The present prospective study tested the role of spiritual struggle in the development and maintenance of PTSD symptoms following trauma. We assessed exposure to trauma and non-trauma events during the first year of college, spiritual struggle due to the most stressful event, and PTSD symptoms resulting from the index event. Spiritual struggle partially mediated the relationship between trauma and PTSD symptoms. These results suggest that spiritual struggle is an important cognitive mechanism for many trauma victims and may have relevance for cognitive therapy for PTSD. To conclude, it’s not my body — my allergic reaction to alcohol — that’s going to take me back to drinking.
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So mistreating our bodies is sort of like setting our own house on fire. Except unlike burning our house down, we can’t go find a new body to live in if we destroy the one God gave us. We dwell on that thought too long, and our desire eventually gives birth to action.
- Physical threats come in the forms of things like infections – prions, viruses, bacteria, protozoa, and mycelia, or things like toxins—pollutants, pesticides, radiation, medications, and substances of addiction.
- The solution to spiritual malady offered by Alcoholics Anonymous is to affect a spiritual awakening – in essence a psychic shift or attitude adjustment.
- No amount of reason, rationalization, or punishment, will restore their sight.
- If you are a deep feeler who has always been sensitive, you might be an empath and/or HSP.
- Some of us are very comfortable embracing spirituality, but for others, it feels weird or uncomfortable.
- The specific manifestation(s) of addiction represent an attempt to fill this emptiness from the outside.
- When we are disconnected from our Souls, our True Selves, our Higher Nature, we feel innately lost.
Our Church Life
But first, let’s examine how complicated grief is connected with an important spiritual experience known as the Dark Night of the Soul. Because complex grief is so deep-rooted, it also requires deep-rooted healing techniques and practices that are Soul-centered. Yes, it’s crucial to seek support from psychiatrists and therapists. But at the same time, it’s also essential to do some Soul-searching and work with yourself on a spiritual level. But complicated grief is not solely to do with the mind and heart, as those in the psychotherapeutic field would have you believe.
A Spiritual Inventory
Other cognitions that may predict spiritual struggle include pre-trauma self-appraisals (R. A. Bryant & Guthrie, 2007), attributional style (Gray et al., 2007), and coping self-efficacy beliefs (Benight & Bandura, 2004). Next, participants indicated whether they had experienced trauma since coming to college on a modified form of the TLEQ that contained 15 items corresponding to events that could have occurred during the first year at college (i.e., excluded childhood abuse; see Table 1). “Other trauma” refers to other events that were life threatening, caused serious injury or were highly distressing or disturbing.
The Spiritual Malady: Bane of the Alcoholic and Addict
- Also, they cannot fathom how other people manage to deal with crises in life – even when they have it worse.
- So denial can be a pretty thick fog to break through in this area.
- STEP 4We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
Table 2 summarizes mean differences by trauma group in potential mediator and outcome variables. Independent samples t-tests were performed to compare the group that appraised at least one event as a trauma to the group that did not on demographic and the normally-transformed study variables. The trauma and non-trauma groups did not significantly differ in age, gender, or racial/ethnic identification. The trauma spiritual malady group scored higher than the non-trauma group on PTSD symptoms at both time points and on spiritual struggle at Time 2. There was a trend toward a significant difference between the groups for the subscales of spiritual struggle. While religion is often helpful in times of stress, it can also be a source of stress if religious beliefs or attributions suggest maladaptive ways of understanding an event.
Complex Grief and Being a Highly Sensitive Person
Clinicians working with trauma victims should be aware of the possible relevance of spiritual struggle in clients’ interpretation of the event and subsequent recovery. Our results indicate that clinicians must recognize that religious and spiritual beliefs may be present not only as a resource but as a negative force in the face of stressful life events. Care must be taken to assess clients’ personal feelings toward their spiritual struggle and support personal growth while challenging maladaptive cognitions. Some clients may benefit from treatments designed for spiritual struggles (e.g., Cole & Pargament, 1999; Murray-Swank & Pargament, 2005). Effectiveness of such treatments may lie in allowing victims to alter the meaning of their trauma in order to view the world, themselves, and a higher power in more benevolent and flexible ways.
They also experience an ineffable quality from becoming spiritual – one where their feelings go beyond mere words. I honestly feel like part of me has died with my little Dean. I’ve tried to become more spiritual but all I think now is that I don’t want to stay on this plane of life anymore. That I don’t want to slowly loose everyone I love and become alone. That maybe I should just go to where they are waiting for me. I’ll try following the steps here but I don’t know of I can so it.
thoughts on “The Spiritual Malady”
Punishing God Reappraisal as partial mediator of the relationship between trauma exposure and PTSD symptoms, controlling for baseline PTSD symptoms. Spiritual Discontent as partial mediator of the relationship between trauma exposure and PTSD symptoms, controlling for baseline PTSD symptoms. Well, if you’ve been in Celebrate Recovery or any 12-step program for a while you know that, for most people who are actively working the steps, over time the mental obsession dissipates. I remember my wife Deb coming home from her first Overeater’s Anonymous meeting.
But don’t stop the rest of your family from experiencing the joy and support of a church family. Sometimes it’s easier to admit our resentments against a stranger or co-worker than someone in our own family. So denial can be a pretty thick fog to break through in this area. It takes rigorous honesty, and it might require a lot of digging and peeling away of layers to start uncovering things.
