When Good Spiritual Practice Goes Bad: Prayer, Rumination, and Revelations of Damnation

CW: brief mention of self-injury

I still have vivid memories of a particular day in December over a decade ago. I was in my second year of doctoral work at the time, and I spent an evening talking with some of my fellow students. We found ourselves disagreeing about a number of theological questions, including the topic of whether God’s justice would allow for universal salvation. I was the only LDS student in the group (in fact, I was the only LDS student in the doctoral program); the other participants represented a variety of religious backgrounds and theological outlooks. My memory is that people were trying to be respectful, but there was an undercurrent of tension, and I left feeling a little unsettled.

Within the space of a few hours, I had completely fallen apart. I was utterly convinced that I’d been particularly awful to one of the students with whom I disagreed. The more I thought about it, the stronger of a sense I had that I was a horrible, evil person who treated others in terrible ways. My behavior felt unforgiveable; I knew at the most core level of my being that I deserved to suffer for it. It was like a revelation of my own damnation. This excruciating experience was not actually new to me; having been through something similar a few times before, I could remember that in psychologically healthier places I’d recognized that I needed to challenge these feelings of overwhelming guilt when I started to drown in them. But it was hitting too hard. And to challenge the guilt would be to accept a paradigm in which I deserved to have it challenged, and I was convinced that wasn’t the case. This wasn’t an instance of inappropriate or misplaced guilt, I wrote in my journal. It was simply what I deserved.

I’d just started seeing a new therapist, and wasn’t yet comfortable enough to call him. I did manage, though, to reach out to a few friends and tell them a bit of what I was feeling. They were of the opinion, based on my descriptions of what had happened, that I hadn’t actually done anything terrible. I’d expressed disagreement about a particular issue, and the conversation had felt tense, but I hadn’t lashed out or engaged in any sort of personal attack or anything like that. I couldn’t explain to them why I felt so awful about it; I couldn’t even explain it to myself. But there I was. The scripture from the Book of Mormon that kept coming to mind was Alma the Younger’s account of being “racked with eternal torment,” with a soul that “was harrowed up to the greatest degree and racked with all my sins.”

I knew, of course, that what you were supposed to do in a situation like this was to pray, to ask God for forgiveness. I finally gathered my courage—because at this point I was fairly convinced that God hated me—and prayed. And prayed and prayed. I sobbed, and begged God for mercy, for some kind of response. And the answer I got was . . . nothing. The experience left me feeling even more terrible, because it confirmed my sense that I was beyond redemption. Not even God could help me, I realized. I was on my way to hell. In fact, in a very real way, I was already in hell. I couldn’t sleep; I tossed and turned for hours, utterly lost in despair. I felt so hopeless that I didn’t even bother contemplating suicide, because I knew that killing myself would just get me to my eternal doom a little faster. There was no way out. Around 4:00 am, I finally got out a razor blade and cut up my legs. I didn’t feel any less damned, but hurting myself at least calmed me down enough that I was able to fall asleep. And the next day the emotional storm gradually subsided, helped especially by a conversation with another sympathetic friend who had been part of the group the previous evening and was therefore able to offer some valuable perspective on the whole thing.

After many years of therapy, and time spent reflecting on this incident, I have some ideas about why it was so triggering for me. One piece is that I had felt somewhat aggressive toward my interlocutor, and I had so deeply internalized the notion that I needed to be “nice” and understanding at all times that I had little practice with owning and dealing with feelings of aggression. Another factor to do with the specific question we were arguing about; my classmate was emphasizing God’s justice, and because that notion had been deeply intertwined in my life with the spectre of a wrathful God who couldn’t wait to punish me, it was a deeply fraught topic for me. On top of that, I was breaking long-internalized rules in my personal theological thinking by even questioning the picture of a God who tortured sinners, and that usually led to a psychological and spiritual backlash. On some level I seemed to have adopted the belief that the absolute worst sin you could commit was to underestimate how much God hated sin, or to imagine that God might not demand payment in full for every stray thought. I’d heard a lot of contempt throughout my life for churches which weren’t demanding enough, and people who didn’t sufficiently appreciate that God had very high expectations. (Looking at this now, I can see how certain passages of scripture, such as the assertion in the Doctrine & Covenants that God cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance, plus the entire framework of substitutionary atonement, fueled this worldview. I do realize that the whole thing is supposed to inspire you to turn to Jesus, but that never worked for me, because when I attempted to do that, it felt like Jesus didn’t want anything to do with me.)

Another thorny situation involving prayer and spiritual guidance happened at the beginning of my master’s in theology program. I’d dropped out of a graduate history program, and moved to another city to start work at a different university. I was confident in my decision to study theology, which I absolutely adored from the start, but I was questioning my choice of that particular school, because I felt socially isolated and rather miserable. I’d had a solid social network at my last school, and it was a difficult adjustment. And for some reason, I got it into my head that I was supposed to have gone to a different university—one to which I hadn’t even applied. I prayed extensively about the question, and the thought that I was actually supposed to be at this other place was so recurrent that I couldn’t help wondering whether it was a spiritual impression. I woke up nearly every morning for a while and second-guessed myself, wondering whether the Spirit was telling me that I’d made the wrong decision. Once in a while I was able to get enough distance to question what was happening in my head; for one thing, I asked myself, why on earth hadn’t the Spirit bothered to convey this important information before I’d submitted my applications? But often the impression felt so strong that I couldn’t dismiss it. However, as I started to feel more settled and build social connections  at the university I was attending, these feelings began to subside, and they eventually disappeared altogether.

A friend of mine who’s frequently struggled with anxiety told me that she’s found it similarly challenging to distinguish between spiritual impressions and anxious thoughts. For example, she might have the thought pop into her head that she’s forgotten to turn off the stove and she needs to go home and check it. And what if that’s the Spirit warning her to go save her house before it burns down? She said that she once decided to really devote herself to listening to and following the Spirit, and the result was that she was nearly immobilized by anxious thoughts. This makes a lot of sense to me, because I’ve also heard the miracle stories in which people are saved through paying close attention to spiritual promptings, which can indeed take the form of warnings.

I value spiritual practice. I value it a lot; I think it can be a rich and meaningful part of your life, one that can help you cultivate a deeper sense of connection to God, to others, and to the world. However, for all I learned growing up about things like prayer and scripture study and seeking spiritual guidance, I never learned that these things could go completely off the rails, and that it’s worth evaluating what role they’re playing in your life. The experiences I shared above were not the only times in my life that prayer actually made things worse for me. Usually it hasn’t been as dramatic as a revelation of personal damnation, but especially when I’m in a more depressed state, I’ve found that the line between prayer and rumination can be strikingly thin. Before I know it, talking to God morphs into extended contemplation of everything that’s wrong with me and everything that’s wrong with the world, and I pray myself into a kind of black hole of despair.

These kinds of issues have left me somewhat more skeptical about spiritual experience—or at least, the idea that prayer and listening to the Spirit will always provide clear guidance. It’s not that I don’t believe that spiritual guidance can be a real thing. I can look back at my life and point to particular spiritual experiences that have been deeply meaningful and even life-changing for me. But the ones that I continue to hold on to as anchors of my faith have held up over time. They’re not the ones that have aggravated my depression, and rarely if ever have they been in the vein of divine micromanagement of my life. They’re the ones that have left me feeling more connected, that have called me toward love and toward living life as fully as possible. (A psychology professor I had as an undergrad at BYU once made an observation that has stuck with me: his experience with these issues had led him to suspect that if a spiritual impression conveys that you have do something right now, odds are that it’s a compulsive thought and not the Spirit. I have no doubt that there are people out there who can come up with counter-examples, but I’ve found that perspective helpful. In my experience, the Spirit patiently beckons you forward; it doesn’t say, “you’d better do this right away or everything will be ruined.”)

When I’m in a state of miserable depression and despair, I suppose it’s possible that God could break through that and convey some sort of unambiguous message, rather than leaving me lost in the turmoil. However, at least for me, that doesn’t seem to happen much. When things are difficult, I’ve therefore found that it’s good if I can turn to things outside of my head; I’ve come to believe that God frequently communicates through other channels. I was thinking about this at church on Sunday, because after a kind of amazing 18-month run of general emotional stability, the depression has been creeping back. I was in a pretty low place, and it was reminding me of years and years of going to sacrament meeting and agonizing over whether I was worthy to take the sacrament. When I’m depressed, I’m usually acutely aware of all the ways I’m falling short. And I find that it’s not helpful to simply dismiss those thoughts as “distorted cognitions,” because while the meaning I’m making of those shortcomings might be worth questioning, my awareness of my failings is not grounded in nothing. Well-meaning people would suggest using the sacrament as a time for prayer and reflection on the ways in which you needed to repent. I found that I regularly spent the time feeling a deep and awful sense of my own unworthiness, and I feared participating in the ordinance because, as the scripture warns, I could be eating and drinking my own damnation. Needless to say, the sacrament was not my favorite part of attending sacrament meeting—this wasn’t the only reason why church regularly left me horribly depressed and even suicidal, but it was certainly a factor.

The Episcopal church doesn’t use the worthiness paradigm, and I think that’s extremely helpful for someone with my temperament. But old ways of thinking aren’t easy to undo, and when I had a kind of mini-meltdown earlier this year over a challenging interpersonal situation, I simply couldn’t bring myself to take Communion. I was overwhelmed with the familiar feeling that God hated me and I wasn’t worthy to participate, and I literally left my pew and ran out of the building. So this is very much still a process for me. But on this past Sunday, even though I was in  a bad place and feeling like a mess, I was encouraged to realize that I wasn’t even questioning whether it was okay for me to participate. My parish regularly uses liturgy that emphasizes that it’s God table and encourages everyone to come forward*, and I love the idea that this is something God continually offers because God wants to be in relationship with us—it’s contingent on God’s choice to offer it, not on human qualifications. Which means that I can participate even though I’m ensnared in sin and stupid choices and messy life situations. Our rector gave a sermon a few months ago about bringing all of yourself to the table, even and especially the parts that are broken. “There is no part of you,” he said, “that God does not love.” Honestly, that sounded like an insane assertion to me; when I considered the worst parts of myself, it seemed simply unbelievable. But I keep thinking about it. And I find myself drawn to the teaching that you can participate in this religious ritual as your full self, that you don’t have to pretend that you’re someone who doesn’t have a dark side, that you can bring the most awful things about yourself forward to the altar and seek healing and transformation. So even though I was not in a good place on Sunday, I went up and took Communion. I didn’t try to feel more spiritual or more positive or anything like that; I was in a bad place, and that’s where I was. And something about doing that felt very powerful; somewhat to my surprise, I actually walked away feeling a bit lighter.

I am trying to reclaim other spiritual practices as well that in the past have only fueled despair. Because of my tendency toward rumination in personal prayer, I have found that having pre-written prayers to use has at times been a spiritual lifesaver. Adding Anglican-style prayers to my religious life is something that I’ve absolutely loved. Though I still pray like a Mormon when I’m in the mood, I’ve found that also being able to draw on other prayer traditions has been like learning a second language; it opens up a new world, and more options for communication. When I’m feeling psychologically and spiritually shakier, I don’t have to go it alone; I can draw on pre-existing prayer language that grounds me.

I’m still figuring out how to best to do personal scripture study, which terrorized me for years—it was a regular reminder that I was a sinner worthy of damnation, and God was angry and punitive. I’ve come to think something that might help me is to read the scriptures more like poetry, to interact with them in a more liturgical way, one might say—to see them less a statements of theological fact, and more as a call to encounter the world differently. To take them both less seriously (in terms of seeing them as propositional statements) and more seriously (on the level of experiential engagement). That’s another slow and difficult process, though, and I know better than to open the scriptures when I’m really depressed. Similarly, repentance is of course of tremendous importance to the Christian life, but I think it’s worth making a judgment call about whether you’re in a place where reflecting on your sins will actually be helpful.

I’ve focused on Christian spiritual practice here because that’s what my life has been steeped in, but it’s been interesting to see how these dynamics appear elsewhere, too. Mindfulness is very trendy right now, and I’m definitely on that bandwagon—it’s made a huge difference in my mental health to have that as a resource. But it’s not for everyone; I’ve met people for whom it made things worse, and who’ve been frustrated by practitioners who simply couldn’t believe that and insisted that they keep trying. It’s reminded me of people who kept telling me over the years that I just need to pray more, and couldn’t seem to even process the possibility that prayer could ever make things worse.

Navigating a religious life with mental health challenge is an ongoing challenge for me. It seems almost trivially obvious to say that you have to figure out what practices work for you, and stop doing any that are making things worse, but for much of my life it wasn’t clear to me that that could ever be a legitimate option. I do feel like I’ve gained some valuable perspective and insights over the years, but all of that can be hard to access when things are less stable in my head. I suspect that learning to discern the voice of God is very much a life-long process. But once in a while I have moments that remind me that for all the anguish these issues have caused me, I still believe it’s something worth seeking.

*To be more precise, the official position of TEC is that Communion is open to all baptized Christians. My parish usually frames it as, if it’s your tradition to participate in your own church, you’re welcome to do it here. The question of whether it should be more inclusive is something about which I’ve seen some debate; I myself tend to be in favor of completely open Communion, because I appreciate the idea that Christ wouldn’t turn anyone away.