Christian meditation for repetitive negative thinking: A multisite randomized trial examining the effects of a 4-week preventative program.

Abstract

In the current study, the authors examined the effects of a manualized, preventative program for Christians with repetitive negative thinking (RNT), utilizing Christian meditation as a Christian-sensitive alternative to Buddhist-informed mindfulness meditation. After randomizing participants to a 4-week program or wait-list at two Christian universities, the intervention group received instruction in both kataphatic (using words and images) and apophatic (wordless and imageless) Christian meditation and practiced in a weekly group meeting and on their own. Intent-to-treat analyses revealed several interaction effects (Condition ϫ Time), with the Christian meditation group (n ϭ 36) outperforming the wait-list group (n ϭ 35) on a variety of outcome measures, including experiences of humility and surrendering to God (medium effect sizes), as well as nonattachment and perseverative thinking (large effect sizes). Findings suggest that Christian meditation may hold promise as a daily practice among Christians for the prevention of emotional disorders. Study limitations and directions for future research are also discussed.

The Relationship between God Attachment, Transdiagnostic Processes, and Symptoms of Psychopathology among Christian Adults

“…Building on the aforementioned research by Monroe and Jankowski, which utilized contemplative prayer to reduce insecure God attachment, additional studies can focus on manualizing Christian meditative and contemplative practices to dually cultivate a deeper relationship with God and ameliorate transdiagnostic processes and psychopathology. For example, although Knabb and colleagues have not tracked God attachment per se in their intervention research, they have published multiple studies in the last half-decade on Christian meditative and contemplative practices for psychological and spiritual change among Christian adults, revealing significant decreases, pre- to post-intervention, in RNT (Knabb et al, 2020), IU, worry, depression, and anxiety (Knabb et al, 2017), stress (Knabb et al, 2017; Knabb & Vazquez, 2018), and trauma symptoms (Knabb et al, 2021) and significant increases, pre- to post-intervention, in religious coping (Knabb et al, 2017, 2020) and a positive view of God’s providence (Knabb et al, 2017). With these emerging results in mind, additional research is needed on the use of classic/historic Christian psychospiritual practices for dually improving God attachment (e.g., reducing anxious and avoidant God attachment, increasing secure God attachment) and ameliorating transdiagnostic vulnerabilities and psychopathology.…”

“Unknowing” in the 21st century: Humble detachment for Christians with repetitive negative thinking.

“…At the time of this writing, the authors are making plans to launch an experimental study to evaluate a four-week preventative program for Christian college students who are vulnerable to repetitive negative thinking, having already written the manual (Knabb et al, 2018). In the first week of the manualized program, we focus on working with college students to better understand the role that repetitive negative thinking (rumination, worry, and brooding) plays in emotional disorders, and present our empirical model—positive views of God’s providence can prepare Christians to be able to surrender repetitive negative thinking to God through humble detachment.…”

The Effectiveness of a Centering Meditation Intervention on College Stress and Mindfulness: A Randomized Controlled Trial

“…This experimental study was a 4-week randomized controlled trial that compares the effects of a centering meditation group to a waitlist control group on stress and mindfulness. The length of the study (4 weeks) and frequency of meditation (twice a day) is based on the procedures of related empirical studies (Offidani et al, 2017 ; Knabb et al, 2020 ). The study protocol includes Intention-to-Treat (ITT) analysis to reduce any biased effect of the intervention (Gupta, 2011 ).…”