Forgiveness and chronic low back pain: A preliminary study examining the relationship of forgiveness to pain, anger, and psychological distress

Struggling With Adversities of Life

“…Given the number of interpersonal stressors and challenges that FMS patients face [32], it is important to consider that lower forgiveness may be an important point of intervention for coping with these experiences. Most associations between forgiveness of self and others with anxiety, depression, anger, health, and quality of life were statistically significant, in the predicted direction, of moderate size, and consistent in direction and magnitude with much previous research in pain patients and healthy populations [28,29,45]. Associations between forgiveness of self and pain severity and number of pain regions approached statistical significance and remain clinically significant issues to address.…”

“…Results showed that pain patients' average levels of forgiveness of self and others did not differ from a healthy sample, and forgiveness was related to less time in pain, less pain intensity and interference, and better mental health. The second study examined forgiveness in a sample of chronic low back pain patients and showed that forgiveness was related to less pain, anger, and psychological distress [29]. The salutogenic associations with pain, health, and anger are likely due to the coping benefits of forgiveness [30] that impact the stress-disease connection [31].…”

Alcohol Use and Religiousness/Spirituality Among Adolescents

“…Unforgiving thoughts have been shown to have a negative effect on skin conductance, heart rate, and blood pressure. 23 It is therefore not surprising that previous studies have also found forgiveness to be associated with improved outcomes in rehabilitation from traumatic brain injury, 24 patients with cancer, 25,26 management of low back pain, 27 and alleviating Post Traumatic Stress Disorder symptom severity, 28 among other health problems. One study has shown forgiveness therapy to be important in recovery for adult substance abuse treatment clients.…”

Forgiveness in Younger, Middle-Aged and Older Adults: Age and Gender Matters

“…Findings in connection with forgiveness in this respect are divergent. While links with certain forgiveness instruments and social desirability have been found (e.g., Brose et al 2005), other scales on the other hand such as the Enright Forgiveness Inventory (EFI) do not seem to be correlated with social desirability (e.g., Carson et al 2005;Subkoviak et al 1995). The TRIM-12 Inventory, an earlier version of the TRIM-18 which includes the Revenge and Avoidance subscale, demonstrated very low associations with measures of social desirability (McCullough et al 1998).…”

“…Indeed, previous research has shown that forgiveness is associated with improved interpersonal relationships between the forgiver and the transgressor (Karremans and Van Lange 2004;Tsang et al 2006). In addition to its apparent relational benefits, forgiveness is also positively associated with physical (Carson et al 2005;Lawler et al 2005) and psychological well-being (Karremans et al 2003;Toussaint and Webb 2005).…”