Trauma and PTSD Symptoms: Does Spiritual Struggle Mediate the Link? PMC

Reappraisal of God’s Powers as partial mediator of the relationship between trauma exposure and PTSD symptoms, controlling for baseline PTSD symptoms. 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. Spiritual struggle as partial mediator of the relationship between trauma exposure and PTSD symptoms, controlling for baseline PTSD symptoms. Substance abuse often arises from a spiritual void or an attempt to fill an emotional, mental, or spiritual pain.

Alcoholics Anonymous’ 12-Step Program

  • Once you open up to this idea and implement that spiritual connection, you will experience your long-awaited spiritual awakening, the answer to that pesky spiritual malady we suffer from as alcoholics.
  • Finally, enrollment in the study in no way influenced whether a student experienced trauma during the study, ensuring that the choice of being in the study did not interact with the manipulation.
  • We statistically addressed these limitations to the extent possible by transforming the variables and using non-parametric procedures, and results suggest that even low levels of struggle can have important implications for post-traumatic distress.
  • Spiritual awakenings often evolve so gradually that they are almost imperceptible.

Because exposure to potentially traumatic events is common (Kessler, Sonnega, Bromet, & Hughes, 1995), the mechanisms through which post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms develop is a critical area of investigation (Ozer, Best, Lipsey, & Weiss, 2003). Among the mechanisms that may predict PTSD symptoms is spiritual struggle, a set of negative religious cognitions related to understanding or responding to stressful events. Although prominent theories emphasize cognitive factors in the development and maintenance of PTSD symptoms, they have not explicitly addressed spiritual struggle.

Addressing the Three-Fold Illness and Other Ways to Heal in Glenwood Springs

spiritual malady

Shameful secrets can fester in the dark recesses of our minds and inflame our hearts with recrimination and resentment. Sorry for being so direct in this blog, it is a message of hope, there is a way to completely turn your life around. The great psychiatrist Carl Jung called this a ‘low level thirst for wholeness – for union with God’. In our addictions, we tried to quench our soul-thirst with fleeting pleasures.

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Differences by Trauma group

  • Many theories of PTSD share the premise that PTSD symptoms are caused and maintained by a person’s cognitive efforts to cope with the traumatic event (Keane, Fisher, Krinsley, & Niles, 1994).
  • It can involve practices such as meditation, prayer, mindfulness, or participation in support groups that emphasize spiritual growth and healing.
  • My last blog post took us back some 4 billion years to set a foundation for deconstructing illness and disease.
  • Apart from dissecting the Big Book so as to have a firmer grasp on the 12 Steps and program and in general, it also is designed to help us decipher the intricate language and wording used from a different time period.

The spiritual malady is not the only aspect of the three-fold illness that can be healed in Glenwood Springs. There is also an opportunity to take advantage of some of the best recovery centers in the country, which can offer help with the mental obsession and the physical allergy. This study did not control for other possible contributors to PTSD symptoms, including type of trauma experienced and the total number of traumas experienced in the Time 1 to Time 2 interim, because there was insufficient variability to do so. Additionally, the most common trauma in the present sample was sudden, unexpected bereavement, which may be better characterized by grief responses not fully captured by the sole outcome measure of PTSD symptoms (Gray et al., 2004). A potential difficulty with measuring spiritual struggle is its relative infrequency. However, studies have shown that spiritual struggle is common among college students (Astin et al., 2004; A. N. Bryant & Astin, 2008), indicating that studying spiritual struggle, even in samples that may not identify as highly religious, is feasible.

spiritual malady

Genuine Leather Big Book Covers

  • Particularly notable to this discussion is what we look like in threat.
  • While we believe that the present study represents an important contribution to our understanding of the intersection of trauma and spirituality, particularly given the paucity of information on this topic, it has limitations that must be considered.
  • Compassion radiates whenever we can connect with another through shared experience.
  • Another way to address the spiritual malady and heal in Glenwood Springs is to connect to some of its amazing recovery communities.
  • Although this sample fairly closely mirrored the university’s incoming undergraduate class, the majority of participants were White, non-Hispanic students.
  • Our spiritual malady never just goes away and stays away on its own, it requires a constant spiritual connectivity and effort on our parts in our programs to keep it and the subsequent alcohol and drug abuse at bay.
  • The lack of diverse ethnic and racial representation suggests a need for increased attention to recruitment of people of color in psychological research (see Castellanos & Gloria, 2007; Hall & Allard, 2009).

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. Interestingly, some individual subscales of spiritual struggle (specifically, Punishing God Reappraisal, Reappraisal of God’s Powers, and Spiritual Discontent) partially mediated the relationship between trauma and PTSD symptoms; however, reappraisal of the event to evil forces did not relate to 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.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) characterizes the reexperiencing, avoidance, hyperarousal, and emotional numbing symptoms that may persist in response to traumatic events. The summation of physical threats, spiritual threats, spiritual malady shadow threats, and existential threat is our total threat load. A chronically high total threat load will lead to maladaptive physiology and maladaptive behavior, and will lead to illness and disease—both physical and spiritual.

The practice of compassion is a spiritual experience with a spillover benefit—compassion breeds more compassion. Scientific research provides evidence that the experience of compassion toward a single individual facilitates compassion toward others. Empirical data also demonstrates that our sense of compassion increases measurably when we can find commonality and connection with others.

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