Coping with Physical Loss and Disability

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