Spiritual Struggles Psychology of Religion

Spiritual struggles are typically experiences of conflicts of religious or spiritual beliefs, practices, or experiences that cause or extend distress. The distress may be experienced as an emotion such as sadness, anger, or anxiety. In addition, people who struggle may wrestle with conflicting thoughts.

Spiritual struggles can be interpersonal and intrapersonal. Interpersonal spiritual struggles may be between the individual and God such as anger with God for “not showing up as expected” or acting in a way that seemed unloving. Spiritual struggles may also be between the person and others such as a young college woman experiencing conflicts with parents over religious values or conflicts within congregations.

Intrapersonal struggles may be experienced as a failure to live up to spiritual standards of right living or difficulty in forgiving oneself for moral failure. Struggles may also be experienced as a battle with supernatural evil.

Spiritual struggles may be different from other psychological difficulties because of the experience of the supernatural as well as the importance of religion and spirituality to the identity of many people.

Spiritual struggles can be assessed through interviews and survey items.

Some research suggests younger persons and women are more susceptible to struggles than are others.

Spiritual struggles can affect mood and behavior with symptoms of depression and anxiety evident. Religious scholar Marcus Borg referred to anxiety, fear, guilt, and anguish as the told of his spiritual struggle as an adolescent Christian.

The effects of a struggle may be closely linked to the struggle itself or the effects may worsen an existing health or mental health condition. Spiritual struggles have been linked to worsening a variety of general health conditions such as cardiovascular problems and cancer.

Few studies have looked at the possibility of personal growth following a spiritual struggle. This is an area in need of research. An example might be a more mature outlook or sense of peace and wellbeing once the struggle has been resolved.

When spiritual struggles result from a person's behavior that violates their spiritual/moral standards, self-forgiveness may be helpful in repairing the distress and "healing the soul."

I am drawing on a summary by Julie Exline (2013) for this post. Please see her chapter (below) or other works to learn more about spiritual struggles and the names of prominent scientists who study this field.

You can find a variety of scales and survey items related to spirituality at my Assessment and Statistics Blog. Some of the measures are free to use or may be free with permission of the author.  https://statistics.suttong.com/

Some spiritual survey scales and items are included in the book CreatingSurveys  

available on AMAZON worldwide

How to measure Spiritual Struggles and Coping

Religious and Spiritual Struggles  Scale

Brief RCOPE Scale (religious coping)

Related posts

  Conversion / Deconversion in Psychology of Religion

  Demonology, Deliverance, and the Psychology of Religion

  Religious Spiritual Coping - Positive and Negative

Cite this post 

Sutton, G. W. (2020, January 8). Spiritual struggles. Psychology concepts and theories. https://suttonpsychology.blogspot.com/2020/01/spiritual-struggles.html

Reference

Exline, J. J. (2013). Religious and spiritual struggles. In J. J. Exline (Ed.), APA handbook of psychology, religion, and spirituality (Vol 1): Context, theory, and research. (pp. 459–475). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/14045-025

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Promiscuous Teleology Kellermen

Promiscuous Teleology is a concept described by Deborah Kelemen (1999). The idea is based on findings that preschool children tend to attribute functions to a variety of objects and parts of objects. In another study, children and adults viewed an object's function as what it was designed to perform.

Reference

Kelemen, D. (1999). The scope of teleological thinking in preschool children. Cognition, 70, 241–272. doi:10.1016/S0010-0277(99)00010-4

Hope Theory

C.R. Snyder and his colleagues are credited with the development of hope theory.  Goals are the key cognitive component of hope theory. Goals organize the mind’s processes leading to the achievement of a goal. Hope is a motivational state that arises from thoughts about pathways thinking and agency thinking in the pursuit of a goal.

Hope theory has two major components: Pathways Thinking, and Agentic Thinking. 

Pathways Thinking refers to a person’s thoughts about ways to reach a goal. True hope relies on a person’s ability to generate at least one realistic way to reach a goal. People with high levels of hope are skilled at finding more than one pathway to a goal.

Agency or Agentic Thinking is a strong belief in one’s capacity to reach a goal. The primary example of agency thinking is the statement, “I can do this.” This is especially true when some barrier arises.

Pathways thinking and agentic thinking interact to strengthen each other when a person’s mind is engaged in the process of sequencing action toward a goal.

Snyder and his colleagues developed measures of hope. See the Adult Hope Scale for more information including Snyder’s classic book on the Psychology of Hope.

Hope is a significant variable in the Psychology of Religion as well. For example, Christians focus on hope embodied in Jesus during Christmas and Easter.

Hope is also a significant contributor to positive outcomes in psychotherapy (Sutton, Kelly, Worthington, Griffin, & Dinwiddie, 2018).

C.R. Snyder (Charles Richard "Rick" Snyder) was a psychological scientist at the University of Kansas (1944-2006).

Links

Adult Hope Scale

The Paradox of Hope at Advent

References

Sutton, G. W., Jordan, K., & Worthington, E.L., Jr. (2014). Spirituality, hope, compassion, and forgiveness: Contributions of Pentecostal spirituality to godly love. Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 33, 212-226

Sutton, G. W., Kelly, H., Worthington, E. L. Jr., Griffin, B. J., & Dinwiddie, C. (2018) Satisfaction with Christian psychotherapy and well-being: Contributions of hope, personality, and spirituality. Spirituality in Clinical Practice, 5 (1), 8-24. doi: 10.1037/scp0000145         Academia Link       ResearchGate Link

Reference for using scales in research:

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Geoffrey W. Sutton, PhD is Emeritus Professor of Psychology. He retired from a clinical practice and was credentialed in clinical neuropsychology and psychopharmacology. His website is  www.suttong.com

 

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