The Ghost Post

#043 When 24 becomes 43

In my new year’s post I wrote about looking for a focus word for the year, and shared the words that had been powerful in 2024, anchoring me amongst the waves of uncertainty resulting from the big changes in my life.

I also shared a note, with the cryptic contents of a barely started article from Easter last year, with words that seemed to make little sense together, but were the seeds of an idea that had tickled me at some point.

In case you didn’t catch it…

Mammals

Etruscan shrews ping pong ball

Holding on to the baby in front - a shrew shrew train!

Two badgers, two pheasants, a bird of prey, and something unidentifiable.

Fennec fox

It seems to be gibberish, but then I remember that one of these lines is the road kill driving from Devon to Somerset. In Grand Cayman that line about road kill would simply say Chickens. I also remember that it was my niece who told me about the fennec fox. I love the randomness of these things being laid down on the page together, and wonder what I had been thinking about how I might weave an interesting post from them.

The creative mind, is limitless and unfathomable.

What are you going to do with your wild and precious creativity today?

I’ve been looking back through more of my draft posts, and wondering what magic is lying inside. I’m going to share one with you.

One of the most important words has been Trust.

This word was the starting point for an exploration into topics of trust and spirituality last year, and my wonderings about the human ability (or need?) to have faith in something bigger than ourselves, and the relationship between spiritual practice and psychological well-being. It’s a big topic, and when I posted the original article it was way too long. I decided to break it up into two, and I posted an initial article, If you wanted to drown, you could, intending there to be a second part. I penned it, intending to come back to it and just tweak the introduction.

It remained in my draft folder, the ghost of Post #24. Looking back at the actual post #24, I understand why I didn’t manage to pull together such a weighty topic. It came out three days before I shook the snow globe of my life, leaving everything I knew, to move to an island in a different continent. I was living Trust, even if I wasn’t posting it!

I’m going to take myself back to that time…

Let the adventure begin…

Returning to the intro to the intended second part a fortnight later I was deep in the final throes of preparation for my relocation. I sat on a cushion in my empty living room, and opened the laptop to write, too overwhelmed by everything that was happening, and the support I had been receiving.

I breathed, trying to take it all in, or simply allow it to flow over me.

There’s excitement alongside the stress, I was told. So why didn’t I feel it?!

Holmes and Rahe developed a measure of stressful life events, the Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale, or Social Readjustment Scale, back in 1967, and old though it was even then, I recall using it as a Trainee Clinical Psychologist back in the noughties. I don’t know if it is still regarded as valid or clinically useful, as there are many limitations in its premise, and many life events that weren’t even imagined in the 60s, but the measure lists and rates life events, ascribing a score based on their perceived stressfulness.

A score of 300 is said to be associated with an 80% chance of health breakdown in the next two years! I don’t recall using it in such a predictive manner, but as a way to quantify, and validate for the client, just how much was going on for them.

It’s always helpful to consider measures like this in the context of the individual’s adaptive ‘buffers’ such as social support and positive coping strategies. We are not all carrying the same burdens, and the context of our lives does not stay consistent. The more we are trying to manage, the harder it is to stay upright, and prolonged periods of stress inevitably have an impact on our nervous systems and health.

I’m curious how we might each have scored our individual experiences of Covid-19, and Post-Covid, and whether a Covid Readjustment Scale might still be a helpful measure to help us understand our ongoing physical, psychological, and spiritual needs. But that is a rabbit hole I do not have time for today- the point I intended to make was to acknowledge that this scale identifies ‘changing residence’ as amongst the 43 most stressful life events.

I’m surprised to read that moving home is down in 32nd place, as it feels like such a stressful thing to do. I consider that emigrating is quite an extreme way of moving home, and must surely score more highly on the list. Why does it not have it’s own category?! But I am reminded that emigrating is not an unusual event, and that I am not alone in it. The partition of India forced the relocation of 18 million people. People leave homes every day due to violent conflict or to find better conditions, risking their lives and life savings to do so. I am doing none of these things, and whilst a family will be living in my home, there will always be a sofa or a spare bed in the UK for me to sleep on. Nothing prevents me from returning to my country if I don’t like the one I’m

heading to.

Trust- A big topic to pivot back to!

Trust is something that we talk about in clinical psychology, such as in relation to working models of attachment relationships, the importance of trust between client and therapist, and the consequences of an individual not having trust in their self, others, and the world. It’s surprising to realise that I have rarely engaged in reflective conversations with other health professionals about how we conceptualise and talk about trust in a more spiritual sense, both as professionals, and with people who seek our services.

By this I mean the idea that something bigger than us might be operating, and perhaps have generally positive intentions towards us, and other beings. Some people would describe this ‘something bigger’ as God, and others might understand this as the spirit, a divine power, the universe, or Gaia / nature.

I’ll pause to let you consider your reactions to this. You’re all sure to have them, but how often to we discuss our ideas, with curiosity rather than debate.

Spirituality is a huge topic and some theoretical approaches in clinical psychology lend themselves to exploring this level of meaning making and its impact on psychological well-being, better than others. Going into a new place of work, and a country that I understand to have strong Christian practices, I’m curious how we each navigate this bigger field of trust in our individual clinical practice, and how we navigate it in our personal lives. I offer my thoughts, respectful of the field of differing views, hopeful that I might spark shared curiosity and reflection.

I do not profess to have any answers here!

Trust in the universe

This kind of statement, or invitation, depending on how you read it, is one that I hear often, and can seem problematic to the rational mind. Faith and trust require a willingness to let go of the need to know things intellectually. The invited experience is of ‘allowing’ events to unfold and accepting, rather than resisting, or analysing. It sounds simple, but as with many simple things, typically isn’t easy!

Spiritual practices are very individual, and often mean different things to different people, but I found some research examining the relationship between spirituality and well-being, including mental health.

It is not a field I’ve explored much before so I searched Google scholar and followed other links for information. I found a study by Naima Aslam et al, a group of researchers in Pakistan who use a measure called the Daily Spiritual Experience Scale (DSES) to operationalise spirituality, with a sample of 230 young adults (aged 18-26). I understand that we need standardised measures in research, yet something about quantifying the experience of the numinous, individual experience of spirituality and spiritual practice feels odd to me! The researchers report a significant negative correlation between spirituality and depression, and spirituality and anxiety- concluding that spirituality helps people cope with life, and is an important component of therapy. They cite research that shows 'that people high on spirituality have less mental health issues’ (Kakar, 1989, Nelms, Hutchins, Hutchins, & Pursley, 2007; Larson & Larson, 2003; Larson & Milano 1995; Miller & Thoresen, 2003, see link to Aslam’s et al). They also report that spirituality is correlated with an ability to socially interact with others, with (hypothesised?) positive outcomes. They consider the evidence for cross-cultural and gender differences in spirituality and consider how spiritual beliefs can act as an anchor, and associated with an internal locus of control. The researchers advocate for the inclusion of spirituality in health care, which is an interesting prospect. I wonder at the cross cultural differences between Pakistan and the UK. Is Pakistani culture more comfortable with mind/body/sprit connections, than the U.K. which still tends towards dualism? I realise I don’t know.

Most strangely the research paper’s title implies it will be investigating CBT (A study of the relationship between spirituality and mental health and THE EFFICACY OF COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL THERAPY IN YOUNG ADULTS), yet I see no reference to CBT treatment or models in the study, nor in the conclusions. It is not a study that looks at pre-and post treatment scores, so I am baffled.

Nevertheless, it raises some more interesting questions about the models of well-being that we privilege, and what is considered important, and what is not. How might NHS England respond to the recommended inclusion of spirituality in our treatment models, I wonder, CBT or otherwise.

A shadow side

Whatever the psychological benefits, pursuing a spiritual path can undoubtedly have down sides. John Welwood introduced the term spiritual bypassing for the use of spiritual practices and beliefs to avoid facing emotional issues. Again, this is not something I’ve heard talked about in clinical settings, but anecdotally I have met many people for whom this term might apply.

An interesting article describes the work of researchers from Portugal and USA, Picciotto & Fox (2018) who investigate this in clinical practice. There were only 10 participants, but the qualitative study explores how therapists working in the field of spirituality and psychological wellbeing conceptualise and work therapeutically with ‘spiritual bypassing’. My understanding is that spiritual bypassing occurs when an individual uses spiritual practices, or terms, to avoid, rather than connect with, their inner and outer world. This is not an uncommon thing to do- people can use food, exercise, shopping, sex, drugs, or alcohol to avoid feeling their difficult emotions in a similar way.

This could present itself in many ways, and one UK series of Married at First Sight springs to mind. There an individual regularly expressed their belief in their spiritual superiority, with the apparent function of avoiding reflection on their actions and what really seemed to happening within the relationship! A concrete probably more common example is that we might try so hard to meditate correctly that we stay in our head. Rather than dropping down into our body and experiencing things as they are in the moment, we stay in our minds thinking about what we think and feel. I have witnessed this in myself when learning to meditate, and with people with whom I had worked clinically, often whilst teaching mindful breathing exercises and relaxation techniques. I have seen how the effort to do it correctly gets in the way of being present, and how hard it can be to help them do it differently. The harder we try, the further away we get!

Spiritual bypassing is not always conscious and deliberate. We have probably all witnessed a friend shrug in the face of a relationship breakdown, and straight afterwards declare;

‘Things have worked out as they were supposed to. We weren’t destined to be together’,

This may be their truth, especially if they did not value the relationship highly, but might also be that they are avoiding the drop into more painful experiences of disappointment, anger, or grief, and the necessary emotional processing work.

‘This is fate’, we might story, avoiding the agony of fully felt, lost love.

We’re human after all, who wants to fall in that deep pit of grief?!

Anchoring hope

All coping strategies are valid and have their place, but it is helpful to be aware of the strategies we are employing. I think spiritual practices are most helpful when they support us to sit amongst the difficult parts of life. Feeling connected to a higher power, meaning, or purpose outside of ourselves can resource us to tolerate periods of suffering, as can recognising that we are not the only one experiencing such a pain. In this way we are always connected to others in our human experiences.

My experience of Buddhist teaching however is that it typically emphasises impermanence, that nothing lasts forever. A similar message is in Persian and Christian teaching, and it can be helpful to hold onto in times of suffering:

‘This too will pass.’

This kind of statement anchors us in trust, knowing that everything changes over time. But, to truly know and accept impermanence we may have to let go of control, and previous coping strategies, and limiting beliefs.

What is left?!

Part 2 to follow…

I posted this article as one, and realised it was way too long. Perhaps I should’ve edited it properly, but instead I’ve chopped it in two- leaving the cliff hanger of an existential question, hoping you might be curious enough to come back for part 2!

Last weekend I picked up this lovely Christmas card that was sent from back home! It brought into the focus the strangeness of seeming to live in two places simultaneously. Over time, I am sure this will change, depending on the path my feet take me in next. I hope you continue to join me on this curious and creative adventure of life!