reed & Enright, 2006). Despite these statistics, there still doesn’t seem to be an
agreed-upon treatment plan for victims of the abuse. For this reason, Reed and Enright set out on
the mission to explore a new kind of therapy called forgiveness therapy in their article The effects
of forgiveness therapy on depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress for women after spousal
emotional abuse.
Forms of abuse include criticizing, ridiculing, jealous control, purposeful ignoring,
threats of abandonment, threats of harm, and damage to personal property, with ridicule
associated most strongly with adverse outcomes of psychological abuse. One promising avenue
is forgiveness therapy. FT recognizes that anger can be justifiable and damaging in the long run.
In FT, it is vital to accurately define forgiveness from behaviors like condoning, forgetting, etc.
Per the author, it is the “decision to “give up resentment and to respond with goodwill… toward
the wrongdoer” (Reed & Enright, 2006, p. 921). This is hard work and optional for the women,
empowering them. FT goes through four phases: uncovering, decision, work, and discovery.
Two significant problems present themselves: learned helplessness, developing a pattern of self-
blame, and accusatory suffering, which goes against the idea of justice and brings forth the idea
that the perpetrator is let off the hook (Reed & Enright, 2006). This is where anger validation can
be helpful in the short run, as seen in alternative therapy, but not over time.
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Based on the above outline, the authors hypothesize the effectiveness of FT in helping to
minimize the effects mentioned above of abuse. The authors compare alternative and forgiveness
therapy (Reed & Enright, 2006). In their experiment, 20 women from a mid-west city, aged 32-
54, who were divorced or permanently separated from their partner for two years or more and
who came from various degrees of education, occupations, and family statuses. The majority of
women reported being criticized and their partners having jealous control problems, and all of
them reported their partners purposefully ignoring them or being ridiculed by them (Reed &
Enright, 2006).
The authors utilize a control group design, breaking up the 20 women into ten pairs and
matching them as closely as possible to their age, duration of the abuse, and time since the
separation (Reed & Enright, 2006). The pretest for them included a PTSD checklist,
psychological screening checklist, and more. If a woman described being in a current abusive
relationship, having suicidal thoughts, or having an abusive childhood, she was removed from
the study. Consent forms were presented to the participants, and the experiment/study was
explained to them. And they would be in weekly 1-hour therapy sessions. AT and FT therapy
styles were utilized (Reed & Enright, 2006).
In AT counseling, the clients had more say and control over what they would talk about
and how long. FT counseling had a slightly more controlled approach to the discussion topics,
including defining forgiveness, exploring compassion, and practicing goodwill. Notably, the AT
was implemented with the written and executed protocol closest to what had been described and
tested before. Post-testing was also utilized at the end of the experiment (Reed & Enright, 2006).
The authors “compared FT and AT gain scores from pretest to posttest on all dependent variables
with matched-pair t-tests” (Reed & Enright, 2006). Overall, the following data was concluded.
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“Women in the forgiveness therapy group experience more forgiveness of their abuser, greater
self-esteem, finding meaning in suffering, and new stories (survivor status) demonstrated less
anxiety, depression and pass/PTSD.
From there, the authors venture into a case study that followed one of the participants.
She is a middle-aged woman who has been separated for more than ten years and is experiencing
multiple contexts of psychological abuse. She also demonstrated the negative outcome of
psychological maltreatment (Reed & Enright, 2006). She was active in her engagement during
forgiveness therapy. She moved beyond shame, hate, and self-blame, fully grieved her loss, and
gained energy and drive in her career. Additionally, at post-test, she remarkably improved to
experience little anxiety, no depression, and high self-esteem! “This is the first study to
demonstrate that FT is efficacious as a therapeutic strategy for the amelioration of these long-
term negative psychological outcomes of spousal psychological abuse.” (Reed & Enright, 2006,
p. 926).
Furthermore, the experiment shows that FT is more helpful to psychological health than
the AT previously prescribed. Ultimately, we see a significant improvement, more so during the
FT than the AT, in the following areas: depression, anxiety, PTSD, environmental mastery, and
meaning of suffering (Reed & Enright, 2006). Reasons other than what was shared include the
client telling their unique story, including the hard but necessary work of forgiveness, knowing
their worth, combatting helplessness, and finding meaning in meaningless suffering, leading to
helping wounded others (Reed & Enright, 2006).
Reflection
My initial reaction while reading this article was one of pleasant irony. The article
mentions that up until now, for the most part, in alternative therapy, anger validation has been
FORGIVENESS THERAPY 5
the most commonly used treatment plan for battered women. As a personal advocate for
women’s rights, husbands, and fathers, I believe that anger validation CAN be healthy, but only
to a point. The article's irony is that we are encouraged to forgive one another throughout
scripture. We are encouraged to bear with one another and extend a mulligan, a do-over to
whoever has wronged us. That’s scary because it requires vulnerability. To forgive someone is to
essentially absorb their debt and treat them as though they are no longer an offender.
Of course, it is essential to differentiate between forgiveness and reconciliation, but this
kind of forgiveness is precisely what we see in John 21 from Christ. The same Peter that Christ
told He would build His church upon(Matthew 16:18), and the same one who bragged about his
following of Christ (Matthew 19:27) is the same one who would deny His relationship with Him
not one or two but three times (Luke 22:54-62). What’s impressive about this forgiveness
therapy article is that it is similar to what Christ did with Peter. In the same way, Peter denied
Him three times; he asked Peter in different ways, “Do you love me? Feed my sheep” (New
American Standard Bible, 1995, John 21:17). That took a lot of courage, boldness, and
vulnerability. Jesus has every right to tear Peter apart, yet He extends grace and forgiveness and
sends Peter on. I have seen the positive effects of forgiving those who have abused me. It’s a
process, and some validation of feelings, including anger, is a part of that process, but continuing
to validate the anger over time can have unhealthy effects. There is a reason that the scriptures
warn us about wrath and not sinning in anger (Ephesians 4:26).
Now, while I am optimistic about this form of therapy and from a Biblical standpoint, the
statistics make sense, but there are a couple of red flags for me within the research. The first
problem is the size of the study. There are just 20 women involved in this study (Reed & Enright,
2006). The researcher did well in including women of different ages and some control groups,
FORGIVENESS THERAPY 6
but culturally, 90% were white and all from the same city (Reed & Enright). Cultures vary from
city to city, family to family, race to race, etc. Such a narrowed participant base takes away some
of the validity for me.
Another thing to note is that 25% of the women had remarried since the separation (Reed
& Enright, 2006). This is also a problem because being with a new partner can help people work
through things. If they have remarried, they may have already received counseling personally or
in their new marriage. I know my wife and I were very different people before, during, and after
going through a season of healing in our marriage and my recovery from addiction. It is worth
noting that the authors share that forgiveness therapy and approaches in general toward women
who have been emotionally abused have not had adequate research studies and statistics (Reed &
Enright, 2006). Overall, I am excited about the possibilities of this kind of therapy, but when an
experiment is reported to work remarkably well, I am slightly skeptical.
Application
A couple of seemingly obvious applications can be made from this article. I can safely
say that I have not encountered a woman who has been intentionally emotionally abused in the
counseling setting yet. Still, I would utilize forgiveness therapy if I did. In vulnerability and
transparency, very shortly after my wife and I got married, as I was deep in my pornography
addiction, I cheated on her, lied to her, deceived her, and essentially emotionally abused her. One
of the first words that came out of her mouth was saturated with anger.
For about the first year, I took any anger from her. I felt I deserved it, and to some
degree, I did. However, over time, as I got healthier, I started pursuing the renewing of my mind.
As others in our community came around her, she grew to forgive me, at least on an initial level,
within a few months. I share this because we practiced forgiveness therapy in our counseling
FORGIVENESS THERAPY 7
sessions, some of the conversations she had with others, and some of our discussions. We
explored what forgiveness was; she denounced lies that the enemy had spoken over her, and we
realized we both had a distorted identity and grew much more robust than we were even before
we got married.
One other thing that stuck out to me was that forgiveness can have effects on regulating
emotions such as anxiety and depression while also increasing self-worth and gaining a healthy
sense of morality (Reed & Enright, 2006). One thing I see a lot of in counseling is anxiety. This
isn't surprising because Generations Y and Z are some of the most anxious generations. I hadn’t
given any thought to forgiveness being linked to anxiety, but it makes sense from a
psychological level. An application I could apply with the young man I am currently counseling
who struggles with porn addiction is to explore forgiveness therapy. We have explored his
family of origin, and some deep father wounds are present. Interestingly enough, he often
presents with anxiety and, at times, depression. I am curious and would imagine that walking
him through forgiving his father may help with anxiety, depression, and addiction overall.
One final application I noted in the article is my need for a deeper understanding of abuse
and forgiveness. I have experienced both, but I don’t know if my knowledge base beyond
scripture is deep. An action step I could take would be planning to spend some time over each
year researching trauma, abuse, and forgiveness from a psychological standpoint. As I want to be
a well-integrated counselor, this action step helps me to be more well-rounded.
FORGIVENESS THERAPY 8
References
New American Standard Bible. (1995) The Lockman Foundation.
Reed, G. L., & Enright, R. D. (2006). The effects of forgiveness therapy on depression, anxiety,
and posttraumatic stress for women after spousal emotional abuse. Journal of Consulting and
Clinical Psychology, 74(5), 920–929. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-006X.74.5.920
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