Spiritual Pain: A Brief Overview and an Initial Response within the Christian Tradition

Abstract

The author notes that spiritual pain is widespread, both within individuals and society. Drawing on personal experiences and a literature survey, he offers an overview of current work on spiritual pain. As distinct from palliative caregivers, he suggests that spiritual pain can be noticed, but is difficult to define. Drawing on some of the Church's spiritual masters, the author offers a broad typology for spiritual pain, claiming that current methods for attending to spiritual pain are too complex to be useful. He therefore offers, and briefly explores, the image of retreat for attending to spiritual pain--compassionate hospitality, tempered by a form of "tough love" that enables the retreatAnt to embrace, welcome, and dialogue with pain. He suggests that essential features within such an image include an experience of support; a safe and sacred space, a sense of freedom; appropriate expressions of reassurance, and opportunities for forgiveness and reconciliation.

The Book of Job as a Resource for Counseling

“…To Eliphaz's speech in ch. [1][2][3][4][5][6].Job charges his friends with denouncing him because they think God will reward them for their "piety" (17:5). The pastoral caregiver is often faced with a choice between piety and honesty.…”

Spiritual Assessment of Patients With Cancer: The Moral Authority, Vocational, Aesthetic, Social, and Transcendent Model

“…Spiritual assessment begins with clinicians' self-awareness of their own spirituality, including the ability to care for personal spiritual needs, establish good relationships with patients, and initiate discussion with patients at the appropriate time (Anandarajah & Hight, 2001). Burton (2003) stated that assessment of spiritual pain depends "as much upon the spirituality of the caregiver, and upon their capacity for contemplation, for close listening, to narrative, for intuition, and for discernment, as it will upon the results of any neatly developed questionnaire" (p. 442). Many providers may recognize spiritual pain intuitively but lack a clinically usable tool to elicit discussion that helps to validate patients' experiences.…”

When the Sacred Hurts: Using Grounded Theory Analysis to Understand How Former Members Experienced Abuse of Religious Authority in Christian Groups

“…Accounts of ARA have described experiences of spiritual conflict and distress. Western conceptualizations of spirituality do not traditionally incorporate the concept of spiritual pain (Burton, 2003), and most of the literature on the topic encompasses clinical observations based upon work with individuals who are in hospice or are chronically ill (Burton;Millspaugh, 2005a;Millspaugh, 2005b;Morrison, 1992;Satterly, 2001). However, researchers have investigated how religious strain and spiritual struggle are related to psychological distress.…”

“…The term "spiritual pain" has also been used to describe what individuals sometimes experience in relation to spiritual struggles. The lack of literature on this construct might reflect the impact of cultural influences on research agendas, for the idea of spiritual pain tends to receive more attention in Eastern religious and spiritual traditions (Burton, 2003). In the United States, the concept of spiritual pain gained prominence with the hospice movement and care of those who are chronically ill (Morrison, 1992).…”

“…Therefore, spiritual pain is often multifaceted and can affect an individual spiritually, physically, emotionally, and psychologically. This impact includes emotional responses such as grief, anger, guilt, shame, doubt, despair, fear, helplessness, and fatigue (Bartel, 2004;Burton, 2003). Millspaugh (2005a) theorized that spiritual pain is composed of several dynamic and interactive components.…”