Religious Spiritual Coping- Positive and Negative

Coping is the act of dealing with stressful experiences. Religious or Spiritual (RS) coping refers to the act of employing religious or spiritual resources to cope with a stressful experience. 

KennethPargament is the psychology of religion scientist who identified two major groups of coping strategies as positive and negative RS coping. His seminal work was summarized in the 1997 book, The Psychology of Religion and Coping: Theory, Research, and Practice. Many studies since then have illustrated how positive and negative coping strategies work with different stressful conditions.

Pargament, Koenig, and Perez (2000) developed the RCOPE as a measure of positive and negative religious coping. The researchers identified five basic functions of religious coping with impactful events. A shorter form has been used widely in research (Brief RCOPE).

1. Meaning- positive and negative religious or spiritual reappraisal

2. Control- active and passive strategies to deal with the events

3. Comfort-drawing on RS connections or support, or becoming discontented with RS

4. Intimacy- seeking RS support from others or discontent in interpersonal RS relationships

5. Life transformation- RS direction, conversion or disengaging, deconversion

Gall, T. L., & Guirguis-Younger, M. (2013) have summarized some of the findings from coping research. In general, positive religious coping has helped people deal with distress- including general health and mental health conditions. However, negative coping is linked to worsened conditions in some studies. Seeing a condition as punishment by God seems to be a particularly common negative coping response among people whose conditions worsen.

Examples of drawing on RS to positively cope with difficulties include the following:

RS purification and forgiveness

RS direction, guidance, and conversion

RS consultation with members of the clergy

RS connection

Examples of negative religious coping include

RS discontent

RS views of God or gods as punishing

RS reappraisal of God’s power

RS persistent pleading for divine assistance

When RS appears helpful in dealing with stressful experiences, people report increases in 

one or more of the following:

Acceptance

Happiness

Optimism

purpose in life

When RS does appears unhelpful in dealing with stressful experiences, people present with the following:

Anxiety

Feeling burdened

General negative mood

Callousness

References—These references offer a more in-depth look at RS coping.

Gall, T. L., & Guirguis-Younger, M. (2013). Religious and spiritual coping: Current theory and research. In APA handbook of psychology, religion, and spirituality (Vol 1): Context, theory, and research. (pp. 349–364). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/14045-019

Pargament, K. I. (1997). The psychology of religion and coping: Theory, research, practice. New York: Guilford Press.

Pargament, K. I., Feuille, M., & Burdzy, D. (2011). The Brief RCOPE: Current psychometric status of a short measure of religious coping. Religions, 2, 51–76. doi:10.3390/rel2010051

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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

Connections

   My Page    www.suttong.com

   My Books   AMAZON     GOOGLE PLAY STORE

   FACEBOOK   Geoff W. Sutton

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Publications (many free downloads)

  Academia   Geoff W Sutton   (PhD)     

  ResearchGate   Geoffrey W Sutton   (PhD)

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