Nourishing Your Family’s Spirit in Crisis

In 1935, Bill Williams and his physician cofounded Alcoholics Anonymous and set off a “12-Step” movement that would eventually come to include 2 million members and 115,000 AA groups worldwide, not including other groups like Al-Anon (for families of alcoholics), Overeaters Anonymous, or Gamblers Anonymous. Such groups work through establishing trusted social support (in part by maintaining strict anonymity) while group members work through the 12 Steps to recovery.

What is notable about AA and many other 12-Step programs is that they encourage participants to recognize a higher power, and embrace a spiritual understanding of how to work through crises. The first step of AA is to admit one’s powerlessness over alcohol, and recognize that one’s life had become “unmanageable.” The second step involved recognizing a higher power, and entrusting that higher power to restore “sanity.” The remaining steps are even more overtly spiritual, including requiring that addicts turn their lives over to God as they understand Him, asking for forgiveness from God and others, and seeking to come to a greater understanding of God and His will.

AA is notoriously difficult to research because of its anonymity requirement. It is hard to know exactly how successful such programs are, but the AA Big Book claims a 50% success rate, with 25% remaining sober after a few relapses. Some research credits the social component of AA as crucial. But in addition, more and more data also point to the power of maintaining a regular faith or spiritual life as important to navigating times of crisis. Whereas once, such a response was seen as a mark of emotional immaturity, researchers now increasingly recognize it as a legitimate and helpful response. The American Psychological Association reports on one study finding that “People who made more use of positive religious coping methods had better outcomes than those who struggled with God, their faith or other people about sacred matters.” Such “positive” religious coping mechanisms include encouraging those undergoing crisis to reframe hardship in a positive light (“an opportunity to grow closer to a higher power or to improve their lives”), fostering connectedness and a sense that one is part of something greater, and “cultivating connection through rituals.”

For families facing a crisis, it is natural and good to turn to faith and spiritual practices to help make sense of the madness. (Notably, the Pew Research Center says that roughly a quarter of Americans report that their faith has deepened during the present pandemic.) And while it’s not impossible to establish healthy habits in crisis, it’s far easier to have such habits in place, so you can dig into them when you feel the world crashing around you. We’ve discussed some of these already this week—attending religious services, or maintaining family rituals like holidays, vacations, or regular prayer together. Some of these habits have overtly religious meaning. But you can also maintain non-religious spiritual practices, like mindful breathing, yoga, or exercising regular gratitude instead of dwelling on the negative. 

As a paper published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services puts it, “strong families are guided by an underlying moral or value system shared by all members.” Furthermore, according to the same paper, “A family's ability to adapt to stressful and potentially damaging events, as well as to predictable life-cycle changes, has been identified as an important characteristic of strong families.” Strong families can handle crisis because they can change enough to weather the blow—they can get a new job, manage an illness, move to a new location, get outside help when needed. But such families don’t change so much they are unrecognizable. They’re still the same unit, just living in slightly new ways. They learn from hardship.

Your family’s spiritual connectedness is one thing that will help you maintain your closeness in the midst of external or internal pressures; it will help you adhere to a “moral code” when the temptation may very well be to cut bait and run.