Tending to trauma as religious leaders
A few years ago, I was working with a group of young people who were brilliant and passionate and had tons of ideas… that they would rarely share. In our meetings together, my co-Rev. and I would ask for their opinions. They would stare at the table, pick at their fingers, anything to avoid making eye contact or stating their opinion. I was getting so frustrated! My co-Rev. and I did workshops on using your voice and feeling and expressing difficult emotions and they would frequently just stare at the floor during those discussions as well. We knew they were FULL of opinions — in our one-on-one meetings and in a casual setting we got to hear all about them. Then, when it came time to have an “official” meeting, the room went silent, and these amazing people seemed to shrink into themselves. No matter what we tried, nothing seemed to get them to speak up.
Then, one day as I read one of my many books on trauma, it occurred to me: what I am asking these people to do goes against their learned survival strategies. Each of these young adults, at one point or another, had learned being quiet and small might keep them safe. When faced with me in role of authority figure and leader asking things of them in an “official” capacity, their protective mechanisms kicked in and they would shut down. The more I pushed them to speak up, the more I was pushing them deeper into their coping strategies. My frustration fell away; I had to try something new.
I tell this story because this realization is one small example of how becoming trauma-informed can transform the way we do ministry. We, dear religious leaders, don’t know near enough about trauma, and I firmly believe that becoming trauma informed is a pathway to healthier careers and healthier ministries.
Trauma, defined for these purposes as any experience that makes you feel like your life is threatened over which you have no control (threat to life and lack of control are the two essential pieces here), has deep and long-lasting effects on people. In addition, there is so much we do not, or are not willing to, see as trauma — particularly events from our childhood. Things that happen to us as kids that feel dangerous and out of our control can affect us for the rest of our lives. However, we often can’t remember difficult parts of our childhood or color them with rosy glasses as a coping mechanism. Our brains are incredible at protecting us, but often our adaptive protection mechanisms begin to harm us as we grow. Internalizing our feelings, avoiding conflict, becoming reactive and acting out in rage, the need to control, to have power over — the lists of ways we have learned, over time, to protect ourselves is long. And so many of these behaviors show up in how we hurt ourselves or hurt other people.
Not only do our own life experiences often contain trauma that effects how we behave, the life experiences of our parents and their parents and on and on are passed down to us in behaviors and in our DNA. We are, every one of us, impacted by trauma, acting out in ways we don’t understand, and many of us know don’t really help us, but we can’t figure out another way to be.
I started the journey to becoming trauma-informed because I was working with so many people who had experienced trauma and because of my own. We are not taught how to do this in seminary, yet it is such a huge part of our job. Much of the country has no physical access to mental health care much less the ability to afford it. Over half the counties in the United States don’t have a psychiatrist. When we add to this the cultural and personal barriers to accessing mental health care, it’s no wonder so many religious leaders, particularly in areas with fewer accessible resources, end up being the primary mental health resource for members of their congregations.
I hear the stories of my colleagues who are counseling people around issues of addiction (the heart of which is frequently trauma), sexual assault, suicide, and emotional, physical or religious abuse. We sit with people just diagnosed with cancer, or other kinds of life-altering disease, miscarriage, chronic illness — when you feel like your body has betrayed you or is fighting against you, you can develop PTSD, but we rarely think of it that way. Others clergy serve communities traumatized by racism, the violence around them or history of violence within them *on top* of the daily influx of individuals who have experienced trauma. We frequently get in intractable battles for control with people whose early life experiences taught them having control means being safe. We aren’t trained for working with people or communities who have experienced trauma and it is burning us out and making us sick. There’s trauma-informed social work, trauma-informed yoga, LIBRARIES are becoming trauma-informed but there are so few resources for communities of faith.
Learning about trauma and how it impacts individuals and communities doesn’t just help me provide better pastoral care to the people in my life who have experienced trauma, it helps me work better with everyone. Yes, I am better in a crisis, I know how to create a community that is safe for people who have experienced trauma, and how to resource them better. Being trauma informed has helped me sit with people who are experiencing all manner of mental health issues. But I am also just better with people. Because we are all carrying some kind of heavy shit around.
In my efforts to become trauma-informed, I have learned to view others behavior in more generous ways. I understand that so much that we do to each other, we do to keep ourselves safe: safe from other people, safe from our feelings, our memories, our shame. When someone starts acting in ways that don’t seem to be in alignment with the situation at hand, I ask myself, “What is making this person feel unsafe? What is the hurt that I can’t see?” I do this a lot with myself, too. This has transformed my ministry and my relationships.
As I learned, I brought what I was learning into our ministry. I made sure people knew they didn’t have to close their eyes for prayer (for a person who has experienced trauma, closing your eyes can feel really unsafe). We practiced grounding and focusing on your breath to prepare for worship. We talked about coping mechanisms and dissociation and how to calm your nervous system. We spent time addressing creating healthy boundaries and expressing emotions, talked about how the ways we talk to ourselves in our head effects our daily lives, shared coping skills for anxiety, depression, OCD, PTSD. The community gained an understanding of how they could improve their own lives but also how they could be allies for one another on a journey to health.
We, rather accidentally, created a healing centered ministry (for more on the move from trauma-informed to healing centered, read this piece from Shawn Gwinright). And it was beautiful. It started by leaders being honest and transparent about our own struggles with mental health, it grew into a community effort to heal from our wounds. The community checked in on each other about going to therapy and reminded each other (and me) that, “You’re not a mistake, you made a mistake.” We had an informal system of them checking in on each other when Facebook posts or community absences made it look like someone was self-isolating. We were sharing the work of helping one another that so often rests on the shoulders of the priest, rabbi, imam, pastor or deacon.
Then I started to imagine what it *might* look like if we were able to create healing centered congregations. As I watched our students care for one another, I began to believe that healing-centered ministry was a beautiful possible future for a healthy church.
What if one of those members of your congregation you find yourself so often in conflict with came to you and they were ENRAGED about the new paraments (fill in your common church conflict here). What if that happened and you said, “I hear you are really upset about this and I want to have a conversation about it. But I am wondering if something else might be going on underneath this. Could you spend some time thinking about that and come meet with me in a few days and then we can talk about the paraments and whatever else might be going on?” And they take a beat, then they say they’ll come in on Thursday if that works for you.
How might you, as a leader, be better able to function if your congregation was more emotionally literate and aware of their own shit (not to mention your own)? What would it look like if you could have honest conversations that weren’t charged? I know that sounds really pie in the sky, but I honestly believe it is possible. Maybe not everywhere, maybe not with everyone. However, if we became informed about trauma and shame, how they affect us and our community, and passed that knowledge on to our congregations we could actually transform lives. What if the love of God could power us through the tough conversations and realizations we need to have to actually become communities of healing? What could that look like? Isn’t it worth trying?
I’m going to keep writing about this — more about what being trauma-informed looks like, theologies of trauma, the barriers to having a healing congregation, and what I have learned along the way. I hope you will join me.
In the meantime, no joke, I highly suggest following #traumainformed on instagram. I found my therapist there and have learned a lot and gotten great resources there.
