Counseling Faculty Publications and Presentations
Disability and forgiveness: An intervention to promote positive coping for persons with disabilities
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2016
Abstract
Disability is an event that forever changes a person's life. Throughout the coping and adaptation process, many experience negative thoughts and feelings such as anger, anxiety, depression, and multiple forms of frustration. Some of these may be related to a disability, while others are by-products of the negative experiences, attitudes, and treatment of persons with disabilities. These include societal barriers and injustices and changes and losses that often accompany a disability. Counseling professionals can assist persons with disabilities in learning to improve their coping process by learning about approaches and, in this case, interventions to help promote healing and positive coping. In order to cultivate forgiveness, the present article clarifies the meaning of forgiveness and its relevance to persons with disabilities, discusses barriers to and benefits of forgiveness, and provides a rationale for developing the forgiveness intervention and information about the content and modules it contains. Implications concerning ways counselors can use the forgiveness intervention and future directions for study are also discussed.
Recommended Citation
Stuntzner, S., & MacDonald, A. (2016). Disability and forgiveness: An intervention to promote positive coping for persons with disabilities. Annals of Psychotherapy and Integrative Health, 25(4), 36–61.
First Page
36
Last Page
66
Publication Title
Annals of Psychotherapy and Integrative Health