Coping with Physical Loss and Disability: A Workbook

by Rick Ritter, Tyler Mills (Illustrator)

Overview

A New Approach to Coping

This workbook provides more than 50 questions and exercises designed to empower those with physical loss and disability to better understand and accept their ongoing processes of loss and recovery. The exercises in Coping with Physical Loss and Disability were distilled from ten years of clinical social work experience with clients suffering from quadriplegia, paraplegia, amputation, cancer, severe burns, HIV/AIDs, and neuro-muscular disorders arising from accidents, injury, and disease.

About the Author

Rick Ritter, MSW, a disabled veteran and social worker, has worked with more than a hundred clients who have experienced physical loss and disability. This workbook is a distillation of the very best questions and exercises to draw the client towards re-taking control of their life. He has competed in international events for disabled athletes. Ritter was also a major contributor to got parts? An Insider's Guide to Managing Life Successfully with Dissociative Identity Disorder. He currently resides in Ft. Wayne, Indiana.

Series Info

Coping with Physical Loss and Disability: A Workbook is the second book in the New Horizons in Therapy Series. This series is specifically designed to empower clients to work on their own in a therapeutic setting. As many therapists will state, it's often what the client does outside the session that can make the biggest difference in recovery.

What People Are Saying

This workbook is a very good stimulus for focusing on issues that are crucial for better coping with loss and disability. Just putting the questions with the blanks together is a great opportunity for self-reflection and might greatly help people raise their consciousness. As I believe the saying goes 'If you do not help yourself, then no one will be able to help you.'"
-Beni R. Jakob, Ph.D, Israeli Arthritis Foundation (INBAR)

"Ritter provides a valuable self-care plan for those suffering from the loss of physical capacity. He also shows readers how to find the mental, emotional and spiritual encouragement critical to the healing process."
-Georgiann Baldino, Author and cancer support-group facilitator

"This workbook is more than just a set of exercises, valuable as that can be. It is an inspiration, a guide, and in some cases may become a lifesaver. The author himself has suffered severe physical problems and has surmounted them. So he is not some 'expert' telling you what to do, but rather a guide who has been there himself. A lot of my work deals with chronic pain management and this workbook will be
invaluable to my clients."
--Robert Rich, Ph.D., author of Cancer: A Personal Challenge

"Rick Ritter captures the depth of the emotional pain in the aftermath of physical loss and disability. This workbook format will surely provide a sense empowerment to those who feel helpless in these situations."
-Rev. James W. Clifton, Ph.D., LCSW

"I found the workbook useful in addressing the various aspects of the physical loss. The examples given by the author are very relevant and will help the sufferer relate to similar situations. I recommend the workbook to those who are trying to heal from past traumas or to those who are trying to help their near and dear heal."
- S.V. Swamy, Holistic Healer and editor of Homeopathy For Everyone

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781932690187
Publisher:	Loving Healing Press
Publication date:	01/01/2006
Series:	New Horizons in Therapy
Pages:	104
Product dimensions:	8.27(w) x 11.69(h) x 0.22(d)

Read an Excerpt

Coping With Physical Loss and Disability: A Workbook

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By Rick Ritter

Loving Healing Press

Copyright © 2006 Rick Ritter
All right reserved.
ISBN: 1-932690-18-2

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Chapter One

Past and Future

Many frustrations and misunderstandings arise from intermixing the past and the future. In this chapter, you will look at your beliefs in both areas.

A person can best be described by considering four aspects: emotional, mental, physical and spiritual. All four are important, and they interact in complex ways. You have undergone some distressing physical losses. The impact of these on your life will depend on the emotions you feel about them, your thoughts, and the way you conceive of your place in the universe.

Steve was born with no apparent disabilities, but as a young boy was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy and by age 11 or so he was in a wheelchair. Steve almost grew up with his disabilities since he was diagnosed at such a young age. However, he eventually lost all of his peers whom he had met and become friends with through his Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) contacts, because he outlived all of them by quite a few years. He finally died at the age of 29 from complications of MD and from complications of HIV. He had contracted HIV via a blood transfusion during a surgery to place rods in his back. Steve lived a relatively happy life within his limits, in spite of the double-whammy dealt to him by life.

Mike was an angry young man whom I worked with at the request ofhis wife and medical support staff due to his anger and his subsequent lashing out at all of them. He had been wrestling with a friend in his backyard in his mid-twenties and his friend broke Mike's neck. He became a quadriplegic ("quad") instantly and he had gone from being a roofer to an angry trapped young man relegated to his hospital bed and medical equipment and having to rely on others for his every need. His daughter, who was five, had really gotten to him when she defied his verbal correction and instruction and mocked him, saying, "I don't have to listen to you anymore-you can't catch me." Initially he didn't respond very well, but eventually he moderated his response and worked within his limits to improve his response to others on most days.

Larry had become a quad when he and a buddy were driving while drunk. His buddy died and he was left a quadriplegic. He had gone from working in his own business and riding and caring for horses and motocross bikes to being confined to bed and then eventually to an electric wheelchair since his fracture had been a high one. He terrorized his family either from bed or from the chair. I witnessed him pinning his daughter against the wall with the wheelchair when she was in her teens. He still clung to the idea that he was the king of his roost and he used any means to control others about him. Yet when he was in a public setting, he often would be confronted with the looks and the questions from children and he would break down crying. However, he quickly he switched back to anger as his preferred mode of expression. No one ever reached him and he never worked beyond the anger and the guilt of his situation. He died fairly isolated and most people wanted nothing to do with him.

Mike came to terms with his anger while Larry let it run rampant and destroy both himself and his family relationships.

These four aspects of a human being (emotional, mental, physical and spiritual) are important in every one of the exercises in this workbook.

1-1. Who are you today? This question requires that you describe who you are in written words, drawings, collages, paintings, clay work, movement or any other expressive means that you are comfortable with or have the ability to accomplish. Select at least two methods of answering this question. Creative activities will reveal a great deal of useful information to you. Art therapy is based on the belief that the creative process involved in the making of art is healing and life-enhancing. Take into account in this question, and all the rest of the questions in this workbook that the "you" we are referring to is the emotional, mental, physical and spiritual you. Consider all four of these aspects of yourself in each set of answers.

1-2. Who do you see yourself as having been prior to this current loss?

Use the same techniques as for the first exercise. However, don't just remember. Before starting to do the work, close your eyes, breathe quietly and 'go back' to the way things were then.

1-3. Who can you become? Some people find it difficult to answer this question. If this is the case for you, ask others who know you fairly well. This will give you a start. (You may also return to this and other questions and answer them in more complete ways as you progress through this workbook.)

1-4. What are your abilities currently? This would include physical activities, work and relationships with people.

1-5. What limitations do you currently have? This would include physical, emotional, mental and spiritual areas of your life.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Coping With Physical Loss and Disability: A Workbook by Rick Ritter Copyright © 2006 by Rick Ritter . Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Preface . 1

What is Physical Loss? . 3

Getting Started . 4

Chapter 1 – Past and Future 5

Chapter 2 – Self-Care and Support 13

Chapter 3 – Dealing with Loss: Feelings and Beliefs . 27

Chapter 4 – Understanding Disability 41

Chapter 5 – Transforming Circumstance 53

Chapter 6 –The Ongoing Process of Loss and Recovery . 65

Epilogue . 75

About the Author . 77

Appendix A -- Other Resources for Coping with Physical Loss . 79

Therapeutic Techniques 79

Readings on Issues Related to Physical Loss and Disability 79

Films on Issues Related to Physical Loss and Disability 80

Guidelines for Watching Films . 81

Suggested Reading for Coping with Physical Loss and Disability 82

For Therapists Working with Physical Loss and Disability . 84

Appendix B -- Organizations That Can Help . 85

Support Foundations and Associations 85

Sports Support Organizations 87

Index 91

Table of Figures

Fig. 2-1: Sample Schedule 19

Fig. 2-2: Schedule Form . 20

Fig. 2-3: Sample Self-Care Plan . 21

Fig. 2-4: Self-Care Plan . 22

Fig. 2-5: Sample Eco-Map . 24

Fig. 2-6: Eco-Map 25

Fig. 3-1: Timeline . 31

Editorial Reviews

This workbook is a very good stimulus for focusing on issues that are crucial for better coping with loss and disability. Just putting the questions with the blanks together is a great opportunity for self-reflection and might greatly help people raise their consciousness. As I believe the saying goes 'If you do not help yourself, then no one will be able to help you.'"

-Beni R. Jakob, Ph.D, Israeli Arthritis Foundation (INBAR)

"Ritter provides a valuable self-care plan for those suffering from the loss of physical capacity. He also shows readers how to find the mental, emotional and spiritual encouragement critical to the healing process."

-Georgiann Baldino, Author and cancer support-group facilitator

"Losing one's bodily integrity or functioning ('physical loss') provokes mourning and a distorted self-image. The horror and recoil that disabilities elicit in the healthy only compound the victim's sense of deprivation and worthlessness. Though slender, the workbook is indispensable to victims of physical loss, their nearest and dearest, medical staff, and psychotherapists or grief counselors."

-Sam Vaknin, Ph.D., author of Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisited

"Rick Ritter captures the depth of the emotional pain in the aftermath of physical loss and disability. This workbook format will surely provide a sense empowerment to those who feel helpless in these situations."

-Rev. James W. Clifton, Ph.D., LCSW

"I found the workbook useful in addressing the various aspects of the physical loss. The examples given by the author are very relevant and will help the sufferer relate to similar situations. I recommend the workbook to those who are trying to heal from past traumas or to those who are trying to help their near and dear heal."

- S.V. Swamy, Holistic Healer and editor of Homeopathy For Everyone

"As an orthopedic surgeon who specialized in patients with cancer I have found this book to be an excellent resource for patients. The author has a remarkable personal history with dealing with multiple knee surgeries and has discovered ways to deal with the associated physical losses. He shares his techniques for patients to cope with physical disability. I find it to be an excellent resource for some of our patients. Highly recommended for anyone who is dealing with physical disability.”

-- an Orthopedic Surgeon, Ft. Wayne, IN

From the Publisher