The Rev. John Bauman on forgiveness as a choice

Hope in Rehabilitation

I’ve been writing my dissertation for a D. Min. at Andover Newton Theological School on “The Role of Forgiveness in Rehabilitation.” I decided to write about forgiveness when a patient focused something that had been in the back of my mind for some time. A physical therapist made a referral saying that a Catholic patient feared she wouldn’t be going to heaven. Wasting away and breathing with the help of a trache and oxygen, this patient was not motivated to do her therapy due to an unresolved forgiveness issue. She had carried a burden of guilt for three years. She had not asked for forgiveness because she expected condemnation from G-d and her husband.

So we talked about her family and religious background, her involved and caring husband, her depressed mood, and her lack of motivation to participate in her rehabilitation. We came to a picture of her early negative experience with authorities and her resulting long-held expectations about their reactions. When we discussed a different way of perceiving both her husband and her G-d, and when we prayed asking for G-d’s help so that she might start to reconsider her beliefs about asking for forgiveness, she decided to rethink her beliefs and how they affected her relationships and even her health.

By the time we met two days later, she had confessed her guilt to her husband who said he had forgotten all about that unimportant, little thing. She had confessed to G-d and felt forgiven. She had gotten out of bed and gone to physical therapy. It was not long until she had gained enough weight and strength so that she could go home.

Thinking about the now very conscious idea that unresolved forgiveness issues might also be affecting other rehabilitation patients; I began to try to conceptualize how other rehabilitation patients go about adjusting to their physical conditions. For patients in the rehabilitation hospital with COPD who had smoked and held it against themselves, for patients with an amputation who had not followed their diabetic diet, for patients with a stroke who had not altered their lifestyle, for patients after a DWI or injury following a bad decision, for patients who held G-d responsible for their condition, I tested doing pastoral care with them while thinking in terms of an unresolved forgiveness issue and in terms of trying to help them work through a forgiveness process. I developed a pastoral care style that felt comfortable to me by adapting ideas from Robert Enright’s very helpful description of a four-phase forgiveness process in Forgiveness is a Choice. Using this approach with patients has helped me focus my interventions, as appropriate, to help patients with unresolved forgiveness issues in their rehabilitation.

While I have found two research studies connecting rehabilitation and forgiveness, these studies have focused more on forgiveness, anger and social desirability. I am hopeful that other people may have done some research, writing, or thinking on this subject. I also hope to conduct quantitative research on forgiveness and rehabilitation.

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