2 Ways Your Relationship With Religion Affects Your Well-Being
Religion alone isn't inherently good or bad for your well-being, but the way you relate to it can shape your mental and physical health.
By Mark Travers, Ph.D. | July 31, 2025
When life feels uncertain, everyone needs something to hold on to; a hope that things will get better, or perhaps the belief that you're part of something greater than yourself.
That something is often faith: a steadfast trust that things will work out, even when you can't yet see how. And, hope is the emotional fuel that can keep you moving forward, no matter how heavy the present may feel.
While both faith and hope can feel like mere abstract ideas, religion can make them tangible for many. This can be through rituals, stories, community and a sense of being held by something greater. Religion offers structure to believe in and a source of meaning.
An April 2025 study explored the relationship between religiosity, religious orientation and sleep health. Researchers specifically looked at the roles of anxiety and depression, which are two key indicators of mental well-being that are also closely tied to sleep.
Researchers collected data from over 200 adults (both religious and non-religious), using questionnaires and two-week sleep diaries.
They assessed whether participants identified as religious and how they related to their faith. This relationship was understood based on whether they saw religion as a deep life purpose, a means to an end or an ongoing spiritual quest.
The results reveal how deeply our beliefs and the emotional states they generate can influence both mind and body.
Here are two ways religious beliefs can impact your well-being.
1. Religious Belief Can Ease Anxiety And Help You Sleep Better
Sleep is often thought of as a solely physical need. However, it can be quite deeply tied to your emotional world, especially to experiences of anxiety. You may have noticed that when your mind is restless or racing, your sleep can suffer. In fact, it's quite common for people to find themselves caught in a trap of overthinking late at night.
Ikea conducted a large-scale global sleep survey with over 55,000 participants. The results showed that 11% named "overthinking" as a major barrier to sleep, alongside stress (17%) and anxiety disorders (12%).
As your sleep suffers, so do many other aspects of your mental health, such as your mood, focus, energy and even emotional regulation. Over time, this can create a vicious cycle where poor sleep and chronic anxiety feed into each other, creating a loop that damages your well-being.
In the April 2025 study, researchers found that religious individuals reported significantly lower levels of anxiety compared to non-religious participants.
Anxiety didn't just coexist with poor sleep, but mediated the relationship between religious belief and sleep health completely. Being religious was linked to better sleep because it was linked to lower anxiety. This held true for both sleep quality and sleep efficiency.
However, depression didn't play the same role. The impact of religious belief on sleep was about how calm and secure a person felt inside.
Based on these findings, the real power of religious belief might lie in its ability to quiet mental overactivity. This could be through prayer, surrender or a sense of divine protection.
Religion has the ability to offer a kind of emotional anchoring that may help ease emotional spirals or internal restlessness that can disrupt sleep for many.
So, when the mind is calm, the body can rest.
This study is a reminder that faith, when rooted in emotional safety, can be more than just spiritual. Religion, or any other form of faith that can help soothe your inner chaos, might just be the key to deeper rest.
2. How You Relate To Religion Shapes Its Impact
When we think of religious beliefs, it's important to remember that they can look different for everyone. For some, it's a quiet personal truth. While for others, it's a ritual passed down through generations, or merely a space to ask deeper questions about life.
The April 2025 study didn't just look at whether someone was religious. It also looked at how they related to their faith. This is what researchers referred to as "religious orientation."
They explored three key orientations:
- Religion as an end. In this sense, faith is lived as a core value or deep purpose. It's integrated into your life, not as an obligation, but as a source of personal peace.
- Religion as a quest. Faith in this orientation is approached as an ongoing search. It often involves questioning, doubt and not feeling fully anchored in belief.
- Religion as a means. This is a more instrumental way of looking at religion, where it is used to gain external outcomes like social belonging, status or comfort.
The study found that how one relates to their faith significantly influenced their mental and sleep health.
Researchers found that participants who viewed religion as an end in itself experienced lower anxiety and reported better sleep quality and efficiency.
On the contrary, those who saw religion as a quest — as an ongoing, questioning approach to faith — experienced higher anxiety. This, in turn, was linked to poorer sleep efficiency, as well as to decreased sleep quality.
These effects were all mediated by anxiety. This means that the emotional state influenced by one's relationship with religion played a key role in shaping sleep outcomes.
This study highlights that belief isn't always comforting by default. It's a truly supportive factor when it feels more personally meaningful and emotionally settled. While doubt and questioning are natural parts of any spiritual journey, when they linger without resolution, they may actually add to mental strain.
Let this be a reminder to reflect on how you engage with your faith and whether it brings clarity or confusion. This can be an important step not just in your spiritual life, but in your overall well-being.
Faith And Fear Can Change The Way You Experience Life
Faith can offer inner grounding in a world of chaos. When anchored in genuine trust, it can change the way you move through life's challenges and help soften fear.
Remember that fear, in essence, is just faith turned inside out and an inner belief in things going wrong. So, when fear drives your thoughts, religion or any sort of inclination in faith can provide belief in possibilities.
This shift alone can change not just how you feel, but also what you're able to choose and create in your life in any given moment.
In the long run, this shift can change everything. A fearful mind only narrows your vision and convinces you that your options are limited, even when they aren't. When led by fear, you may stop looking for solutions because you've already decided none exist.
But faith has the power to allow you to see what can be done, and pay attention to how things can work out, even if not right away.
That said, while it may be tempting to use faith as a constant emotional safety net, you must remember not to let it become a form of bypass — or something you reach for just to avoid discomfort. True faith can help you be prepared to meet life with strength and softness alike.
Wondering how your sensitivity to anxiety might be shaping your perspective and sleep? Take this science-backed test to find out: Anxiety Sensitivity Test
A similar version of this article can also be found on Forbes.com, here.