What You Need to Know About Spiritual Illness and Disease

This biases our system towards threat physiology and plays a significant role in our health and wellness. As we are an inherently spiritual species, we frequently fear a spiritual death as much as a physical death. Failure to recognize the effects of all of our existential worries, big and small, leads to all kinds of mishaps and trouble for our species. When we are under threat, we create a bias towards negative, selfish, aggressive and prejudiced thoughts. When being chased by a tiger it is helpful to think “danger”, react quickly, judge without contemplation, defend and protect one’s self. It is not a time for deep thought, nor bonding and sharing, or you’ll be sharing a meal with the tiger and not in a good way.

Tap into your inner source of power and keep moving forward

We have to be aware of this phenomenon in everything we do and we have to be willing to look directly at this reality to be aware and correct course. Understanding spiritual malady and its impact on recovery is essential for anyone battling addiction. This deep-seated sense of disconnection and unrest drives the cycle of addiction and self-destructive behaviors. By addressing this spiritual disease through connection with a higher power, the 12 Steps, and professional help, individuals can find a path to lasting sobriety and holistic healing.

Why is it so dangerous to be self-reliant when suffering from an addiction?

Anxiousness, depression, and boredom are a few other factors that contribute to being spiritually maladapted. For a while, that seemed to work for us but once we stopped using substances the discontentedness came back to the surface in sobriety. Regardless of how it manifests itself, a spiritual malady is always rooted in an inner conflict. This inner conflict can be caused by many different things, such as childhood trauma, unresolved grief, or trauma related to addiction.

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And for those experiencing complicated grief, there’s not much energy to do anything else. While one is longing for the person (who mirror’s your own Soul qualities), the other is longing for Divinity/God/Enlightenment. The feelings of loss, longing, emptiness, and sorrow that you’re experiencing mirror exactly what those undergoing a Dark Night experience. The only difference is that those experiencing complex grief are seeing all their hope, freedom, and happiness bound-up in the lost person.

• Social threat and injury are other forms of spiritual threat and injury that are particularly toxic to humans.
• If you can relate to these feelings, you might be experiencing soul loss, which is what inevitably leads to something known as the Dark Night of the Soul.
• According to Alcoholics Anonymous, informally known as The Big Book, when someone with alcoholism drinks, they have an abnormal reaction likened to an allergic reaction.
• Thankfully, the “spiritual malady” is no longer a “missing piece” of Step One for me.

The concept of spiritual disease is deeply embedded in the philosophy of AA. It is rooted in the idea of being spiritually sick—a condition that profoundly affects our soul and emotional nature. This spiritual disease is not a physical ailment but a profound affliction of the spirit, manifesting as a sense of emptiness and disconnection from oneself and the world. This is frequently referred to as ‘breed and feed” physiology, although it is clearly much more than just that.

Alcoholics Anonymous’ 12-Step Program

By addressing the spiritual disconnection at the root of our addiction, we can begin to heal and find lasting sobriety. Grasping this concept allows us to truly understand the necessity of spiritual healing in our recovery journey. We look very different in these different phenotypical states. Particularly https://ecosoberhouse.com/ 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. Both phenotypes are helpful for survival, but long-term defense states are ultimately destructive to us.

Spiritual Malady and the Relapsing Nature of Alcoholism

Life may feel hopeless, desolate, and totally void of meaning. We may carry the sense that we’re like the living dead, dragging ourselves through an existence that leaves us feeling nothing but pain, disappointment, and sorrow. When we are disconnected from our Souls, our True Selves, our Higher Nature, we feel innately lost.

This means those things that are not solid- such as our thoughts, our beliefs, our emotions- are what is spiritual. When we say that alcoholism or drug addiction is ‘a spiritual malady’, it means that our disease in centered in these things (thoughts, beliefs, emotions). 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. Strengthening this relationship with a spiritual being brought us hope that we can recover from the mental and physical suffering of alcoholism. Anyone can be spiritually maladapted, but as an alcoholic, we use alcohol to deal with having a spiritual malady.

• 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.
• Addicts and alcoholics may rid themselves of their drug or alcohol dependency by completing the Twelve Step process.
• Another significant symptom is the challenge in personal relationships.
• 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.

If you are a deep feeler who has always been sensitive, you might be an empath and/or HSP. Consequently, you feel pain (and joy) to a greater degree than others. If this is the case, it’s important that you learn about your needs, in whatever way possible. For example, do you feel too stimulated by your environment (and is that distracting you from processing your grief)? Perhaps you need to take a vacation or create a space in your living area that is free of clutter. Perhaps you need to take a break in order to work through your complex grief first.

Signs You Have Complicated Grief (a Spiritual Malady)

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. The way humans think is on a spectrum of self-centeredness and god-centeredness. When dealing with the disease of alcoholism we are selfish and self-centered beings.