Spiritual Pain: A Symptom in Search of a Clinical Definition PMC

Here at California Detox in Laguna Beach, we can help you unpack the physical, psychological, and spiritual aspects of alcoholism. My diverse experience encompasses positions at Nurse on Call Home Healthcare, Trilogy Home Healthcare, Jupiter Medical Center, and Lawnwood Regional Medical Center. I’ve specialized in pain management, pediatrics, and cardiovascular care, ensuring that each patient receives the best possible care.

  • And once we take action and put that substance in our system – whether its alcohol, drugs, sugar, or whatever—it sets off a physical craving for more of that substance or activity and we’re caught in a cycle.
  • Unlike normal people (whatever that means) alcoholics are unsettled to the core.
  • After attending FSU and FAU where he majored in writing, Bryan ventured out to follow in the footsteps of his idols, running straight into drug addiction.

It is within the context of this transcendent space that the experience or symptoms of spiritual pain may be manifested in the clinical setting. We propose that spiritual pain is a symptom because it can only be experienced and/or identified by the patient, as opposed to a sign that is assessed https://ecosoberhouse.com/ by an observer. We conducted a literature search to identify and compare definitions of the experiential dimension of spiritual pain. Key databases were searched, up to the year 2021 inclusive, for papers with a definition of “spiritual” or “existential” pain/distress in a clinical setting.

What Is Spiritual Malady and How Do We Become Well?

Our brains are constantly searching to see if we are safe or threatened and this subaware mechanism fine tunes the system based on the incoming information. Some predictive codes are inborn, instincts, but humans actually have very few instincts. Prejudice comes from the predictive codes in the shadows of the brain. We accumulate threat and trauma codes throughout a lifetime that bias the system towards threat and trigger threat physiology easily. Spiritual threats can come in the form of emotional threat or injury. We can experience emotional attacks, assaults, accidents, or abuse that affect our physiology similar to a physical threat or injury.

Seven papers were identified that provided limited definitions or descriptors of spiritual pain in a clinical setting including Saunders’ early definition noted above. Four papers were from Western countries (USA and Sweden), one from Japan, and two papers, although written in the USA, did not specify the location of the study (Table ​(Table2).2). Cicely Saunders’s spearheaded the hospice movement and was early to point out the multi-dimensional nature of “total pain,” including the mental and spiritual spheres of the pain experience.

The Spiritual Malady

You should also try to find other people in AA who share your beliefs and struggles; they can provide support and fellowship as well as offer helpful advice. Just remember, even if you don’t share the same beliefs, everyone in AA are united by their shared experience with addiction and their desire to stay sober. Here are some things you can do to work through your spiritual malady spiritual malady even if you don’t believe in God or have an understanding of your higher power. As we work towards this state of selflessness we find that we are slowly being relieved of the hopeless alcoholic state we once thought we were doomed to be in forever. It is constant maintenance of being spiritually connected with a god of your understanding.

If we make that a daily discipline we will never regret it. All treatment calls are accepted by drug and alcohol centers advertising with the Call Affiliate LLC network. As a result of this thought process, the spiritual illness they’re up against is at the core of their addiction. Also, they cannot fathom how other people manage to deal with crises in life – even when they have it worse. This is due to the fact that addiction is really a spiritual disorder. Although the disease has biological, behavioral, and psychological roots, treating those aspects, without including the spiritual component,  is like sticking a Band-Aid on a bullet wound.

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