Forgiveness Therapy - Article Example

Forgiveness Therapy Forgiveness, which differs from excusing, reconciliation, pardoning, and forgetting, is essentially the process of voluntary and intended change in attitude and emotions by a victim of an offense. In their journal article The Effects of Forgiveness Therapy on Depression, Anxiety, and Posttraumatic Stress for Women after Emotional Abuse, Reed, and Enright (2006) compare forgiveness therapy with alternative treatment. As a topic, forgiveness therapy can be viewed through the perspective of a psychological virtue and concept that promotes long-term of persons abused emotionally. The journal article to be reviewed focuses on women who were emotionally abused in spousal relationships and how their psychological health is impacted. This paper will provide a summary of the article, the writer’s reflection on it and how the writer would apply the learned information to a potential counseling setting. Summary According to Reed and Enright (2006), the negative psychological outcomes of abuse are exhibited by women much longer after the actual abuse from spouses or people they are romantically involved with, and an estimated 35 percent reports such incidents. They opine there is no treatment authenticated by clear tests, despite 72 percent of women in research projects reporting impacts more negative impacts such as depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic disorders than those from physical abuse. These impacts, recorded from a study involving 20 women divorced for two years and psychologically, are demonstrated even after the abusive relationship is terminated. However, research on the new area of forgiveness therapy (FT) suggests that it addresses the ongoing bitterness and alleviates negative feelings because of forgiveness, based on goodwill, involves the decision to let go of such feelings. Ongoing research emphasizes on forgiveness being the restraint from negative responses and, rather promotes positive ones. The article explains that accusatory suffering heals the abuse and frees perpetrators, but can also be considered a defense against the women’s fear that they are responsible for their own victimization. From this, it suggests that any treatment must consider changing the victim status. In the 20-participant study, t denotes the number of tests conducted, and those who participated in FT demonstrated greater improvements in aspects such as forgiving former abusive partners, self-esteem, environmental mastery, finding meaning in suffering and new stories. These were recorded, in that order, as t(9) = 5.80, p Read More