Five Common Methods of Unhealthy Post-Abortion Coping and Their Spiritual Consequences
Suppression The individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by intentionally avoiding thinking about disturbing problems, wishes, feelings or experiences.
Some Symptoms: Substance abuse, increased anxiety, promiscuity, compulsion to keep busy and distracted.
Some Spiritual Consequences: Running from the truth; difficulty in participating in church activities or organizations; avoidance of contemplation; avoidance of prayers; avoidance of God.
Repression The individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by expelling disturbing wishes, thoughts, or experiences from conscious awareness. The feeling component may remain conscious, but detached from its associated ideas.
Some Symptoms: Difficulty in empathizing with others; a sense of “running on automatic pilot;” increased use of avoidance mechanisms; being disturbed by connectors to the abortion (approach/avoidance conflict); displaying edgy or erratic behavior or emotions; being less free to make conscious choices; difficulty bonding with others; or relationship problems.
Some Spiritual Consequences: Same as above but may also find participation in church activities or organizations intolerable and quit; resolving moral conflict by disconnecting or fleeing; increased tendency to perceive God as judgmental and harsh, which leads to avoiding thoughts of God and projection of this conflict onto others (such as anti-abortionists or religious leaders) who are perceived as persecuting or judging the individual.
Rationalization The individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by concealing the true motivations for his or her own thoughts, actions, or feelings through the elaboration of reassuring or self-serving but incorrect explanations.
Some Symptoms: intolerance, argumentativeness, anger, hatred
Some Spiritual consequences: denial of objective moral truths; denial of reality; living outside of the truth; denial of need for forgiveness, reconciliation, or repentance.
Denial The individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by refusing to acknowledge some painful aspect of external reality or subjective experience that would be apparent to others.
Some Symptoms: May be functional in the short-term but problematic in the long-term; increased use of denial leading to more self-alienation and isolation; feeling emotionally numb; compulsively defending abortion rights; splitting off emotions and overly focusing on the cognitive; distancing in parent-child interactions/relationships.
Some Spiritual Consequences: Acting as if one’s behavior were morally correct because of rationalization; being able to attend church functions and participate in sacraments as if nothing had happened; erosion of any personal relationship with God and identification with only those Church beliefs which are selectively congruent with the individual’s own beliefs.
Undoing The individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by words or behavior designed to negate or to make amends symbolically for unacceptable thoughts, feelings, or actions.
Some Symptoms: Replacement pregnancies; the need to be a “perfect mother;” self-punishing behavior; neglect of self; compulsion to continuously chastise oneself as a bad person; hanging onto guilt or grief; compulsive volunteerism.
Some Spiritual Consequences: Obsessive guilt; lack of joy; feeling outside the Church or feeling a compulsive need to prove oneself worthy. Compensatory behaviors may become a substitute for repentance, trust in God, and release of one’s aborted child to the care of God. They can also be manifested in a scrupulosity regarding outward signs of religious devotion which shifts the focus away from inward feelings of guilt. Without deeper healing, such persons are likely to eventually become “burned out” and disillusioned because they never feel they have done enough to satisfy God.
Good acts, such as bearing children and volunteering for good causes, are deeply satisfying only when they are motivated by love rather than by guilt. If one is still principally acting out of a sense of guilt, then one must work through the guilt to the experience of forgiveness from God and oneself. Forgiving ourselves is often a big hurdle, and requires prayer and a lot of support from others who have been through the same process. By seeing how others have forgiven us, we can better believe that God has forgiven us and be encouraged to forgive ourselves.
*All defense mechanisms and coping styles are taken from the American Psychiatric Association Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Ed.(DSM-IV), Washington, D.C.: APA Press, 1994, pp. 755-757.
