Chapter 10: Religion, Spirituality & Well-Being Flashcards
Personal/situational meaning
Based on life circumstances/situations, finding meaning in job, relationships, children, etc.
Cosmic/global meaning
How are we connected to others, a greater entity/something larger than ourselves?
- Breadth: lateral and horizontal comparisons
- Depth: looking more deeply into the human condition
- Dynamic understanding: not a destination, a dynamic journey/process
Ways to create meaning
- Harmony & coherence: A feeling that life makes sense. 2. Religion can provide a sense of coherence, but is not necessary for creating meaning
- Service to others/cause: altruism
- Creativity: contributions that will outlive you (music, art, research, etc.)
- Live life fully!
- Suffering: seeing difficult experiences as an experience that you have grown from and learned something important from
- Religious experiences: spirituality and religion can contribute to meaning
Spirituality vs. religion
Spirituality is a broader term that includes religion. Both religion and spirituality involve a search for the sacred, something larger than yourself, but the subset of people who are both spiritual and religious use a more formal/structured setting to practice their beliefs.
Benefits of religion
- Subjective well-being: more PA, less NA, sense of life-satisfaction. The closer people feel towards a higher power, the more they feel a sense of satisfaction
- Eudaimonic well-being: having a sense of purpose/meaning is supported by religious participation
- Physical health: religion may have a slight advantage over spirituality in this aspect. Being part of a religious group provides a supportive community that can be there for you when you are ill and provide social support.
Types of prayer
- Adoration: expressing worship and love
- Thanksgiving: expressing gratitude and thankfulness
- Reception: being open/listening to guidance from a higher being, channeling messages
- Adoration, thanksgiving and reception prayers are associated with increased well-being - Supplication: asking for help regarding a situation - associated with less well-being
- Confession: expressing sins, asking for forgiveness - associated with less well-being
- Obligatory: The Lord’s Prayer, prayers that are said during certain times/instances - not much of an effect on well-being
- Some research has shown that being prayed for can increase well-being! Keep in mind that most research in this field is correlational, not causative.
Religion and well-being
Increased well-being for: women, African-American people, older people, frequent attendance, God-focused prayer, and intrinsic/quest orientation
Decreased well-being for: medical neglect, authoritarian beliefs, and negative coping (guilt)
Possible explanations for relationship between religion and well-being
- Social support: organized religion has an advantage over spirituality in this domain because there is a constant religious community that is present and available to support. Seeing God as a form of social support can increase well-being through religion
- Healthy lifestyle: Idea of one’s body as a temple, being formed in the image of God, religious rules/moral standards can beneficially influence people, motivate them to live healthily
- Personality integration: life makes sense, I am working toward a particular goal (heaven/eternity), striving for wisdom, gaining knowledge/applying it to your life
- Positive emotions: the sheer experience of feeling more positive through hope, gratitude and forgiveness can explain why religion is linked to increased well-being
- Coping strategies: positive coping strategies (prayer, referring to social support for assistance, compassion for yourself and others, how you handle issues in life, collaborative style w/ god would be a positive coping strategy (rather than putting it all in God’s hands and expecting God to do all the work!)
- Sense of meaning: sense of purpose, belief that life was meaningful, a sense of connection with others and that you made an impact
Sacred emotions
- Gratitude
- Forgiveness/self-forgiveness
- Empathy
- Compassion/self-compassion
- Humility
Gratitude
Two-step process - Recognizing positive outcome and recognizing the external source for outcome (i.e., it is other-focused)
Forgiveness
The combination of thoughts, feelings and behaviors towards a transgressor. The goal is to replace negative emotions with positive ones. It is NOT legal pardoning, excusing, condoning, denying, forgetting, or even reconciling. It is not accepting the reason for the transgression or pretending that it didn’t happen. It is a process wherein you free yourself of the negative emotional ties towards the person who wronged or harmed you.
Forgiveness Process
- Uncovering: uncover the negative impact of not forgiving. If nothing else, it negatively affects you to hold onto anger/sadness, thinking about how not forgiving has hurt you
- Deciding: research says that forgiveness is a conscious, cognitive decision. Waiting for feelings to dissipate? You’ll be waiting for a long time! It’s more about realizing that these feelings are not beneficial to you and making a conscious decision to forgive them. Research shows that making this decision first is important so that your feelings can follow suit and decrease in their intensity and their ability to trigger you or hurt you. Learning to let go of the desire to nurse the grudge while still acknowledging that the transgression occurred and deeply impacted you is an important part of the process of forgiveness.
- Sometimes you may have to recommit to this process, it’s not just about making the decision once. It is an iterative process, you may have to recommit to the decision - Working: doing the difficult work of trying to understand from the other person’s perspective why they behaved
- Deepening: how have I grown/changed? Try to see some form of benefit in the process
Effect of forgiveness interventions
Leads to increase in: positive emotions, feelings of control, perspective, healthy relationships.
Leads to decrease in: unforgiveness (nursing the grudge), hostility, physiological activity (undoing effect!)
Upward spiral of forgiveness
Forgiveness happens in the context of social relationships. Someone in a social relationship hurt you -> leads to the forgiveness process -> forgiveness leads to positive emotions -> strengthens the social relationship
More likely to want to forgive someone that you have a social relationship with
Loving-kindness meditation
“May I be filled with loving-kindness. May I be well. May I be peaceful and at ease. May I be happy.”
- expand outwards to your family, friends, strangers, and people you dislike
