HealthyGamerGG - Religion & Mental Health

Episode Date: February 1, 2022

Religion & Mental Health Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/healthygamergg/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you decide, okay, so if religion is, can be good for my mental health, but like, what if I'm not religious? Does that mean I need to become religious? I'd say absolutely not. You do not need to become religious. If you are, you know, not religious inclined, then here are the things that you should do. All right. So parents blame mental health problems on lack of religious faith. So hello, HG community, and thank you for being an open place to discuss things. Good job. Everyone at HG. For as long as I remember, I have had problems with my mental health. It has been a special. hard during the time where I've been away from parents to complete studies. Whenever I try to have this conversation with my parents on my declining mental health, my parents, especially my father, makes it a point that this decline has been in large part due to me not taking my religion seriously, Islam. And I should just pray and be more pious. Now, I understand where he's coming from. He was born during a time of war and revolution in my country of origin, and he got to where he is, despite those circumstances, through a strong spiritual faith. As a result, when he was, whenever he says this to me instead of feeling better, I just feel ashamed and guilty because I'm not

pious or mentally strong as he is. I do admit I have some doubts and negative feelings towards my religion and have not been practicing my faith much because it brings about a lot of painful memories because in my country it was used as a tool of control and oppression. I still don't know where I stand regarding religion. In large part because I feel like I have not had the time to explore what it means to me and to separate it from the negative ways it's been used to control and make people miserable. How should I reignite the threat of discussion with my parents in a fruitful way? Sorry for the long post and thank you for reading if you did. Okay. So I think this is a really, really important post. And there are a couple of things that I want to start with,

which are actually disclaimers of sort and just like setting some ground rules. So I understand that religion can be quite a divisive topic, right? So we touched on one. one or two of those back in 2021, and I guess we haven't learned our lesson yet, so here we go. So we're going to talk a little bit about religion and mental health today. I want to lay out a couple of disclaimers. So the first is that I'm not an expert on religion. I'm not a religious scholar. I don't really know, you know, it's not my field of expertise.

That being said, I have spent a lot of time exploring religion, so I grew up going to a Catholic school and pretty familiar with Christianity and Catholicism. and then also like went through my own journey. I grew up Hindu, but was basically agnostic or atheistic for like most of my life. Or not most now, because I'm older. And then sort of rediscovered a love for karmic religions, for lack of better terms. So this sort of includes Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism. Eastern religions is another way to put out.

Once I understood what they were actually saying. And so there may be a bias there because I have, you know, explored a lot of different. religions and sort of decided on a particular spiritual path, which suits me. So apologies if it comes across as biased in that way. And the last thing is that I think that this is the reason I'm sort of bringing it up is because I think that this is an important thing to talk about. Because a lot of the world is religious and what's the relationship between religion and mental health? So I'd like to approach this in the way that we do at other things at HG, which is like, let's just kind of like look at it pretty critically and

analytically and try to understand, does religion have a positive impact on mental health, negative impact on mental health? And if it does have a positive or negative impact, what are the reasons for that? What are the mechanisms for it? And so I think what we'll sort of discover is actually pretty cool. Okay. So the first thing that we're going to talk about is, I know it sounds kind of weird, before we get into religion, what improves mental health? Okay, so there are all kinds of things that contribute to your mental health, like physical health, etc. But what we're going to start by focusing on is actually something called common factors research. So some time ago, there was one form of essentially psychotherapy. And that form was

psychoanalysis was discovered by like Freud and Jung and those people. And then over time, psychoanalysis became psychotherapy or psychodynamic psychotherapy. And then like over time, like we had this group of behaviorists that developed cognitive behavioral therapy. Oh, no. We're lagging. And then someone who was learned CBT and psychotherapy learned how to meditate. And they're like, hey, this is cool. And they developed dialectical behavioral therapy.

And I can see that we're lagging. So I'm going to just, I guess I'm just going to talk. Oh, no, there it goes. Okay. And so then what we sort of discovered is that there's a bunch of. of different types of psychotherapy, right? So like, and they're quite different. So, uh-oh.

So cognitive behavioral therapy is very different from DBT because like this has a mindfulness component. Psychodynamic psychotherapy is similar to psychoanalysis. So it's like quite different. And so people sat down and they started to figure out, okay, like which one of these is best? Because they're very different. And one, we're talking about your, you know, your dreams.

We're doing dream analysis. Like, this is over here. Like dream analysis is like, quite different from meditation, which is quite different from doing like worksheets about your feelings. So these are all very different. Which one's the best? So as people started to compare different things, what they sort of discovered is they're all about the same. And then that got really confusing. Because it's like how is like, how does meditation offer the same benefit as something like dream analysis? Like how the hell does that even work? Like how can these things essentially

give you the same benefit. Like, that doesn't make any sense because they're so different. And so what people sort of started looking at is something called common factors research. And this iPad thing is lacking. Lacking. So we're going to just go old school lecture style, okay? So they looked at common factors research,

and essentially what they figured out is that, oh, it's not actually any one of these particular things, but there's a set of common factors that will determine whether something is mentally, like, helps your mental health or doesn't help your mental health? So there are two or three big things that they sort of discovered. The first is something called the therapeutic alliance. So you need to have someone that you can trust and talk to,

like that they can like sort of handle your mental things. You need a consistent, trusted space to go to with your mental health problems. The second thing they discovered was that you need an organizing framework. So like the good therapists are not necessarily, it's not that CBT is like more correct than psychoanism. analysis or that DBT is more correct than CBT. It's that whoever is like teaching you the stuff or whoever is offering mental health support needs to have an organizing framework that sort of encompasses everything that we kind

of look at. And so these were kind of two of the really big things that they kind of discover. So the interesting thing is that, you know, back in the day, we didn't really have like an appreciation for mental health. So like where did people go with their. mental health problems, right? So if I feel sad or I lose a child and I'm going through the grief process, who do I go to like help me make sense of that? Because we've sort of discovered through research that that's really important for people. Who's like a place that organizes the way that I view

the world and a lens that that that I can use to understand problems and myself. And this used to be done through religion, right? So like that's what religion sort of did. Like if you lose your kid, like, who do I turn to? Like, okay, I'm going to turn to like a priest. Right. So hopefully there's like a strong therapeutic alliance there. There's a trusted person who has an organizing framework that they can use to like help me navigate my problems. And we even see this from this particular poster that this person's dad went through a very, you know, tumultuous time in their life that was not easy. And religion sort of gave them answers, gave them a narrative, gave them maybe a trusted space. And so they used. And so they used.

those kinds of things to kind of like navigate their life and get some kind of mental strength and fortitude. So that sort of makes sense, right? So like if you kind of look at it that way, religion sort of touches on a couple of the parts of common factors research. Okay. So, you know, what do we need? We need a therapeutic alliance and then we need an organizing framework. And in the past, this is where we, you know, religion used to do these two things. So there are a couple of other big things that are very, very important that religion does for us. One is it gives us a sense of community or social capital. So there have been numerous studies that show that social interactions and social capital are good for mental health.

Right. So like isolation makes mental health problems worse. Community makes mental health problems better. We have like a shared group of people that we can like survive with or process things with. So we see this a lot, for example, with like the Jewish. diaspora where there's like a very, very strong sense of like community and like an almost us versus them kind of mentality, which has downsides. But that strong social connection, we see this a lot also amongst like, you know, Indian diaspora too. So like Indians and Hindus,

like we all hang out with each other, right? Because this is like our shared culture. It's our religion. So we have a strong sense of community, at least where I live. And we kind of all get together and these have positive impacts on mental health. So religion kind of offers, you know, a safe space theoretically where people you can trust. Religion offers definitely offers an organizing framework, right, depending on which religion you believe in, stuff like heaven, hell, sin, good, bad, et cetera. Like, it just gives us lots of, like, ways to view the world. Why does a bad thing happen to me? Well, because religion will give you an answer. It'll say because of this and that. It definitely offers a sense of community, right? And then there are two other things

that I think are really, really important that religion offers. One is sublimation of ego. So if you guys watch our streams a lot, you're going to know that a lot of our suffering comes from our ego. Ego isn't all bad, but religion is essentially like, at least Abrahamic religions, tend to be like very sublimating the ego-oriented.

So a good example of this is Alcoholics Anonymous. So this is something I know a little bit more about, which is why I'm going to use this as an example. So Alcoholics Anonymous is a very successful, on the whole, a very successful organization that helps people gain sobriety. There are some studies that even suggest that Alcoholics Anonymous is the most successful intervention that someone can do that will, has the greatest chance of having someone become sober. There are all kinds of caveats and problems with that research, but you could definitely make the argument. So a big thing that's kind of bizarre about Alcoholics Anonymous is it starts with the idea that I am powerless in the face of my addiction. And that's weird, right? Like, you'd think that, we'd think, like, logically, that, you know, if you want to overcome a problem, like, we want to empower people, right?

Like, we want people to be like, yeah, like, you can do it. Like, you can kick this habit. Like, you're in control. Like, you can do. like you can do it. And so Alcoholics Anonymous, which is very heavily founded by, in Christian roots, by the way. So it's like, it's very religious. So they believe in like higher power and like a lot of Christianity like focus themes and stuff like that, which rubs people the wrong way. If you guys are not really into that, refuge recovery is a very good alternative. So that's like has a lot of like fellowship and community, but it's based more on Buddhist principles. So this is kind of weird, right?

because like alcoholics anonymous and Christianity will sort of say, this is where I'm like, I could be misspeaking. So apologies if I'm offending people. But like there's sort of this idea that in the Abrahamic religions that God is all powerful and like you are not, right? Like that's a comment in the Abrahamic religions. Is that God can like do whatever they want to, but like you as a human being, you don't have all the power in the universe.

Which is different from the karmic religions because the karmic religions actually sort of say the opposite or even say that you are one with God and you are just as powerful as divinity is. you are divine. So that's kind of different there. But since the person is kind of coming from the tradition of Islam, and we're, you know, we'll just use that as an example. So like if you kind of think about it, how is this sort of like ego sublimation? Like how can this help with mental health, right? Because this is a big part of, you know, religion is sublimating your ego and sort of like teaching you that God is all powerful and you are not and all this kind of good stuff. And so Alcoholics Anonymous is a good example of this because a big part of the addict's brain is

I can handle this. So when people kind of say this, right? Like when your brain says, I can handle it, I can handle it. I'm in control. It's this kind of thought, which is essentially coming from the ego, right? This is coming from the Aham Kara or ego. And this is the thought that gets you in trouble. So when you adopt like a sublimation of the ego kind of attitude,

it actually does seem to help in terms of kicking an addiction. there's good data for that. And I suspect that it helps too in terms of like dealing with suffering, right? Because we know that ego is associated with suffering. And so we can sort of see how, okay, so like if we're sublimating the ego, you know, we're going to decrease our suffering. And this may in turn improve mental health. There's also good data behind this as well. So if we look at the outcomes of meditative practice, which will sort of, you know, sublimate the ego.

Some people pop on cat ears and call it a day. You? Your gorilla suit is so realistic. The local zookeepers are after you. Duncan's keeping you fueled to fright this Halloween. So sip the bone-chillingly bold peanut butter cup macchiato, savored with a frightfully enchanting spider donut. Or sink your fangs into the Dunkle-Lantern donut with a blood-orange Duncan refresher. All so you can haunt even harder. America runs on Duncan. Price and participation may vary limited time offer.

In the ego, and that seems to be correlated with people like being happier, because we know that meditation improves mental health. Okay, so that's another mechanism that religion uses. And the last mechanism that we're going to talk about is that religion does actually teach us discipline of the mind. Hopefully, we're going to talk about caveats in a second. So if we think about things like saying Hail Marys, right, what we're literally doing is we're like, it's a thought on a technique.

So it's focusing the mind. When we go to church every Sunday, we're like sort of disciplining ourselves because we've got to go to church. So you can't be a degenerate. Like you got to get to church. You got to like get dressed up and you got to clean yourself up and this and that. Right. So when you pray five times a day, that sort of improves your awareness.

Like you can't lose track of time because you've got to pray five times a day. So a lot of like religion has baked into it techniques like prayer, which involve like focusing the mind and probably have health benefits as a result. And so this is where things get a little bit. So a lot of religion has actually like stuff kind of baked in. that results in disciplining of the mind. So can religion help mental health? There are some studies that actually suggest that religion and spirituality,

actually religion, can have positive effects on mental health. There are lots of downsides to religion and mental health as well. So for example, this person is talking a little bit about guilt, right? So like, I don't know where I stand. I feel ashamed and guilty.

So religion is not necessarily a blanket, or it's in no way a blanket positive force for mental health. So there's a lot of, lot of like abuse of power. There's a lot of shame. There's a lot of guilt. There's a lot of betrayal of trust. There's a lot of like bad things that come out of humiliate, uh, of religion. So when we sublimate the ego, can that improve our suffering in mental health? Yes. But sublimation of the ego also makes us right to be taken advantage of. Right? Because if I am like,

if I'm powerless in the, in the face of whatever and there's like, there's this, this priest who's all powerful and he says, do something, then I should do that. right? So there are definitely downsides which can happen with religion, but there is some research that suggests that religion can have positive impacts on mental health. And as we start to sort of unpack what is it that religion does, like what are the mechanisms of religion, what we sort of discover is that I haven't seen anything that suggests that a particular religion is more correct, sorry, more beneficial for mental health than another religion. I'm not an expert in the research, by the way. So I think what we can, what I would conclude sort of scientific

is that it's not a particular religion, and actually this is also influenced by the studies that I've done, because Bethanjali says this too. So he says that you can meditate and all this kind of stuff. Well, that's fantastic. You can attain enlightenment that way. But you can also attain enlightenment through devotion and surrender to God. And the key thing that Bethanjali doesn't really explain in a whole lot of detail, because that's not what he talks about. But if you really look at some of these yogic texts, what they say is that it's not the God part that leads to enlightenment. It's the devotion and surrender part.

So the God that you surrender to doesn't matter. It's not like this God will give you more spiritual growth than that God. Now, I recognize that that is a contentious statement for a lot of people who insist that their God is the better God and that's the one that you should surrender to. But what Butanglii sort of said is that he's like, the important part is like the sublimation of the ego and the devotion to an object, whether it's a particular God or it's an ideal or whatever. It's the devotion to the thing that results in the spiritual growth. And so what we can kind of see if we sort of unpack religion is that there are like five things that I think will contribute to people's mental health that religious organizations and religions tend to offer. right? And this is where it's kind of like, do you have to be religious to improve your mental health? Absolutely not. But I think the advantage of religion is that it's kind of like a combo meal, right? It's like pre-packaged. Everything's sort of set up for you. So you kind of get hopefully these things if you go to a good religious place without like having to structure them yourself. Because if you don't want to go that route, you're just totally fine. Then what I think it's important to do is if you want to get these benefits, then you have to structure each of these things yourself. Right? So you can go and order the combo meal and you're going to get kind of everything you need.

for one meal, it's going to be packaged, right? There's ups and downs to that. But if you decide, okay, so if religion is, can be good for my mental health, but like, what if I'm not religious? Does that mean I need to become religious? I'd say, absolutely not. You do not need to become religious. If you are, you know, not religiously inclined,

then here are the things that you should do. So first is find a trusted source. So this is where, like, I think mentorship is critical here. right? This can also be like a therapist. Number two, figure out how the world works. You need an organizing framework. So this is like kind of a tall ask. Like this is the advantage of religion,

which is like they just tell you. They're like, hey, here's how it works. We don't have to believe them. You don't have to trust it, whatever. But if you're not going to do that, then you need to do the work to figure out what is the organizing principle or like what are the organizing principles that I'm going to use to make sense of like why,

why crap happens. Is it going to be science? Is it going to be philosophy? Is it going to be spirituality of like a particular tradition? Like meditation, right? Is it going to be like some kind of like family, cultural kind of thing? So whatever, but you need some kind of organizing framework, right? Next thing that you're going to need is community. So if you want to meet people, going to church is a really, really easy way to do it. Right? They're like people there, generally speaking, they tend to be pretty nice. Right? So it's like a great form of like social capital

and community and stuff like that. So if you don't have that, you're going to need to like find a community, find your tribe. Number four is sublimate the ego. So religion once again does it for you. I think sometimes they do it to the detriment of people, right? When they really browbeat you

and treat you with a lot of guilt and shame, I don't think that that's healthy personally. So you can also get like PTSD and all kinds of self-worth problems from the wrong kind of religious interaction. So this too is hard, but I think this you can meditate, for lack of a better term. And then number five is, once again, meditation and yoga. So you're going to need to learn, like, discipline and like, you know, practices and stuff like that, which is tricky.

But, you know, this is your substitute to religion. And I think what's starting to happen, part of the reason that we're seeing a decline in religion is because the things that religion basically used to be only one that. did this stuff, right? So like a thousand years ago, like, science wasn't that well developed. Like, they couldn't really give us answers about how the world works. Our community and our tribe was like tangled up with our religion. The way that we learned discipline and the way that we learned to sublimate the ego were like basically all that existed was the combo meal because we just sort of had, we just didn't have options. And now as we're starting to learn more about meditation as we're starting to learn more about community and science and

things like that. You don't need to go to a religion to get the mental benefits of religion anymore. Now, this once again is going to be a biased few because I'm sure there are going to be people out there who will say that my religion by virtue of what it is offers a significant benefit. So specifically, like people will say like, you know, believing in Allah, like will help your depression. That's what this person's dad says. And they're going to say that this is different from believing in Jesus. That Allah has an effect that Jesus does not have. right so like that's where some people will say believing in jesus is going to have an effect even hindus will say that but i don't really think that's what the hindoo religion says

um to the hindu religion part of what i like about it is that they're sort of like you can be atheistic and you can be hindu you can be agnostic and you can be hindu it's a little bit more in my mind and this could be where my biases i really don't think so but if you really look at it objectively like if you look at the religious texts of hinduism the oldest religious texts are 25% music theory, 25% medicine, 25% rituals, and 25% creation myths.

And so you'll also have people like, Bethanjali, you're like, you can believe in God or, like, not believe in God. So even the concept of Hinduism as a religion is sort of like false. Like, that idea of religion, even the word religion, is like a Judeo-Christian concept. when people ask, are you Hindu? Like the R-U-A religion is like a Judeo-Christian concept, right? Because the Abrahamic religions were the ones who sort of said there's like us and not us.

There's like the people of Israel and there's like the not people of Israel. They're like the ones who believe in Christ and like the ones who don't believe in Christ. There's like, you know, the infidels and the not infidels. So that fundamental idea of owning to a religion, converting to a religion, believing in a religion, that's actually sort of like a Western concept because it's like how do you convert to Buddhism? Like you don't really can. I mean, sure you can.

Someone somewhere out there will convert you to Buddhism if you want to. They're going to be sects that will convert people. But it's not really like Buddha didn't, you know, start a, like, he wasn't saying like you should believe what I say. Like you, that's, he was just teaching stuff. So the karmic religions are quite different in that way and that they're sort of just a collection of information. And what the karmic religions did,

they didn't separate out spirituality from the other things. It's just like if you go to university, you can major in religion and you can major in mathematics. It's no different. It's not like spirituality is like a different thing from science. They're actually all tangled together. They're just different sources of knowledge. And so if you look at, for example, karma, like karma is just the principle of cause and effect, which is like, you know, has physics applications and has like non-physics applications. Which is why, you know, you have music theory and medicine, which are part of the holy books, because that's like the idea of a holy book is also like alien to Hinduism. There's

like, no such thing is a holy book. There's no Bible in Hinduism. There's like all kinds of texts, and you can sort of believe which one you want. So it's a little bit more, in my opinion, scientific, but that's probably going to piss a lot of people off because the idea that I say my religion is more scientific than your religion is like a easy way to piss people off. But I really do think that, you know, I haven't seen any, you know, prescriptions for malaria in the Bible, whereas you'll see that in Indian or Hindu religious texts. right? Yeah, so this is the other thing.

So Hexicon is saying religion equal scientific. So in the West, we view those things as like contrary, right? We think of like religion and science as like being on opposite ends of the spectrum. But especially in the Eastern religions, like if you read Butanjali, it's like quite scientific. Like it's critical. So it also encourages you like the Brahmas Sutra, for example, is like a text that will teach you logic and will teach you how to poke holes in arguments. So it's like a text on logic,

which is generally considered like a religious text by people in the West, but in the East, it's just, it's just Brumbus, they just taught everything. So when you go, when you went to, like if you became like a monk, for example, you had to learn medicine. Like, it was all part of the same education.

So like all religious leaders, like were doctors and were trained in surgery, for example. I mean, that may not be fair to say, when I'm saying all, because I wasn't there. But it's just different, right? So in short, can religion have positive effects on mental health?

I think absolutely. There's even data to support that. And at the same time, it's not like religion is the only source of those kinds of things. And if we start to analyze a little bit about, okay, how does religion improve our mental health? What we end up with is essentially five factors, right? So there's a trusted safe space, which seems to be very, very important. And from studies of psychotherapy, we sort of discover that this is. a key part of positive mental health outcomes. We also need an organizing framework. So whether it's

DBT or CBT or psychodynamic therapy or psychoanalysis, it doesn't really matter, whether it's a Hindu worldview or a Christian worldview or whatever. You just need a worldview that is internally consistent and can handle whatever life throws at you. The other big thing about religion is it's a major source of social capital and community, which has very positive effects on mental health. And the last two things, these are a little bit more kind of my opinion. There's less research to suggest this, but based on what I've seen, you know, sublimation of the ego is a big common theme amongst religions, which leads to positive mental health outcomes. It's not necessarily that you need to go to religion to do these things, but that seems to be a big part of it based on my study.

And the last thing is that it seems to be a pretty systematic way to discipline the mind, which is very, very good for your mental health. And so if you, you know, can religion be good for your mental health? Absolutely. I think the closer that religions stay to these five points, the more positive they're going to be for your mental health. Can they be bad for your mental health? Absolutely. So there's a dark side to sublivating the ego, which is that people may take advantage of you. There's a dark side to disciplining the mind, which is that some of those practices may border on abusive or not even border on abusive. There's a dark side to this, which is that community and social capital can lead to things like shunning, right, and ostracization if you start to like, and so

suddenly that the community, instead of being a positive impact on your mental health, starts to become a negative impact and emotionally damaging to you. And the last thing is that, you know, sometimes the therapeutic alliance gets, like, taken advantage of, and that's really bad for you. So you don't need religion, but it's kind of the combo meal. It's easily packaged, and you don't have to really worry about it. But you can, by all means, develop these things on your own, but it's just going to be harder, right, because it's not, like, packaged for you.

So that's religion and mental health.