Transcript God Help Me: Advances in the Psychology of Religion and Coping

Understanding Spirituality in
Spiritually Integrated
Psychotherapy
Kenneth I. Pargament
Department of Psychology
Bowling Green State University
[email protected]
Presented at
Samaritan Annual Conference
Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy
Denver, Colorado
August 8, 2009
Cindy Videoclips
Reductionism
– religion as a means of anxiety reduction
 Durkheim – religion as a source of social solidarity
 Geertz – religion as a source of meaning
 Kirkpatrick – religion as an evolutionary byproduct
 Freud
Searching for the Sacred at an Early Age
“Dear God,
How is it in heaven? How is it being the Big
Cheese?”
Young Child (Heller, 1986, p. 31)
Children as Spiritual Beings
 The
capacity for spiritual experience and
knowledge
 The capacity to think about God as unique rather
than humanlike
 The capacity to conceive of an immaterial spirit
and an afterlife
 The capacity to experience spiritual emotions
A Definition of Spirituality
 Spirituality
is a search for the sacred.
Sacred Core
God
Divine
Transcendent
Reality
Sacred Ring
Place
Meaning
Sacred Core
God
Divine
Soul
Transcendent
Reality
Children
Marriage
Nature
Time
Sacred Qualities
 Transcendence
 [There
is an] ‘otherness’ [to religious experience. It is]
‘wholly other. . . quite beyond the sphere of the usual,
the intelligible and the familiar, which therefore falls
quite outside the limits of the canny” (p. 26).
Sacred Qualities

Transcendence
 Boundlessness
“To see a World in a grain of Sand; And Heaven in a
Wild Flower; Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand;
And Eternity in an Hour” (William Blake)
Sacred Qualities


Transcendence
Boundlessness
 Ultimacy
Nature as a Sacred Resource
(Ahmadi, 2006)
o
“Whatever happens in the world to me or others, nature
is still there, it keeps going. That is a feeling of security
when everything else is chaos. The leaves fall off, new
ones appear, somewhere there is a pulse that keeps
going. The silence, it has become so apparent, when
you want to get away from all the noise. It is a spiritual
feeling, if we an use that word without connecting it to
God, this is what I feel in nature and it’s like a powerful
therapy” (p. 134).
Nature as a Sacred Resource
(Ahmadi, 2006)
o
“Whatever happens in the world to me or others, nature
is still there, it keeps going. That is a feeling of security
when everything else is chaos. The leaves fall off, new
ones appear, somewhere there is a pulse that keeps
going. The silence, it has become so apparent, when
you want to get away from all the noise. It is a spiritual
feeling, if we an use that word without connecting it to
God, this is what I feel in nature and it’s like a powerful
therapy” (p. 134).
Sacred Aspects of Life
 Psychological
attributes (e.g., virtues, meaning)
“The things that come from God are the highest
things that we look for in life; peace and joy and
love and beauty and health and vitality and strength
and wisdom and creativity and abundance and the
whole cookie factory. . . God gives these resources to
us like the sun gives light” (interviewee).
Sacred Aspects of Life

Psychological attributes (e.g., virtues, meaning)
 Cultural
products (e.g., music, literature)
“We have so much misery and suffering here.
So much difficulties and pain. But soccer is our
gift from God. Our healing grace so that we
Brazilians can go on” (Rev. Filiho, Washington
Post)
Sacred Aspects of Life
Psychological attributes (e.g., virtues, meaning)
 Cultural products (e.g., music, literature)

 People
(e.g., saints, cult leaders)
Manifestations of God in People
“God has a deep raspy voice – God is a jazz singer. She is
plush, warm, and rosy – God is a grandmother. He has the
patient rock of an old man in a porch rocker; He hums and
laughs, he marvels at the sky. God coos at babies – she is
a new mother. He is the steady, gentle hand of a nurse,
the cool reassurance of a person pursuing his life’s work,
and the free spirit of a young man wandering only to live
and love life” (McCarthy, 2006).
Perceptions of Sacredness:
Results of a National Survey
 “I
see evidence of God in nature and creation”
(78%)
 “I see God’s presence in all of life” (75%)
 “I sense that my spirit is part of God’s spirit”
(68%)
 “I experience something more sacred in life than
simply material existence” (76%)
 “I see my life as a sacred journey” (55%)
The Search for the Sacred
Discovery
Socio-Cultural Context
A Direct Encounter with the Divine

One night, in the middle of one of my depressions, I heard
a voice I’d never heard before, and haven’t heard since.
The voice said, ‘I love you, Parker.’ This was not a
psychological phenomenon, because my psyche was
crushed. It was ‘the numinous.’ It was ‘mysterium
tremendum.’ But it came to me in the simplest and most
human way: ‘I love you, Parker.’ That rare experience
taught me that the sacred is everywhere, that there is
nothing that is not sacred, therefore worthy of respect.
(Palmer, 1998, p. 26)
Encountering the Sacred Indirectly
o
“You really want to know who raised me? It was a peppertree
with a short trunk. . . It had a great nest inside that was like a
womb. . . You could sit in that womblike space and look out at
the world without the world seeing you. . . I felt safe and loved
and protected in that tree. It was my link with God/creation –
with what was stable and real. . . that tree was a sacred presence
in my life, and it taught me more about God and love than I ever
learned in all the years I went to Sunday school” (Anderson &
Hopkins, 1991, pp. 35, 37).
The Sacred as a Product of Internal and
External Forces
 “One
half of ‘God’s stuffing,’ comes from the
primary objects the child has ‘found’ in his life.
The other half of God’s stuffing comes from the
child’s capacity to ‘create’ a God according to his
needs” (Rizzuto, 1979,p. 179).
The Sacred and its Implications
 The
sacred as magnet
 The sacred as reservoir
 The sacred as emotional generator
 The sacred as guiding light
The Sacred as an Organizing Force
“ If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not
of the body; it is therefore not of the body? If the whole
body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole
were hearing, where were the smelling? . . . But now are
they many members, yet but one body. And the eye
cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee, nor again
the head to the feet, I have no need of you. Nay, much
more those members of the body, which seem to be more
feeble, are necessary” (I Corinthians 12: 15, 17, 20-22).
The Search for the Sacred
Discovery
Conservation
Socio-Cultural Context
Spiritual Pathways
 Ways
of Knowing (Bible study, science)
 Ways of Acting (ritual, quilting)
Nontraditional Way of Acting
“By simple definition, quilting is merely sewing pieces of
fabric together into a whole. But as spiritual discipline, it is a
careful attention to the details of my life. Quilting as spiritual
discipline is entering the sensual richness of the universe,
creating order out of chaos, beauty out of the simple,
wholeness from the scraps, and in the midst, being
transformed” (Bushbaum, 1999, p. 236).
Spiritual Pathways
 Ways
of Knowing (Bible study, science)
 Ways of Acting (ritual, quilting)
 Ways of Relating (shared worship, loving
relations)
Love as a Way of Relating
“Love releases us into the realm of divine
imagination, where the soul is expanded and
reminded of its unearthly cravings and needs”
(Thomas Moore, 1992, p. 81).
Spiritual Pathways
 Ways
of Knowing (Bible study, science)
 Ways of Acting (ritual, quilting)
 Ways of Relating (shared worship, loving
relations)
 Ways of Experiencing (prayer, meditation)
The Search for the Sacred
Discovery
Conservation
Conservational
Spiritual
Coping
Threat,
Violation,
and
Loss
Socio-Cultural Context
9/11 as a Desecration




Students in Ohio and New York City coping with 9/11
About 50% agreed that attacks were “An offense against both me
and God.”
About 30% agreed that “Something sacred that came from God was
dishonored.”
Perceptions of desecration are linked to:
 Emotional distress
 Anxiety
 Depression
 PTSD
 Poorer physical health
 Extremist reactions and desire for vengeance
Ways of Spiritual Coping
 Benevolent
Spiritual Reappraisal
 Seeking Spiritual Support
 Seeking Support from Clergy/Congregation Members
 Spiritual Helping
 Spiritual Purification
Benevolent Spiritual Reframing
Child either positively reframes a
situation or God’s response to a
situation by imbuing religious/spiritual
meaning or significance.
“God allows me to have this
illness so I can be challenged
more in this life. I will be
more happy because I am
more fulfilled. Having to
cope with Cystic Fibrosis will
allow me to progress further
in my next life.”
Ano and Vasconcelles Meta-Analysis
(2004, Journal of Clinical Psychology)
Number of Studies
Cumulative
Effect Size
Confidence
Interval
Positive Religious
Coping with Positive
Health Outcomes
29
.33*
.30 to .35
Positive Religious
Coping with Negative
Health Outcomes
38
-.12*
-.14 to -.10
The Search for the Sacred
Discovery
Conservation
Conservational
Spiritual
Coping
Threat,
Violation,
and
Loss
Socio-Cultural Context
Spiritual
Struggle
Transformational
Spiritual
Coping
Spiritual
Disengagement
Dangers of Religious and
Spiritual Life
 Don’t
let worry kill you -- let the church
help
 Thursday night -- Potluck supper.
Prayer and medication to follow
 At the evening service tonight, the
sermon topic will be “What is Hell?”
Come early and listen to our choir
practice.
Three Types of Spiritual Struggle
 Interpersonal
 Intrapersonal
 Divine
Interpersonal Spiritual Struggles

Negative interactions among congregation members:
Gossiping
 Cliquishness
 Hypocrisy
 Disagreements with doctrine


“They get off in a corner and talk about you and you’re
the one that’s there on Saturday working with their
children and washing the dishes on Sunday afternoon.
They don’t have the Christian spirit” (Krause et al., 2000).
Intrapersonal Spiritual Struggles
“Is Christianity a big sham, a cult? If an
organization were to evolve in society, it would
have to excite people emotionally, it would have to
be self-perpetuation, it would need a source of
income, etc. Christianity fits all of these. How do
I know that I haven’t been sucked into a giant
perpetual motion machine” (Kooistra, 1990, p.
95)?
Struggles with the Divine
“Many times I wonder how there can be a God – a
loving God and where he is . . . I don’t understand
why He lets little children in Third World
countries die of starvation and diseases. . . I
believe in God and I love Him, but sometimes I
just don’t see the connection between a loving God
and a suffering hurting world. Why doesn’t He
help us -- if He truly loves us? It seems like He
just doesn’t care. Does He?” (Kooistra, 1990).
An Illustration of Spiritual Struggle
“I am told God lives in me – and yet the reality of
darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great
that nothing touches my soul.”
Spirituality and Health Study
 Participants
 1629
participants
 Age: Mean = 49.1 years, SD = 17.76
 75.3% Christian
 56.2% Attend religious services “almost every day” or
“every day”
 55.3% Engage in private prayer “almost every day” or
“every day”
 59.9% “Very religious” or “fairly religious”
Spirituality and Health Study

Measures

Mental Health: Symptom Assessment-45 Questionnaire
(Davison, Bershadsky, Bieber, Silversmith, Maruish, & Kane, 1997)
Obsessive-Compulsive
 Anxiety
Paranoid
 Depression
 Hostility
 Interpersonal
Sensitivity
Ideation
Phobic Anxiety
Somatization
Religious Struggle: Negative Religious Coping Subscale of
Brief RCOPE (Pargament, Koenig, & Perez, 2000)
 Social Support: Six items adapted from previous research

(Zimet, Dahlem, Zimet, & Farley, 1988)
Spirituality and Health Study
 Procedure
 Sample
recruited from sampling frame maintained by
Survey Sampling International
 Sampling frame reflects demographics of 2000 U.S.
census
 Contacted 8,500 individuals
 1,895 completed the survey (22% response rate)
 266 surveys excluded due to missing data
Spirituality and Health Study
 Statistical
Analyses
 Regression
 Criterion
measures: SA-45 subscales
 Model 1: Age, gender, education, ethnicity, income, marital
status, frequency of prayer, frequency of church attendance,
social support, occurrence of personal illness/injury
 Model 2: Religious struggle
 Model 3: Interaction of religious struggle and personal
illness/injury
Spirituality and Health Study
 Summary
 Religious
struggle positively associated with
various forms of psychopathology
 Relationship between religious struggle and
psychopathology stronger for individuals with
recent illness or injury
Measures
(Pargament, Koenig et al. 2004)










Number of Active Diagnoses
Subjective Health
Severity of Illness Scale (ASA)
Activities of Daily Living (ADL)
Mini-Mental State Exam (MSE)
Depressed Mood
Quality of Life
Positive Religious Coping and Religious Struggle
Global Religious Measures (Church Attendance, Private
Religiousness, Religious Importance)
Demographics
Consequences of Religious Struggles
Study of medically ill elderly patients over two years
(Pargament, Koenig, Tarakeshwar, & Hahn, 2004)
 Struggles with the divine predicted increases in depressed
mood, declines in physical functional status, declines in
quality of life after controls
 Struggles with the divine predicted 22-33% greater risk of
mortality after controls
 Struggles also predict stress-related growth

Specific Religious Struggle
Predictors of Mortality
 “Wondered
whether God had abandoned me”
(RR = 1.28)
 “Questioned God’s love for me” (R = 1.22)
 “Decided the devil made this happen” (R = 1.19)
The Transformation of the Sacred
 Rites
of passage
 Revisioning the sacred
 Conversion
*Admitting the limitations of the self:
*Incorporating the sacred into the life of the self
Prelude to Conversion
 “I’m
sitting there on the table, and they were
taking pictures of all the marks and bruises, and I
was waiting to hear whether or not my skull was
fractured. They had just told me that my eardrum
was broken. . . I felt like I was going to faint, and I
knew, sitting there on that table, that there had to
be something different, there had to be a better
way, there had to be more than this” (Pargament,
1997, p. 246).
Centering the Sacred

My motivations and my whole sense of direction have
changed. My values changed. What I thought was
important changed. I just completely shifted gears. It’s
given me a sense of purpose and direction I never had
before, and I’ve been searching different avenues but
never found exactly what I was supposed to be doing.
I’ve tried a lot of different things, a lot of different jobs,
traveled a lot, had lots of experiences in my life. Yet
always there was that kind of restless searching, searching.
Now I feel like I know exactly what I’m supposed to do.
(Miller & C’de Baca, p. 130)
Spiritual Disengagement
“How could you in all your greatness have abandoned
me, a little girl, to the merciless hands of my father?
How could you let this happen to me? I demand to
know why this happened? Why didn’t you protect me?
I have been faithful, and for what, to be raped and
abused by my own father? I hate and despise you. I
regret the first time I ever laid eyes on you; your name
is like salt on my tongue. I vomit it from my being. I
wish death upon you. You are no more. You are dead”
(Flaherty, 1992, p. 101).
Growth
Integration
Discovery
Conservation
Conservational
Spiritual
Coping
Threat,
Violation,
and
Loss
Spiritual
Struggle
Transformational
Spiritual
Coping
Spiritual
Disengagement
Socio-Cultural Context
Disintegration
Decline
Dis-integration in Sacred Destinations
 Problems
of small gods
Small Gods
 The
Grand Old Man
 The God of Absolute Perfection
 The Heavenly Bosom
 The Resident Policeman
 The Distant Star
 The God in Retirement
Dis-integration in Sacred Destinations
 Problems
of small gods
 False gods
Spiritual Struggle as a Predictor of
Addiction
(Caprini, 2007)
90 freshmen complete measures of addiction and spiritual
struggles at three points in time over first year of college
 After controlling for neuroticism, social support, and
global religiousness, spiritual struggles predict greater
likelihood of developing 11 of 15 types of addictive
behaviors, including

Gambling
 Food starving
 Prescription and recreational drugs
 Sex

Alcohol as a False God
“As my alcoholism progressed, my thirst for God
increasingly became transmuted into a thirst for the
seemingly godlike experiences that alcohol induced.
Alcohol gave me a sense of well-being and connectedness
– and wasn’t that an experience of God? Alcohol released
me from the nagging sense that I was never good or
competent enough – and wasn’t that God’s grace?
Alcohol dissolved my worries about the future, allowing
me to live in the present – and wasn’t that a divine gift?
At my core there was a thirst, a thirst for whatever would
fill the emptiness” (Nelson, 2004, p. 31).
Dis-integration in Sacred Destinations
 Problems
of small gods
 False gods
 Internal sacred clashes
 Ambivalence
toward the sacred
 Self-degradation
 Demonization of self and others
Dis-Integration in Sacred Pathways
 Problems
of Breadth and Depth
Miles Wide and Inches Deep
“Spirituality in the United States may be three thousand miles
wide, but it remains only three inches deep” (George Gallup,
1999, p. 45).
“ Even though nine out of ten adults have a copy of the Bible in
their homes, only 35% of this largely Christian population
knows who delivered the Sermon on the Mount and only 40%
know what the Trinity is. “
Dis-Integration in Sacred Pathways
 Problems
of Breadth and Depth
 Problems of Fit



Spiritual Extremism
Problems of Fit between Spiritual Pathways and
Situations
Problems of Fit between the Individual and Social
Context
Spiritual Extremism
“Several years ago, I came across a disturbing account of a man
who had murdered his wife, three children, and mother for
ostensibly religious reasons. With [my daughter] being so
determined to get into acting I was also fearful as to what that might
do to her continuing to be a Christian. . .Also, with [my wife] not
going to church I knew that this would harm the children eventually
. . . At least I’m certain that all have gone to heaven now. If things
had gone on who knows if this would be the case. . . It may seem
cowardly to have always shot them from behind, but I didn’t want
any of them to know even at the last second that I had to do this
. . .I’m only concerned with making my peace with God and of this I
am assured because of Christ dying even for me (“Memorandum
. . .” 1990, p. 25).
Dis-Integration in Sacred Pathways
 Problems
of Breadth and Depth
 Problems of Fit



Spiritual Extremism
Problems of Fit between Spiritual Pathways and
Situations
Problems of Fit between the Individual and Social
Context
Dis-Integration in Sacred Pathways
 Problems
of Breadth and Depth
 Problems of Fit



Spiritual Extremism
Lack of Fit between Spiritual Pathways and
Situations
Lack of Fit between Individual and Social Context
 Problems
of Continuity and Change
Spiritual Struggle at Two
Times

CHRONIC (High
Struggle at Baseline
and High Struggle at
Follow Up)

ACUTE (High Struggle
at Baseline and Low
Struggle at Follow Up)

ACUTE (Low Struggle
at Baseline and High
Struggle at Follow Up)

NONE (Low Struggle
at Baseline and Low
Struggle at Follow Up)
Integrated vs. Dis-Integrated Spirituality
The effectiveness of the search for the sacred lies not in a specific belief, practice,
emotion, or relationship, but in the degree to which the individual’s spiritual
pathways and destinations are well-integrated, working together in synchrony
with each other. At its best, spirituality is defined by pathways that are broad and
deep, responsive to life’s situations, nurtured by the larger social context, capable
of flexibility and continuity, and oriented toward a sacred destination that is large
enough to encompass the full range of human potential and luminous enough to
provide the individual with a powerful guiding vision. At its worst, spirituality is
defined by pathways that lack scope and depth, fail to meet the challenges and
demands of life events, clash and collide with the surrounding social system,
change and shift too easily or not at all, and misdirect the individual in the pursuit
of spiritual value (Pargament, in press).