The Spiritual Malady of Addiction

In AA, one of the main goals is to become sober and stay sober. To do this, members must rely on their support system which includes other members, sponsors, and meetings. When people become too self-reliant, they often start to think that they don’t need AA anymore. They may start to skip meetings, distance themselves from their support system, and eventually relapse.

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

• Spiritual healing itself isn’t to blame, it is our mental approach towards spiritual healing.
• One area where spiritual maladies often come to the forefront is in addiction and substance abuse.
• 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.
• In these situations, I feel further from God than normal and then I wonder who moved me or God and the answer is always me.
• Regardless of how it manifests itself, a spiritual malady is always rooted in an inner conflict.

In support of the latter notion, theorists have speculated that psychopathology could impair religious functioning and give rise to spiritual struggles (Hill & Kilian, 2003). In this study, reports of trauma exposure had a small relationship with PTSD symptoms, a finding also reported in other college student samples (e.g., Frazier et al., 2009). 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.

Nurturing Your Spirituality: Tips for Preventing Spiritual Maladies

Without addressing this spiritual malady, we have absolutely no hope for intrinsic change or recovery. It is this notion that the fellowship of AA was founded upon, and how millions of recovered alcoholics equate their success in overcoming a seemingly hopeless situation. The only solution to a spiritual malady is a spiritual awakening. Only once we open the spiritual channels and begin to accept a Higher Power into our lives can we hope to find a solution to our alcoholic condition.

Promoting Mental Wellness Through Spirituality: A Holistic Approach

Our spirit, on the other hand, makes repeated efforts to convince us to face reality. Basically, it means that sometimes we can use spiritual healing as an excuse to “get rid of” certain feelings, memories, and experiences that we’ve had. Spirituality in addiction recovery involves exploring and reconnecting with one’s sense of self, purpose, and connection spiritual malady definition to something greater than oneself. It can involve practices such as meditation, prayer, mindfulness, or participation in support groups that emphasize spiritual growth and healing. So, what is the cure for physical, mental, emotional, shadow, social and spiritual illness, and disease? It is simply to move people away from threat and towards safety.

Types of Spiritual Healing

• The prospective design illuminates how spiritual struggle in response to a trauma, as compared to a non-traumatic stressful event, relates to the development and maintenance of PTSD symptoms.
• However, given the times we are in, I find myself compelled to vault forward to the spiritual.
• This finding suggests that aspects of spiritual struggle are related but distinct constructs that should be assessed separately in future research.
• However, holistic health practitioners often partner with more traditional medicine providers to optimize health outcomes.

At any moment, someone’s aggravating behavior or our own bad luck can set us off on an emotional spiral that threatens to derail our entire day. Here’s how we can face our triggers with less reactivity so that we can get on with our lives. In general, humans, like most species, have four fundamental or primary phenotypes (even these can be subdivided), or genetic expressions, that are reflected in our chemical soup, mitochondria, cells, tissues, organs, emotions, thoughts, behaviors, and relationships. We look very different in these different phenotypical states. Particularly notable to this discussion is what we look like in threat. In threat, we can be mobilized towards aggressive or reactive defenses or we can be immobilized into passive or submissive defenses.

The Dark Side of Spiritual Healing That No One Talks About

• In our quest for understanding and meaning, we often encounter obstacles along our spiritual journey.
• This spiritual malady is the restless spirit, the soul sickness that if left untreated will begin to ooze symptoms of emotional insecurity worry, anger, self-pity, and depression, even if we have been sober for years.
• While the spirit is aware that the pain we experience while we go through our healing journey is not a genuine danger.
• Practicing prayer and meditation helps us be mindful of our surroundings and gain consciousness of our spirituality by bringing us closer to our higher power.
• Even if you don’t believe in God right now, it’s important to keep an open mind.
• However, they had reduced all-risk mortality rates at three months and also 12 months after they were discharged from the hospital.
• We are inherently a spiritual species, and yet, we fill the world with so many aspiritual and anti-spiritual constructs and behaviors.

My intention was to build on that foundation and talk further about the evolutionary molecular and cellular mechanisms that exist in us today and determine whether we are diseased and ill versus healthy and well. My trajectory was to move from physical to mental to social, and then to spiritual illness and disease. However, given the times we are in, I find myself compelled to vault forward to the spiritual. The alcoholic who evolves spiritually  receives inner wisdom –  an intuition and understanding – a noetic mindset that goes beyond the traditional five senses.

• Intellectually, believing in something we cannot physically see or a scientifically proven exists is a hard pill to swallow, those intellectual individuals shut the idea out completely.
• 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.
• Maintaining a healthy lifestyle, including regular exercise, balanced nutrition, and adequate rest, can support overall well-being and foster a sense of spiritual harmony.
• This spiritual malady, or spiritual disconnection, is the driving force behind our addiction and self-destructive behaviors.
• Exploratory analyses are conducted to identify the strength and direction of the relationships between the subscales of spiritual struggle and PTSD symptoms.

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