Psychological Disorders and Spirituality

We are beings that are relating to a world as it is, not as it is suppose to be. Therefore, we are always in a state of trying to make a fallen world work for us when in actuality our true longings are to be home in heaven. Thus all adaptations to life on this earth are ultimately a flight from God. Our commitment to adapt is a commitment to survive. However, all efforts to survive will bring a loss of self and of self in relationship with God and others.

Affect is a bridge between the body and the soul. Emotion is another way to describe affect. Emotion is the bridge between that which is physical, tangible, and measurable within a human being and what reflects the inevitable, invisible, immeasurable, and finite structure we call the soul. Affect is the bridge between the body (measurable) and the soul (immeasurable). Our affect (emotion) is primarily biologically influenced. Every emotion has common physical phenomenon. For example, when a person gets anxious what happens...feels like you are frozen, muscles go flaccid, legs won't hold, heart beats faster (you can feel it moving your chest up and down). When a person is angry they feel like they are being moved towards something, their muscle tone will begin to increase and heart will beat faster (races). These phenomena are commonly known as Fight or Flight.

We all face the reality of betrayal (assault). Our dignity as an image bearer has not been honored. Thus, we want to be protected. We feel abandoned, a sense of death and loss. We wonder will God protect me? Will He provide for me, what my heart most deeply desires?

The two core values that are true of every symptom are adultery (lust) and/or murder (anger). And at some level we have figured out how to fill the emptiness in our hearts with drugs, alcohol, masturbation, food, sex, work, etc. How do we protect ourselves? Is it by being nice and getting along with everyone? Or do we avoid everyone? Or do we become emotionally or sexually addicted to someone?

Assault and abandonment arise out of the issues of depravity that is inside every one of us. Our dignity as an image bearer of God's creation has been crushed by the evil one through the fall of man in the garden. Yet you can't help but see something good in every fallen heart. So, no addiction, no symptom, no pathology, no disorder is so far apart from God's work, that it is really nothing but sin when you get right down to it. Yet it is arising out of that core issue of rebellion.