Pakistan Journal of Applied Psychology (PJAP), 2023, Vol. 3, No.

2, 328-336
DOI: https://doi.org/10.52461/pjap.v3i2.1120 Original Research

Moderating Role of Tawakkul in Anxious Attachment to God and Depression

Muhammad Usama Gondal1, Adnan Adil2* & Anam Yousaf1

Abstract
The present study aimed at exploring the moderating role
of tawakkul in the relationship of anxious attachment to
God and depression among Muslim adults. A sample of
*Corresponding Author:
Adnan Adil 350 Muslim adults was purposively chosen for the present
Professor/Chairperson study. Tawakkul was measured through Tawakkul Scale
Department of Psychology (Gondal et al., 2022), anxious attachment to God was
Government College measured through Urdu version of anxious attachment
Women University Sialkot, subscale of the Attachment to God Scale (Noureen, 2017),
Punjab, Pakistan. and depression was measured through Urdu version of
depression subscale of DASS-21 (Aslam, 2018). Results
Correspondence Email: indicated that tawakkul significantly moderated the
[email protected] relationship between anxious attachment to God and
depression such that their relationship became stronger
when level of tawakkul was low. Higher levels of tawakkul
This work is licensed under
a Creative Commons decreased the likelihood of developing depression.
Attribution-Non Limitations and suggestions for future research have also
Commercial 4.0 been discussed.
International License. Keywords: tawakkul, anxious attachment to God,
depression

Introduction and Literature Review

Religion and religious beliefs have great importance in people’s lives. It is ever-present
and extremely important aspect of humans’ collective heritage. People are surrounded by
religious references in their whole life: birth is celebrated in a religious manner, marriages are
solemnized by clergy and the end of life is also carried upon in a religious way. Attachment to
God can be perceived as a relationship with that figure that can provide safety and security
(Kirkpatrick, 1992). It was further proposed that people seek refuge towards God in distressed
and negative situations and believers perceive God as a secure base and haven of safety. This
attachment to God can be positive (secure) or negative (insecure).
Rowatt and Kirkpatrick (2002) identified two divisions of insecure attachment to God;
anxious attachment to God and avoidance attachment to God. Individuals with anxious
attachment experience apprehension of probable neglect by God, bitterness at perceived
insufficiency of God’s affection, unresponsiveness at time of stress and fear about one’s
relationship with God. The focus of the present study is on anxious attachment to God.
Kirkpatrick and Shaver (1992) suggested that anxious attachment to God leads to lower one’s
satisfaction with life and increase the probability of developing physical and psychological

1
Department of Psychology, University of Sargodha, Punjab Pakistan
2
Department of Psychology, Government College Women University Sialkot, Punjab, Pakistan.

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diseases (specially anxiety and depression). In another study, it was found that negative
emotional states are predicted by anxious attachment to God (Rowatt & Kirkpatrick, 2002).
Similar results have also been found in recent studies. Freeze and DiTommaso (2015) found
that anxious attachment to God lead to emotional distress.
Tawakkul is a fundamental and core significance in the Islamic faith system. There are
numerous verses in the Holy Quran in which the word ‘tawakkul’ has been used. Tawakkul in
Allah-the Exalted is a great desirable quality that is liked by Islamic religion. It is an essential
component for belief and Islam desires that its believers should develop tawakkul to get closer
to the creator. This is because nothing can be done without the will of God and reliance on Him
and seeking His help is highly appreciated (Al-Munajjid, 2017).Islam defines tawakkul as
having trust, dependence and reliance on God only. In psychology, Gondal et al (2022) defined
tawakkul as having faith in God along with putting positive efforts to achieve one’s goals in
addition to unconditionally accepting God’s will. Moreover, annihilating one’s own will has
been regarded as the highest degree of tawakkul (Gondal, et al 2022).
It is commonly seen in daily routine life that people develop trust and reliance with
their closely and positively attached relatives/friends. Similarly, tawakkul would be possible
only when individuals are positively (in other words, securely) attached with God.
Alternatively, if individuals have negative attachment with God (anxious attachment), then
they would be unable to keep positive expectations towards God or put trust in Him. Hence,
anxious attachment to God is negatively related to tawakkul. Research has also validated this
point that tawakkul has significant negative association with anxious attachment to God
(Gondal, et al 2022).
Depression is a common and serious psychological illness. It is a negative mood state
characterized by sadness and/or loss/lack of interest in daily routine life activities which were
once considered interesting by the individual (APA, 2013). It also affects individual’s nutrition
and sleep patterns. Moreover, loss of concentration and tiredness are also common. Symptom
of depression varies from mild to severe levels and individual daily functioning is also
adversely influenced. Severe conditions can lead to suicide (APA, 2013). Religiousness and
putting trust in Allah could be one of the effective ways to ameliorate depression. Results of
another empirical study found that strong faith (tawakkul) and high trust in God were linked
with a lower degree of depression, and greater personal contentment (Rosmarin, et al., 2009).
Another research found that religion has strong positive relationship with mental health and
well-being and negative relationship with anxiety and depression (Ismail & Desmukh, 2012).
Alternatively, anxious attachment is positively related to depression. This is because
anxious attachment to God involves negative feelings and perceptions related to God. In the
time of negative and stressful events, the perceived unresponsiveness from God and
insufficiency of God’s affection will promote negative emotional states in the individual,
particularly depression. Research has also demonstrated this link. Kirkpatrick and Shaver
(1992) proposed that individuals with anxious attachment to God undergo higher levels of
physical or psychological illness (particularly depression). Freeze and DiTommaso (2015)
found that anxious attachment to God leads to emotional distress.
Although previous literature gives evidence for the relationship between anxious
attachment to God and depression, between anxious attachment and tawakkul, and between
tawakkul and depression (as discussed previously), no previous study has identified how
anxious attachment to God, tawakkul, and depression may have parsimoniously been integrated
in a single conceptual framework. It can be inferred from that literature evidence is available
that low tawakkul will lead to more proneness towards depression and high tawakkul reduces
depression; i.e. tawakkul acts as a shield from depression. Moreover, anxious attachment to
God will be related to low levels of tawakkul and low anxious attachment (secure attachment)

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will be related to high levels of tawakkul. This dynamic interplay of tawakkul between anxious
attachment to God and depression suggests its moderating role.
Rationale of study
This study is significance in the sense that it empirically gave additions to the literature by
expressing the particular moderating role of tawakkul in the relationship between acting
mechanisms of anxious attachment to God and depression. Thus, the present study contributes
to theory development and also arise important implications for clinical and counselling
psychotherapy fields.
Objectives
The present research was intended to keep in view the following objectives
1. To identify the relationship between anxious attachment to God, depression and
Tawakkul.
2. To measure the effect of anxious attachment to God on depression.
3. To check the moderating role of Tawakkul on the relationship between anxious
attachment to God and depression.
Hypotheses
The following hypotheses were proposed
1. There would be significant relationship between anxious attachment to God, depression
and Tawakkul.
2. Tawakkul will play significant moderating role between the relationship of anxious
attachment to God and depression.

Materials and Methods

Participants
The size of the sample was decided by undertaking power analysis through G* Power
3.0 (Faul et al., 2007). The analyses revealed that for multiple regression analyses based on
three predictors with α = .05, power of .95, a small effect size of f2 = .05 could reliably be
assessed with N = 340. Based upon power analysis where small effect sizes could be reliably
detected with approximately 340 participants, the sample of the present study comprised 350
Muslim adults; aged 25 and above (M = 31.92, S.D = 8.72). A purposive sampling technique
was used to collect data. All the participants were Muslims, including both men and women.
The minimum education of participants was of matriculation level. The demographic
distribution of the participants has been given in Table 1.
Instruments
In the present study, the following instruments were used.
Tawakkul Scale
Tawakkul Scale (Gondal, et al. 2022) had 24 items with 7-point Likert response format,
ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). It had four dimensions. There was
negative item. Scoring was done by addition of each response. Higher score depicted higher
level of tawakkul. Score can range from 24 to 168. Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient was
.95
Urdu version of Depression subscale of DASS-21
Urdu version of depression subscale of DASS-21 (Aslam and Kamal, 2018) was used
to assess depression. This subscale has 7 items with 4-point Likert type response format;
ranging from 0 (did not apply to me at all) to 3 (applied to me very much or most of the time).

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Scores fordepression are calculated by summing the scores on each of the item. There is no
negative item in the sub-scale. Reliability forstress subscale was .83 (Aslam, 2018).
Urdu version of anxious attachment subscale of Attachment to God Scale
Urdu version of anxious attachment subscale of Attachment to God Scale (Noureen,
2017) was used to check the type of attachment to God of the participants. Response format is
Likert-type 5-point rating scale with 1 to 5. Score for anxious attachment is obtained by adding
each response.Higher score indicated high degree of anxious attachment style. Cronbach’s
reliability coefficient for anxious dimension was .80 (Noureen, 2017).
Procedure
After selection of topic, the scales were finalized and permission was taken from the
authors of scale. Informed consent and demographic form were constructed with the help
supervisor and final draft of questionnaire form was composed. Then, all the participants were
approached personally and given the questionnaire to get the responses. They were told that
their responses will be useful for methodical knowledge; however, they have the right to
withdraw. Informed consent was also taken and it was assured that their information would
only be used for research purpose and full confidentiality would be maintained. Participants
were requested to give their true response. Data was collected from a sample of 350
participants. The data was entered in IBM-SPSS-22 and psychometric properties and
correlation was checked. Outliers were identified and then removed from the sheet. The data
was analyzed through different operations. Results were written in tabular and descriptive
forms and then these results were discussed.
Results
Reliability analysis, tests for normality, and correlation analysis were carried out using
SPSS version 26. The variables of present study were subjected to moderation analyses using
PROCESS macro for the IBM SPSS.
Table 1
Frequency and Percentage of Participants (N = 350)
Demographic variables f (%)
Gender
Male 102 29.1
Female 248 70.9
Family system
Nuclear 250 71.4
Joint 100 28.6
Residence
Urban 281 80.3
Rural 69 19.7
Marital Status
Single/Unmarried 226 64.6
Married 124 35.4
Education
Matriculation or below 3 0.9
Intermediate 7 2.0
Bachelor 40 11.4
Masters 300 85.7

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Age 31.92 years (M) 8.72 years (SD)

Note. f = frequency; %=percentage; M = mean; S.D = standard deviation
Table 1 shows the distribution of various demographic characteristics such as gender,
family system, residential background, marital status, and educational qualification of the
participants of the present study in terms of frequency and percentage. It also reports the mean
and standard deviation of age of the participants in years.

Table 2
Descriptive Statistics, Alpha Reliability Coefficient, and Univariate Normality of Scales in
Study and their correlation matrix (N = 350)
Scales M SD α Sk a Ku b AnATG Twkl Depress
An.ATG 7.18 2.37 .53 -.16 -.69 .. -.15** .34***

Twkl 142.56 23.16 .95 -1.95 5.74 .. -.24***

Depression 12.70 4.19 .83 .84 -.06 ..

Note. Twkl. = Tawakkul; An. ATG = Anxious attachment to God
***p<.001, **p<.01
a
Standard error = .13; b standard error = .26

Table 2 shows the psychometric properties and correlation matrix of scales used in the
present study. The alpha reliability coefficients of all the scales were > .80 except anxious
attachment to God. The values of skewness and kurtosis of all scales are within the acceptable
range, which provide evidence for the univariate normality of the focal measures of the present
study. Anxious attachment has significant negative relationship with tawakkul and has
significant positive relationship with depression. Tawakkul has significant negative
relationship with depression.
Table 3 shows the moderating effect of tawakkul in the relationship of anxious
attachment to God with depression. Model 1 was specified in the PROCESS macro for SPSS
for the analysis of the moderating effect of tawakkul. Findings indicated that tawakkul
weakened the positive relationship between anxious attachment to God and depression as this
relationship became weak at high levels of tawakkul (see Figure 1). The moderation model
explained 41% variance (F (3, 346) = 23.28, p = .000) in depression.
Table 3
Moderating Role of Tawakkul in the Relationship of Anxious Attachment to God with
Depression (N = 350)
Effects B LL UL R2
Anxious Attachment→ Depression .61*** .43 .79
Tawakkul → Depression -.03*** -.05 -.01 .41***
Anxious Attachment x Tawakkul → Depression -.01* -.02 -.01
Conditional Effects
Low Tawakkul .86*** .54 1.17
Medium Tawakkul .60*** .43 .78
High Tawakkul .35** .11 .60
*p < .05, **p < .01, ***p <.001

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Figure 1 indicates that the tawakkul weakened the positive relationship between
anxious attachment to God and depression. This suggested that anxious attachment has least
positive effect on depression on individuals who have higher degree of tawakkul. Thus,
tawakkul may act as a shield from depression and they are saved from developing depression
irrespective of the fact that they are having anxious attachment to God.
Figure 1
Moderating Role of Tawakkul between Anxious Attachment to God and Depression

Discussion
The present study postulated that anxious attachment to God would be positively related
to depression. Results of the study supported this hypothesis. Anxious attachment to God is
significantly positively related to depression (see Table 1). The reason for this is that anxious
attachment to God involves negative feelings and perceptions of God. The perceived
insensitivity from God and insufficiency of God’s affection will promote negative emotional
states in the individual, particularly depression. Previous research has also supported this link.
Freeze and DiTommaso (2015) found that anxious attachment to God leads to emotional
distress; that can lead to depression.
Results of the present study also supported the 2nd hypothesis. Tawakkul was negatively
related to depression (see Table 1). It can be easily justified through the fact that tawakkul
involves strong belief in Allah along with satisfaction over Allah’s will. The negative
emotional state emerges from negative thoughts, emotions, beliefs, and cognitions. But in
tawakkul, an individual has the belief that everything that happened in the past was good for
him/her; and everything that will happen in future would also be good for him/her because
everything is done by Allah and Allah is the most merciful. Hence, there is no space left for
negative thoughts; therefore, depression might not emerge. Results of an empirical study found
that strong faith (tawakkul) and high trust in God were negatively linked with anxiety and
depression, and might lead to greater personal contentment (Rosmarin, et al. 2009).
The third hypothesis postulated that tawakkul will moderate between anxious
attachment and depression. Results of the study supported this hypothesis. It was found that

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when level of tawakkul is low, the relationship between anxious attachment and depression
becomes strongly positive. On the other hand, when level of Tawakkul is high, the relationship
between anxious attachment and depression becomes very weak (see Table 2 and Figure 1).
The reason for this result lies in the fact that Tawakkul acts to shield the individual from
negative emotional states. Tawakkul involves positive beliefs and expectation from God,
positive efforts, and unconditional acceptance of Allah’s will. These factors of tawakkul,
irrespective of the individual’s type of attachment to God, enable an individual to remain
satisfied in all the circumstances of life. This satisfaction and strong positive belief in God
saves the individual from developing any negative emotional symptom like sadness,
hopelessness, loss of interest in life etc. Hence, Tawakkul protects an individual from
depression and this is the reason that when Tawakkul is high, anxious attachment is unable to
develop the symptoms of depression. Alternatively, when level of Tawakkul is low, the
individual has no positive expectation from God and no unconditional acceptance of God’s
will, hence, there will be no shield from the consequences of anxious attachment to God and
the individual will likely to develop depressive symptoms. Although no direct literature is
available to support these moderation results; however, studying the link of variables
individually also give a clear picture. For example, Ismail and Desmukh (2012) found that
religion has negative relationship with depression. Hence, whenever Tawakkul is high, the
individual gets saved from developing negative symptoms like depression; even a negative
attachment to God will not end up in developing depression when the shield of Tawakkul is
present.
Conclusion
The study's conclusion emphasizes the significance of tawakkul in safeguarding
individuals against negative emotional disorders, particularly depression. According to the
findings, not only does individual tawakkul play a crucial role in preventing depression, but its
interactive effects also hold significance. When an individual's level of tawakkul is high,
regardless of whether they are anxiously attached to God or not, they are less likely to
experience depression. This suggests that a strong sense of trust in a higher power can serve as
a protective factor against depressive symptoms. Conversely, the study highlights that when
tawakkul is low, individuals who are anxiously attached to God are more prone to developing
depression. This implies that when individuals lack trust and reliance on God, their anxious
attachment to the divine may exacerbate feelings of depression. Overall, the research
underscores the complex interplay between tawakkul, attachment to God, and depression. It
suggests that cultivating a sense of trust and reliance on a higher power can potentially mitigate
the risk of experiencing depressive symptoms, highlighting the importance of spiritual beliefs
and practices in mental health outcomes.
Limitations and Suggestions
The present study used cross sectional research. Although potentially
significantrelationships were identified, cause and effect relation cannot be inferred without
follow-up experimental research or longitudinal research exploring proposed causal
mechanisms over time. It might be checked through longitudinal research that whether the
participants’ tawakkul remains the same over time with respect to attachment to God or there
might be some fluctuations in its levels. The study took only anxious attachment to God; other
types of attachments like secure and avoidance were not included in the study. Hence, future
researchers may include all these types of attachments to explore their effects on tawakkul and
depression. The reliability of anxious attachment to Godwas moderate as compared to other
measures of the study. Hence, caution should be taken in the interpretation of results of this
scale.
Implications

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Gondal et al. Tawakkul and Depression

In the field of clinical psychology, tawakkul should be incorporated in clinical therapy

as it reduces depression. Clinicians should strengthen the belief system of patients along with
encouraging them to put positive efforts. Clinicians should incorporate in the patients about
how to be satisfied over Allah’s will. Tawakkul should be put in one’s every aspect of life
because it reduces the /negativity caused by different factors. Thus, inclusion of tawakkul in
therapies may prove very beneficial in the treatment of different mental health issues,
particularly depression. Tawakkul finds another implication in cognitive behavioural therapies
such as CBT and REBT. These therapies work on patients’ cognitions, emotions, and beliefs
to cure the problems. Clinicians can incorporate tawakkul in these therapies by strengthening
their beliefs in Allah. This positive belief can help changing the negative beliefs; ultimately
changing the patient’s thoughts and behaviours, and saving the person from depression.

Conflict of Interest: There was no significant conflict of interest in this research.

Funding Disclosure: There was no funding disclosure in this research.
Author’s Contribution: Muhammad Usama Gondal ( literature, data collection, data entry )
Adnan Adil (Conceptualization ,write up, and analysis), and Anam Yousaf (statistical analyses
and proof reading).

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