The Rev. Dr. Glenn A. Robitaille on shame and powerlessness

Looking Beneath Spiritual Delusions

Spirituality is a very personal matter that finds expression in vastly different ways. At times this can be confusing to staff working in the field of mental health who find it difficult to discern whether a client request or behavior is legitimate according to a faith system or is manipulation/attention-seeking. If a belief system is a profound part of a client's life prior to becoming delusional, it is likely to become a distorted part of that client's coping strategy when they decompensate. It is sometimes assumed that religion itself is causal in the development of such delusions. What professional spiritual care providers often find is that the underlying beliefs of such individuals are at the root of the problem and not religion itself.

In healthy spirituality, the individual in question believes he or she is valued and loved by God, or in some cases, is being embraced by a benevolent power or force. When one feels that the purpose of faith is to strengthen and encourage him or her, religious delusions generally do not occur. When such delusions do develop, a strong, negative emotion is usually at the core of the spiritual belief. Two emotions are more commonly observed: shame and powerlessness. When a person has a faith that is shame driven, inordinate amounts of time and energy are spent trying to appease God, or to compensate for past sinful behavior. This can result in over-scrupulous attention to religious minutia, such as the performing of prayers and rituals, the obsessive reading of holy books, and in more extreme cases, self-abasing behavior. One of the functions of mental health chaplains is to assist shame-based clients to challenge these faulty beliefs with more wholesome ones.

The second more commonly seen core emotion is powerlessness. It is not unusual for individuals who have been abused and overpowered to see religious practices as a means of gaining personal power, or of accessing the power of spiritual forces. When a person possesses an innate sense of powerlessness, religious attention is often drawn to those religious writings that accentuate miracles and knowledge of the future, or to parapsychology, magic, or beliefs that one is actually a powerful, well-known person. Megalomania that has a strong spiritual component is often the spiritual deterioration of an individual whose internal dialogue reflects feelings of personal impotence and weakness. It is one function of spiritual care providers to assist individuals who feel powerless to connect with the resources in their faith to strengthen them from within rather than trying to manipulate their environments by exercising a perceived power over them.

When appropriate, chaplains are available to the clinical team to assess a client's faith system based on their stated beliefs and to explain the spiritual needs and practices of clients to the clinical team.

While the process of dealing with distorted spiritual thinking can be a lengthy one, great gains can be made in a short amount of time by changing the vector of the thinking ever so slightly and by providing clients with supportive material.

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