Recently a few different people recommended to me - for different reasons, interestingly - The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. In it Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world’s leading experts on trauma, explains what happens to us when we are traumatized. We are unable to give complete voice to the experience and integrate it into our self-understanding. It keeps us trapped in vigilance, believing that danger lurks just on the edge of our periphery and prompting out-sized responses to triggers. Over time the trauma rewires our brains and sinks deeply into our bodies, manifesting in a number of conditions that are often diagnosed and treated as separate mental or physical health issues. On a social level, it prevents us from trusting others and deepening relationships. Despite all of this resulting unpleasantness, someone trapped in trauma continually revisits that time when everything changed. It becomes borderline impossible to live in the present, much less envision a different future than the current trajectory.
I am not a doctor or a mental health professional. I also do not want to minimize in any way the experiences of abuse survivors, veterans, and others who live with post-traumatic stress. As someone who works with ministers and congregations, though, I kept thinking this sounds so much like some of our churches as I was reading. We don’t know how to name what our issues are and work through them to integrate them into a coherent narrative. The problems we do see are more symptomatic than root. Conflict simmers just beneath the surface until an incident - often a seemingly benign one - ignites it. Trust is hard to come by. We live in the glory days of how church used to be. We are unable to imagine a different future.
In some cases congregations might be recovering from trauma, such as a serious breach of ethics by the pastor or the sudden death of a key leader or a natural disaster such as a fire or flood that significantly damages the church. In other cases shame might be what we’re seeing the effects of: we once had an ASA of 1,000 and now it’s 100. We haven’t had a new member in years. Church members have left over controversies. We don’t feel relevant.
Whether congregations are experiencing trauma or shame, I believe Dr. van der Kolk offers helpful ways forward:
Address the issue from a place of safety (as much as safety can be guaranteed). People need to know that they are not just seen and heard but also valued, no matter what their experiences. A leader’s first task, then, is to build this kind of culture. This is long, ongoing, and necessary work.
Help people put words to their experiences. A problem that can’t be named can’t be dealt with, but most people can’t be invited into this acknowledgment until they feel safer.
Encourage people to feel what they feel and to be in their bodies. This is not a license to harm others emotionally or physically. It is a mining for the data those feelings and sensations offer.
Together craft a narrative that distinguishes between past, present, and future. There is always more than one true narrative. Which one is most helpful? Which one allows us to move forward with hope and in relationship? In choosing this narrative, individuals and congregations reclaim a sense of agency that they had lost, making it possible to get unstuck.
All of this is easier said than done, of course. But these bigger picture tasks mirror scripture: there is a life-altering chasm between us and God, between us and others. The Bible is about finding away to bridge those divides by examining what isolates us, including what causes alienation within our own selves, so that we can move forward in coherence and connection.
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash.
