Motivation and emotion/Book/2025/Spirituality and resilience

Psychological Resilience and Spirituality Daniela, a 34-year-old mother of two was unexpectedly laid off from work. Her world felt like it had collapsed, with bills piled up, her children needs being a priority, and the pressure to “stay strong” for her family weighed on her shoulders. At night she lays wide awake, with her thoughts racing and the fear gnawing at her sense of control. Yet despite being in those dark moments, Daniela turned to something she hadn’t leaned on in so many years...her spirituality. As she started to pray again with hope, journaling her thoughts and goals, the moments of spiritual connection helped her find not all problems vanishing, but her inner strength growing. Instead of being consumed by fear, she started to see opportunities, connection and peace. For Daniela spirituality didn’t erase her struggles, but it gave her a new perspective and strength to carry them and keep moving forward.

Challenges faced in adversity:

Emotional overwhelm: Job loss and financial instability can trigger anxiety, hopelessness, and exhaustion.

Lack of coping resources: Without adaptive strategies, individuals may spiral into stress that harms relationships and decision-making.

Neglect of inner meaning: Spirituality, though deeply personal and impactful, is often overlooked as a psychological support system.

How psychological science can help: Resilience in psychology is about adapting and recovering from hardship. Science shows that meaning-making, hope, and positive reframing are key to resilience, all of which spirituality can nurture. By integrating spiritual practices into resilience, individuals like Daniela can manage stress more effectively, find purpose, and maintain well-being even in uncertainty. (maybe use a scenrio from church talks;based on a true story)

• When key words are introduced, use interwiki links to:
  • Wikipedia articles (e.g., "An early psychological view dreams) of dreams was provided by Sigmund Freud".)
  • Related book chapters* (e.g., "If you're feeling stuck, check out the chapter about writer's block".)

Resilience in pyshcolgy is esteemed as an important factor in developing the ability to adapt in adversities of life. However it has been recognised that throuhgout researching resilience, it has a rather complex nature with various factors of in psychology including biological , social, cultural and environmental that influences the overall development and outcome (Steven M. Southwick et al., 2014). The in-depth perspective of the different dimensions of resileince can explain why some people are more resilient than others, whether resilience relys more on traits or something that is developed overtime and how various degrees of adversity can play a role in developing the skills, experinces and expanding the indivdual's capability to coping to life stressors.

In research resilience is often found to occur as an complex phenuom where internal and external factors influences the indivdual's ability to cope, adpat, recover and endure difficult circumstances including an indiviedual's attribution. There are several psychological theories that explore and explain possible factors and procresses that undergoes the development of resilience and it's outcomes.

Attatchment Theory

• Attachment theory suggests that secure attachment is a primary source of resilience in human life, developed through interactions with primary caregivers in early years (John Bowlby, 1969). Secure attachment helps infants integrate cognitive and affective experiences into a coherent mental representation, fostering trust in others and confidence in being protected during threats (John Bowlby, 1969). As individuals rely on resilience as an interal psychological resource for support, individuals develop charateristics of consistent, reposnsive caregiving, positive self-concept and have higher self-efficacy (ref) which develop into behaviours of self-care, regualting emotions, forms healthy relationships and effectively cope with stressful life events. On the other side, insecure attachements styles cause emotional dyregulation, low self-efficacy and negative self-concept which can be charaterised as difficulty in adpating to adversity, increase risk of mental health issues such as attachment disorders and challenges in maintaining healthy relationships (ref)
  • Secure Attachment: Individuals with a secure attachment style, characterized by consistent, responsive caregiving, develop a positive self-concept and higher self-efficacy. These internal resources help them to regulate emotions, form healthy relationships, and effectively cope with stressful life events.
  • Insecure Attachment: In contrast, insecure attachment styles (anxious, avoidant, or disorganized) are associated with greater emotional dysregulation, lower self-efficacy, and a negative self-concept. This makes it more challenging to adapt to adversity and can increase the risk of mental health problems.
  • Internal Resources: Secure attachment provides an internal psychological resource that supports resilience. This is evident in the increased self-care, emotion regulation, and self-efficacy found in securely attached individuals, all of which are predictive of resilience.

Logotherapy

• (Victor Frankl, 1930) Frankl's logotherapy centers on the idea that the primary motivational force in humans is the will to meaning, suggesting that meaning-making or finding purpose in life creates resilience when facing life challenges.
• Three philosophical and psychological concepts make up Frankl’s logotherapy: freedom of will, will to meaning, and meaning of life (Batthyany, 2019).

• Suffering and Meaning: The theory acknowledges that suffering is a part of the human experience, but it emphasizes that one's attitude towards suffering can help in finding meaning.
• Freedom of Choice: Individuals possess the freedom to choose their response to difficult situations and to maintain their inner dignity, even when external circumstances are beyond their control.
• Self-Transcendence: The act of looking beyond oneself to serve a purpose or contribute to something greater than oneself is a key pathway to finding meaning and building resilience.
  • Fosters a Sense of Purpose: Logotherapy helps individuals connect their daily actions and long-term goals to their core values, creating a sense of purpose that strengthens their ability to cope with challenges.
  • Promotes a Positive Outlook: By focusing on meaning, people can better manage distress and routine difficulties, leading to improved life satisfaction and resilience.
  • Addresses Existential Concerns: The therapy helps individuals confront existential issues like feelings of emptiness or anxiety, which are often linked to a lack of meaning.
  • Cultivates a Healthy Inner Core: Logotherapy encourages the recognition of inherent human attributes like love, humor, and the capacity to pursue meaningful causes, which are foundational for resilience.

1. Suffering and Meaning → Promotes a Positive Outlook Logotherapy teaches that while suffering is unavoidable, it can be given meaning through one’s attitude; this reframing allows individuals to maintain a more positive outlook and strengthen their resilience in the face of hardship.

1. Freedom of Choice → Cultivates a Healthy Inner Core By emphasizing that people always retain the freedom to choose their response to adversity, logotherapy nurtures dignity, authenticity, and inner strengths such as courage and love, which form the foundation of a healthy and resilient inner core.

1. Self-Transcendence → Fosters a Sense of Purpose & Addresses Existential Concerns The focus on self-transcendence—looking beyond the self to serve a greater purpose—helps individuals connect daily actions with core values, fostering a deep sense of purpose; at the same time, it provides a pathway for addressing existential concerns such as emptiness and anxiety, reinforcing resilience.

Broaden-and-Build Theory of Positive Emotions

• (Fredrickson, 2001) broaden-and-build theory suggests that positive emotions decrease autonomic arousal and broaden attention, fostering creativity, exploration, and flexible thinking. The process expands and improves stress-related coping mechanisms such as positive reappraisal, problem-focused coping, and finding positive meaning in everyday events which ultimately builds enduring physical, psychological, intellectual, and social resources.
• Resilience in the Broaden-and-Build Theory
  • Enhanced coping: Positive emotions help individuals overcome stress by broadening their perspective, allowing them to move beyond immediate threats and see more options for coping.
  • Resource building: Resilience is a key psychological resource built through positive emotions, enabling people to better manage and recover from difficulties.
  • Upward spiral: The theory describes a self-sustaining cycle where positive emotions lead to resource building, which in turn increases the likelihood of experiencing more positive emotions and further enhancing resilience and well-being over time. How ?
  • Cultivate positive emotions: Actively engage in activities that promote positive feelings, such as mindfulness or other forms of loving-kindness meditation.
  • Create supportive environments: In settings like the workplace or home, foster atmospheres that encourage positive emotions and provide the resources for people to develop their skills.
  • Focus on growth: Recognize that positive emotions transform individuals, promoting growth, social integration, and a greater sense of purpose and well-being.

Whether resilience relys more on traits or something that is developed overtime:

Resilience as a Dynamic Process

• (Luthar, 2000., Ungar, 2016) The dynamic process of resilience explains that resilience is not as a static trait but more so an ongoing process involving adversity and positive adaptation. The components of this process include adversity, influence of protective factors, and positive adaptation. This dynamic process varies over time and is influenced by the interaction of risk and protective factors.

The Ecological Systems Theory of Resilience

• (Bronfenbrenner, 1979) Ecological systems suugest that environmental factors like family, school, neighborhood, community and culture influences development in complex and interactive ways which contributes to resilience.

How various degrees of adversity can play a role in developing the skills, experinces and expanding the indivdual's capability/ability to cope:

Risk and Protective Factors Model

• (Rutter, 1987) risk and protective model suugest a "steering effect" with certain risk experiences, when encountered at a moderate level, can bolster resilience by preparing the individual for future challenges. What traditionally might be labeled as a ‘risk’ can become a resilience-enhancing experience.

Why it matters: With more on-going research and current theories rising to the surface, resilience is shown to be an essential aspect conidered in managing the complex psychological wellbeing of indivdiuals. Resileince allows indivduals to effectively endure adversity thourgh actions of implementing strategies, practices or personal assets that can be tailored to support their needs and maintain a healthy state of mental, physical and emotinal wellbeing.

• The concept and meaning of spirituality has such diverse perceptions that has expanded over the centuries and research.
• (Development) Spiritualism has evolved and expanded from it's roots of religiousity core to inlcude more personal meaningful-making that is individualised with moral values and beliefs, cultural and universital strcutures*.
• Sprirtuality can be seen now as how an individual finds conncetion to a higher conciousness or being that relates to the 'soul' of the body in aspects of physical, mental, emotional and sense of self. Ultimately, the goal of spirtuality is having a purposeful sense in life that is aligned to an individual's values, beliefs and faith and through it's spiritual connection it creates desireable outcomes.
• In psychology, there are models and theories intergated to understanding the psycholgical process (general or specific?), development of spirituality in the psychological mechanims (general or specific?) and contribution to wellbeing. (general or specific?)

understanding the psycholgical process:

Integrated Spirituality Model

• There are serveral sprituality models that attempt to provide a frameowrk to create undertsadning and incorprating spirituality in various apsects of life. It emphasises the interconnectedness of the individual with themselves, others, and the larger world and recognises that spirituality can be a source of meaning, purpose, and well-being. These models often highlight the importance of integrating spiritual perspectives with psychological, social, and physical dimensions of human experience.
• Models can inlcude Integrated Spirituality Model (Reed, 1992) and Integrated Spiritual Practice Framework (ISPF) (Carrington, Ann M., 2013).

development of spirituality in the psychological mechanims:

Faith Development Theory

• James W. Fowler (1981) explains how spirituality develops in a person's lifespan regarding having faith. His theory includes 6 stages an individual goes through, intergrating psycholgical theories of development. Stages include 'Intitutive-projective', 'mythic-literal faith', 'synthetic-conventional faith', 'individuative-reflective faith', 'conjunctive faith', 'universalising faith.'

contribution to wellbeing.

There is a rise of awareness that psychological resilience and spiritality share intergated ideas, concepts and models, showcasing connection between the two. With their complex and diverse conceptual dimensions, the relationship between spirituality and resilience display in-depth understanding of an indivdual's capabiltiy to cope, endure and persue whilst facing adversity. (Highlight their overlapping dimensions (e.g., meaning-making, connectedness, growth through adversity)

• How psychological resilience supports adaptive coping (problem-solving, emotional regulation)
• How spirituality provides coping mechanisms (prayer, meditation, faith practices, reframing suffering)
• Theories: Attachment Theory, Logotherapy, Integrated Spirituality Models

• Resilience as the capacity to withstand hardship over time
• Spirituality as sustaining belief, hope, and perseverance when situations don’t immediately improve
• Theories: Faith Development Theory, Dynamic Process of Resilience, Risk/Protective Factors

• Beyond survival → resilience and spirituality enabling post-traumatic growth and life purpose
• The pursuit of meaning, contribution, and transcendence after adversity
• Theories: Broaden-and-Build, Logotherapy, Ecological Systems perspectives (growth through community and culture)

Integrative Perspectives: The Interwoven Nature of Resilience and Spirituality

• Discussion of models that explicitly integrate both (e.g., integrated spirituality in psychological well-being)
• Show how coping, enduring, and pursuing are not separate but interconnected stages of resilience and spirituality.

• Reaffirm how resilience and spirituality together deepen understanding of coping, enduring, and pursuing.
• Point to future directions in research or practice (clinical, pastoral, educational, etc.).
• leading into take-home message?
• review other wikiversity of more ideas of structure and topics to include
• Resilience in psychology refers to the ability to manage wellbeing whilst facing difficult circumstances. It has been found that resilience has a complex nature, with diverse aspects of it's development, definition and the factors that influences. Resilience is seen as an essential component in the psycholgical wellbeing of an indvidual. Theroeis and models present udnertsanding and frameworks to explain it's devleopment, express it's importance and it's fundamental components.
• The meaning and understadning of spirituality has expanded and broaden over time. With spirituality first being conceptulised in religousity, now expanding to more personal perspective and udnertsading of the human wellbeing. The concept of spirituality explores conncetedness to either a higher self or being in aspects of physical, mental, emotional and perceptions of self. The goal of spirtuality is finding and fostering a purposeful sense in life aligned to an individual's values, beliefs, culture and faith. In successful spirituality interconenctness it creates desireable outcomes, leading to balanced, healthy wellbeing. In psychology, theories and mdoels ar eitnergated into spiritual traits to undertsand the psycholgical process, mechanisms, and development to the wellbeing.

• Within research and __, it has been found a trend that spiritual and psycholgical resilience share similar concepts, models, frameworks, and components. This correlations leads to investigating a possible relationship that could sheds light into it's possibilty of developing a strong foundation of resilience in the face of adversity with positve psycholgical outcomes. Upon investigating the relationship, it has been discussed of how intergrating aspects of spirituality cna benefit the indivudal's wellbeing in various cultrual, social, physical, emotional and mental circumstances. As well as how spirituality and spcyholgical resilience can be independent, there are more successful outcomes in applying both concepts dependently.
• While the concept of spirituality is intergrated into psychoplgical understanding, spirituality also has it's practical uses. spritualit practices displat the practical applications of spirituality, empahsising it's materialistic value. Spritiual practice has been shown to have benefital outcomes in managing and foster a healthy wellbeing. Practices can include various actions.

- summarise sections, highlights, learning features

- review how conclusion sections are strcutred in other wikiversity/wikipedia pages

Dynamic Resilience Model in Spirituality

• Resilience as a dynamic process (Luthar, 2000., Ungar, 2016) of positive adaptation in the face of adversity. Spirituality is seen as a key protective factor that supports adjustment, coping, and recovery in stressful contexts (Kubitza, 2023)
• The Resiliency Model of Family Stress, Adjustment, and Adaptation (RM-SAA) (McCubbin, McCubbin.,1991)

Transactional Model of Stress and Coping (TMSC)

• (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984) – The framework examines how individuals perceive and respond to stressors in their environment. Spirituality is integrated as a coping resource that influences how stress is appraised and managed, helping individuals reframe challenges with meaning and hope (Kubitza, 2023).

Positive Psychology Framework

• Traits and components found and devloped in positive psychological framworks can be seen in essence of spirituality.
• Intergrating these aspects together, spirituality can be identified as one of character strenghts that promotes resilience, fosters optimism and connectedness and create a sense of meaning (Kubitza, 2023).

Model of Moral Distress and Resilience

• resilience theory (human capacity to adapt under moral stressors.)
• moral distress concepts (drawing on Jameton’s classic definition from 1984/1993: knowing the right thing to do but being unable to act on it).
• spirituality into its scoping review findings (how spirituality can act as a resource within distress–resilience dynamic (e.g., through reflection, meaning-making, hope, or counselling).
• Spirituality provides inner strength and moral grounding to navigate ethical challenges, mitigating distress and enhancing resilience (Kubitza, 2023).]

• Growth through adversity: Why meaning matters (Book chapter, 2011)

Psychological Resilience (Wikipedia)

• Spirituality (Wikipedia)

• Building resilience in the face of adversity, with George Bonanno, PhD | Speaking of Psychology (youtube.com)
• Building Resiliency Through Spirituality | Madison Jaye | TEDxNJIT (youtube.com)