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

Although the present study may provide a window through which to view relations between religious cognitions and PTSD symptoms, they may be very different for a sample of combat-exposed veterans who go on to develop chronic, debilitating PTSD. At Time 2, participants indicated http://lovelylife.in.ua/astma-mozhet-byit-poleznoy-neozhidannoe-zayavlenie-uchenyih whether they had experienced any stressful events since coming to college. The CSLES has high test-retest reliability (Park, Cohen, & Carpenter, 1992; Sandler & Lakey, 1982) and has been used successfully with college students (e.g., Park, Cohen, & Herb, 1990).

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Although this sample fairly closely mirrored the university’s incoming undergraduate class, the majority of participants were White, non-Hispanic students. 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 potential mediators were created by obtaining the summed scores for the three-item subscales and the 12-item overall spiritual struggle scale. All variables were assessed for normality, and transformations were applied as merited (see below).

  • Having compassion for ourselves means that we honor our humanness with self-acceptance when we bump up against our limitations and fall short of our ideals.
  • When you ask them to describe what they mean by that statement, they seem to have a firm grasp on the fact that we alcoholics suffer from “an allergy of the body and an obsession of the mind” — that once I put any alcohol in my system whatsoever it sets off a craving for more alcohol.
  • To conclude, it’s not my body — my allergic reaction to alcohol — that’s going to take me back to drinking.
  • This study was limited by infrequent endorsement of spiritual struggle and PTSD symptoms and resulting highly positive skew of the mediator and outcome variables; however, low levels of spiritual struggle are commonly reported (e.g., Exline, Smyth, Gregory, Hockemeyer, & Tulloch, 2005; Pargament, Koenig, & Perez, 2000).
  • Also, they are passive, in the sense that people do not have an influence over the phenomenon.
  • Symptoms of spiritual maladies are accompanied by severe depression, anxiety, or other mental health conditions.

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  • Specifically, struggle and its separate components are investigated as potential mediators of the relationship between trauma and PTSD.
  • But in our quest to fill this void with any and everything we can think of, we completely miss that the only thing that can actually fulfill us a spiritual connectedness to something greater than ourselves.
  • This spiritual malady, or spiritual disconnection, is the driving force behind our addiction and self-destructive behaviors.
  • The summation of physical threats, spiritual threats, shadow threats, and existential threat is our total threat load.
  • David Roger Clawson, M.D., is a Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation physician with an interest in natural prevention and healing strategies for health and wellness.

This “fourth dimension”, which we find out in the 10th Step is the “world of the Spirit”, takes us beyond the physical, mental, and emotional dimensions of life — and eliminates the selfishness (ego) of the “spiritual malady.” The term “spiritual malady” does not mean that our “spirit” is sick. https://officecom.us/affiliate-marketing-mentor/ 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.

spiritual malady

Examining the Impact of Spiritual Maladies on Personal Relationships

And only when our eyes, ears, mind, and heart are fully open, are we positioned to discern, receive, and appreciate them. At Time 1, participants reported levels of psychological distress using the PTSD Checklist-Civilian (PCL; Blanchard, Jones-Alexander, Buckley, & Forneris, 1996), a widely used self-report measure that corresponds with diagnostic criteria for PTSD. The PCL contains 17 items rated on a five-point Likert scale from 1 (not at all) to 5 (extremely).

In our quest for understanding and meaning, we often encounter obstacles along our spiritual journey. These hindrances or disturbances of the spirit are commonly referred to as spiritual maladies. While the concept of a https://hmpt.ru/viewtopic.php?t=688 may vary for each individual, it generally refers to a state of imbalance, disharmony, or disconnection in one’s spiritual well-being.

  • However, research elucidating the character and directionality of the relationship between struggle and PTSD symptoms is needed.
  • 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.
  • Spiritual discontent has been related to higher levels of depression, suicidality, and PTSD symptoms in a variety of trauma samples (e.g., Exline, Yali, & Lobel, 1999; Harris et al., 2008).
  • 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.
  • We can become aware that humility is not thinking less of oneself, but rather thinking of oneself less, and that we are worthy of self-compassion.

The best definition may be found in the actual experience of one’s own shifts in conscious awareness. Spiritual awakenings can be as profound as a smack-upside-the-head, clear-as-a-bell recognition that all people (no matter how damaged and/or disturbed they may be), in fact, all living things are inextricably interconnected with one another and therefore deserve nothing less than compassion and empathy. They can also be as “ordinary” (though there’s really nothing ordinary about it) as consciously tuning in to the chirping of birds or noticing with greater present-centered clarity the magnificence of a sunset or how wonderful and fresh the desert smells after a rainstorm. One of the core characteristics that makes people vulnerable to addiction (and is also amplified as a consequence of active addiction) is a sense of internal emptiness—a pervasive feeling of being hollow, empty, of something missing.

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