Make Meaning, Cope Well (Part 2: Religious Coping Methods)

Objective: Get information on meaning-making and growth after stressful or traumatic experiences. This post focuses on religious/spiritual coping methods and outcomes. For mental, emotional, and physical factors, see "Update Your Stress Mindset to Thrive."

Outline: Introduction, spiritual questioning and meaning-making, spiritual coping methods, potential outcomes, key takeaways, resources

Note: See the companion post here: "Make Meaning, Cope Well (Part 1: Spiritual Questioning and Meaning-Making." Also, for a therapist, discussing religious/spiritual topics in a professional blog can be complicated. (See below.*)

Introduction: Researchers, mental health professionals, clergy, and laypeople alike may observe that difficult experiences often spark spiritual questions that may result in a quest to make meaning of these experiences. Many people use religious/spiritual coping methods to address painful life experiences. Which methods they choose could help or hinder healing.

What are religious/spiritual coping methods?

Coping methods are exactly what they sound like: underlying strategies or practical techniques that people use to manage difficult experiences. For simplicity, religious/spiritual (hereafter, "religious") in this post describes anything that involves metaphysical aspects of a person's inner life, whether or not it involves a person's affiliation with a particular community or with a particular set of beliefs or practices typically associated with members of communities formed around shared views of the metaphysical (that is, the spiritual, divine, mystical, transcendental).

Both trauma (defined simply here as a stressful circumstance beyond a person's ability to cope) and regular stress (defined here as challenging life circumstances that aren't traumatic, but often are still uncomfortable) can result in spiritual questioning that advances a process of spiritual meaning-making, whether or not a person self-identifies as "religious" or "spiritual." During or after encountering difficult life experiences, people may often find themselves upset, troubled by nagging doubts or questions, or particularly reflective. The discomfort often prompts people to engage in meaning-making to integrate such experiences into their life narrative. People may also choose from a variety of religious coping methods from seeking spiritual support (a positive religious coping method) to changing their beliefs about God's character or abilities (negative religious coping).

In "Make Meaning, Cope Well: Part 1: Spiritual Questioning and Meaning-making," I discuss spiritual questioning and meaning-making after experiences of stress and/or trauma. After a difficult life experience, it's common for people to ask: "Why?" Their pre-experience worldview and beliefs may not be expansive enough to make sense of their experience and so, like a hermit crab leaves its too-tight shell for a bigger one, they begin the process of addressing their disorientation and discomfort through the reconstruction of a life narrative that makes room for their experience and, at best, eventually, they reorient and the nagging questions and uncomfortable feelings typically associated with post-stress or -trauma disorientation resolve. Often, people turn to religious/spiritual coping methods to help them in this process.

Religious coping methods and potential outcomes

Religious coping methods aren't all alike. Not all result in positive outcomes. Clinical psychologist and researcher Kenneth I. Pargament has published extensively on religious coping methods. He and his colleagues published notable articles in the Journal of Clinical Psychology, the Journal of Health Psychology, and the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. Pargament and his colleagues assessed religious coping strategies among diverse groups of study participants. Their findings provide practical information on which religious coping methods are likely to help someone to heal and which may to lead to further difficulties.

Positive religious coping

Positive religious coping methods have a healing impact after challenging circumstances. People who use positive religious coping methods are able to draw on spiritual resources for healing and growth. According to Pargament and his colleagues, they will do things like:

Reframe an experience as "benevolent and potentially beneficial"
Seek to partner with God to address a challenge
Open themselves to "comfort and reassurance through God's love and care."

In general, those who use positive religious coping methods more readily maintain a positive emotional connection with God, look for God's well-meaning intentions, reflect on ways challenging experiences might benefit them, and embrace God's love for them and ongoing presence with them (even in the midst of their difficulties) as supportive and comforting.

Negative religious coping

Negative religious coping methods have a destructive impact. According to Pargament and his colleagues, people who use negative religious coping methods typically experience more psychological distress, depression, and a lower quality of life. They may:

Reframe an experience as divine punishment
Adjust their view of God to minimize God's power to influence the situation
Focus on "confusion and dissatisfaction with God's relationship" with them.

People who use negative religious coping methods are more likely to suffer negative outcomes and are less likely to experience healing and growth after difficult life experiences than those who use positive ones.

Conclusion

Whether we're engaged in a meaning-making process as a result of our own difficult experiences or helping others with theirs, it's important to remember that not all religious coping methods are alike. Some lead to life-affirming post-stress or -trauma life narratives that can help people to adjust to life after stressful or traumatic experiences, deepen their relationships with God and others, and lead them toward greater healing and growth. Others may lead to cynicism, isolation, and despair as people view God through the lens of their pain: God doesn't care or is untrustworthy, vindictive and punishing, or powerless. People who use positive coping strategies typically spend less time wrestling with difficult post-stress or -trauma disorientation and related feelings and are more likely to experience healing and growth; those who use negative coping strategies are more likely to get stuck in their negative experiences. When choosing between religious coping methods, lean into positive ones.

Key Takeaways

Spiritual questioning and meaning-making often naturally arise after stressful and/or traumatic experiences.

Use positive religious/spiritual coping methods for healthier and more satisfying outcomes.

For ways to respond to stress in your own life (using mental, physical, and emotional factors) that could make stress easier to live with in the moment, see "Update Your Stress Mindset to Thrive."

*Note: In this post, I discuss religious/spiritual coping methods from a practical perspective not a spiritual or theological one. It should not be assumed that, because I am writing through this lens, this is the only way that I believe that people can (or should) view, understand, and discuss them or that this is the only way that I view, understand, and discuss religious/spiritual/theological topics. Blog posts are by no means comprehensive treatises. My hope is that this post will help those that it can help in the right context and under the right conditions and that other posts will help others. If important aspects of potential discussion do not appear in this post, it may be due to the constraints of a professional blog, necessary limitations placed on an individual post, or simply, because I have not yet written about a given topic. I invite you to take from this post what is helpful and to search for what else you may need among the many other perspectives and resources available that also provide important insights.

Resources

Books

The Psychology of Religion and Coping: Theory Research, Practice (Kenneth I. Pargament, PhD)

The Upside of Stress: Why Stress is Good for You and How to Get Good At It (Kelly McGonigal, PhD)

Articles

Pargament, K. I. (2004). Religious Coping Methods as Predictors of Psychological, Physical and Spiritual Outcomes among Medically Ill Elderly Patients: A Two-year Longitudinal Study. Retrieved from: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1359105304045366.

Pargament, K. I., Smith, B. W., Koenig, H. G., Perez, L. (1998). Patterns of positive and negative religious coping with major life stressors. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 37(4), 710-724. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1388152?origin=crossref

Pargament, K. I., Zinnbauer, B. J., Scott, A. B., Butter, E. M., Zerowin, J., and Stanik, P. (1998). Red flags and religious coping: identifying some religious warning signs among people in crisis. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 54(1), 77-89. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jclp.10225

Smith, S. (2004). Exploring the interaction of trauma and spirituality. Traumatology, 10(4), 231-243. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/153476560401000403