Suppressing spiritual struggles: The role of experiential avoidance in mental health

We examined the relation between experiential avoidance and mental health in a sample of 307 American adults reporting spiritual struggles. Experiential avoidance was consistently related to poorer mental health. Specifically, both general and spiritual struggle-specific avoidance were correlated with higher levels of depression, anxiety, somatic symptoms, and emotion regulation difficulties. Moreover, experiential avoidance tended to exacerbate the relation between spiritual struggles and adverse symptoms. The association between struggles and poorer mental health was stronger in people with higher levels of experiential avoidance. These findings were particularly robust for the measure of struggle-specific experiential avoidance. Finally, we discuss the importance of attending to the spiritual domain in experiential avoidance and outline future directions for clinical research and practice.