ODL 316: Forgiveness Matters: Empowering Professionals to Facilitate Healing and Self-Forgiveness

Created On: 12/26/24     Revised On: 9/25/25

Attention Case Managers ONLY: CCMC expires on this course on 12/13/26 and will not be renewed. Please complete before this date.

Target Audience:

This course is targeted for social workers, psychologists, counselors, nurses and case managers.

Counselor Skill Groups:

4. Counseling Services

Overview:

Forgiveness Matters: Empowering Professionals to Facilitate Healing and Self-Forgiveness is a transformative training designed to provide helping professionals with practical tools and insights to assist their clients in achieving self-forgiveness. This session will guide you through a clear definition of self-forgiveness and introduce the Four Rs – Responsibility, Remorse, Restoration, and Renewal – offering specific interventions for each. Enhance your theoretical understanding with a presentation on the Stress-and-Coping Theory of Forgiveness and be inspired by Sarah Montana’s powerful personal story. Gain valuable skills to help your clients break free from guilt and shame, fostering improved mental health, stronger relationships, and greater self-acceptance. 

Course Objectives:

By the end of the session, the participant will be able to:

1. Define forgiveness and distinguish between “decisional forgiveness,” which involves letting go of resentment and anger, and “emotional forgiveness,” which replaces negative emotions with positive ones and provides significant health benefits.
2. Examine the health and relational benefits of emotional forgiveness, including reduced stress and its associated health risks, and the role of decisional forgiveness in repairing relationships.
3. Define self-forgiveness in a way that helps direct work with people who are seeking to forgive themselves for hurting others.
4. Describe each of the Four Rs of Self-Forgiveness: Responsibility, Remorse, Restoration, and Renewal.
5. Identify at least one intervention to help promote each of the Four Rs.

Presenters:

Everett L. Worthington, Jr., PhD, Virginia Commonwealth University

Everett L. Worthington, Jr., PhD, is commonwealth professor emeritus working from the Department of Psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University, where he holds an affiliate appointment. He also holds a faculty affiliate appointment at the Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University (Human Flourishing Program). He continues to be active in research and speaking around the world. He is a licensed clinical psychologist in Virginia. He has published over 48 books and over 500 articles and scholarly chapters, mostly on forgiveness, humility and positive psychology, marriage and family topics, and religion and spirituality. He also has developed the REACH Forgiveness model (see www.EvWorthington-forgiveness.com for free resources), which is supported by over 30 published randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and has recently been tested in global grant-funded RCTs in five countries (six sites; N = 4,598), although the results have not been published yet. He has developed numerous other positive psychological interventions. 

Personal interests: He ballroom dances and competes in pickleball singles and doubles. He and his spouse, Kirby, have been married since 1970.

Sarah Montana, WGA Screenwriter, Writer, and Public Speaker 

Sarah Montana is a WGA screenwriter, writer, and public speaker. She has written several screenplays for the Hallmark Channel, including “Rescuing Christmas,” “Love to the Rescue,” “A New Year’s Resolution,” and the Christopher Award winning “Two Turtle Doves.” Her play “The Girl, The Ghosts, and the Minotaur” won the Life Jacket Theater Company’s Proof of Concept Reading Series.

She is a sought-after public speaker about resilience, trauma, and forgiveness, which has led to speaking engagements at TEDx, women’s conferences, corporate retreats, colleges, and podcasts. Her viral talk “What Shapes You Can’t Break You” (view on YouTube or Goalcast) was featured on Goalcast and now has tens of millions of views. Her TEDx talk “Why Forgiveness is Worth It” is featured on TED.com, has received millions of views, and has been incorporated into college curriculums and therapeutic practices. 

She is a Gateless Writing Method certified teacher and teaches students of all ages how to fall in love with the creative process. She’s also a representative for film/TV/streaming on WGA East Council. Stay in touch her at facebook.com/sarahmontanawriter.

Nathaniel G. Wade, PhD, Iowa State University, Boston College, Gather Psychotherapy and Consulting

Following his undergrad graduation, Dr. Wade worked for 4 years as an Addictions Counselor in both an abstinence-based agency and a methadone clinic. He then went to graduate school for Counseling Psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University. He finished his PhD in 2003 and joined the Iowa State faculty where he was a Professor and Associate Chair of Psychology and Founding Director of Network Community Counseling Services. After 23 years at Iowa State, Dr. Wade made the move back east to be closer family. He now operates a private practice with his wife, Gather Psychotherapy and Consulting, and teaches at Boston College.

He is a licensed Psychologist in Iowa and Massachusetts and a Certified Group Psychotherapist. Nathaniel’s research interests center on the processes and outcomes of psychotherapy. Specifically, he has worked to develop and test interventions to promote forgiveness, to understand the impact of integrating religion and spirituality into psychotherapy, and to reduce the stigma associated with seeking counseling. His most recent interest is integrating exercise into psychotherapy. He has published three edited books, over 100 scholarly articles and chapters, and has received over 7 million in grant funding. He is an APA fellow of two divisions: Group Psychology and Psychotherapy and the Society of Counseling Psychology.

When not working, he enjoys spending time with family, hiking in the mountains of New England, and playing soccer each week with the “over the hill” crowd.