TRAUMA (being overwhelmed by life) is part of the warp and weft of our being, and changes us inside. Derived from the Greek word for “wound”, trauma first referred to a physical laceration, but, during the 19th century, its meaning was widened to incorporate psychological wounding.
The current state of the world (and of our Church) is fertile ground for experiencing psychological trauma. This is in addition to any wounds that may have been inflicted through our childhood and adult life experiences.
Philippa Smethurst
There can be a perception that psychological pain is less important than physical pain. Psychological pain can be more easily dismissed, because, unlike a physical wound, it is hidden within. Contrary to popular usage, however, psychological trauma is not an outside event, but a set of responses that happen to us inside.
Not all difficult things traumatise us. Sometimes, overwhelming and painful things happen, we feel sad, we recover, there’s no lasting trauma. But, sometimes, the trauma is not resolved, it lingers and gets expressed in many ways.
Trauma may be caused by a one-off event, such as an accident or terrorist attack, or by a cumulative experience (chronic trauma that is so entwined with our reality that we don’t recognise its effects). Sufferers can become locked into responses.
Observers, carers, loved ones, or we ourselves don’t necessarily see trauma’s wound: what we see are trauma responses. The sufferer may feel too much (be stuck in fight or flight) or conversely they may feel too little (frozen or numb): both of these are involuntary physiological responses. In between these two polarities are all kinds of trauma variations.
WHAT does trauma look like in everyday/parish life? We might meet someone who appears to move through life with the characteristics of a wrecking ball. We might meet another who is remote and unresponsive: both could be responses to trauma.
It might be easy for us to misunderstand the remote person, and assume that they feel nothing. The opposite is likely to be the case: they have more feelings than they are able to manage, and their body and mind are frozen and blank, owing to trauma’s overload.
A man I know whose brother took his own life ended up feeling shame in response. Shame, blaming, or hating oneself, believing that one is responsible for catastrophe, can lead a person to compensate by a compulsion to look after everyone else to their own detriment, with eventual burnout.
In this young man’s case, the horrifying truth was that he had lost his brother, and there was nothing he could do to escape that. We can be frightened to face our own painful feelings truthfully: it is part of our human condition. Yet the ways in which we protect ourselves from pain can easily trap us.
I do not believe that everyone needs psychotherapy, but I do believe that there are some principles that can help people in churches and institutions to look out for trauma, see its signs, and attend to it, whether it is in themselves or people around us.
When we acknowledge trauma thoughtfully, understand it, and find ways to help release its charge, we can move towards post-traumatic growth.
Here are some thoughts about how we might begin to do this:
1. Take time to attend to what is happening
Trauma affects the whole person, mind and body: it is a response of the nervous system.
We appear to be living in dark and traumatising times. It may help if we try to slow down. When we change pace, we notice more things inside that might be subtle and hidden.
In order to mitigate trauma, we need to take time to attend to what is happening, take the risk of softening our grip, release the charge of fear, and let go.
People of faith have resources in contemplation, prayer, and meditation, in finding stillness in the midst of our fear and our noise; to connect with the eternal, the everlasting arms that can hold and restore us.
2. Use the noticing brain
There is scientific evidence and research to show — and people of faith have a way into this — that, if we use the noticing part of the brain repeatedly, we can manage and reduce the charge of trauma.
We can use our minds to attend to our bodies to let them know that we are safe. A long “out” breath can help us to feel soothed. We can repeat words of safety, and learn to trust them.
With the right support, we can return to things inside that may be scary, and feelings that may be feared.
The paradox is that, by returning to fear and attending to what we find, we become less afraid. We can give ourselves repeated messages that trauma was then, and now we are in safety.
3. Hear the trauma story
Human beings are multi-layered. It takes a discipline of reflection and imagination to look beyond the behaviour to find meaning.
When we witness human distress, which may manifest in hurtful or inexplicable behaviour, we might take time to be honest and non-defensive about our own responses to it.
The more we are able to own our own pain, the more we are able to hear someone else’s trauma story. But be aware: listening to trauma needs copious dollops of self-care.
If we don’t feel anyone understands our own trauma story, or even feel that people judge us, that makes us feel traumatised all over again, and there are many people in the world who feel alone like that. What we most need is for someone else to weigh our experience, and get it.
Someone recently said that the wonder of nature was that plants grew silently. Can we listen to ourselves from a still place in our bodies and minds? Can we do this for someone else? Can we run listening courses with a focus on trauma responses in our churches?
4. Contain the trauma parts
After trauma, we may feel fragmented inside, not in control of our own responses, at the mercy of ourselves and the world.
One of the facets of trauma’s disconnect is to compartmentalise our emotional experience into distinct parts that can be hidden away, inside our minds and bodies for safe keeping. Rather like a jack-in-a box, this raw trauma jumps out when triggered in a way that seems out of proportion.
This understanding may shed light on someone who seems out of control of their own responses, “acting out” or responding in a particular way with no awareness of the effect of their actions on anyone else.
Approaching trauma thoughtfully means understanding its eclipsing nature. Some forms of behaviour may seem exaggerated, while others may be erased altogether.
We might ask ourselves: What is exaggerated here? What is hidden? How can I hold what I hear without judging, and offer spacious containment, like wide outstretched arms?
5. Offer support to the hurting
Safe places really matter in order to find calmness and feel safe enough to share our feelings. The Church can offer spaces of care, being led by the traumatised person, and asking them what they need.
If someone is unseated by a catastrophe or sudden loss, members of a community should approach with sensitive and respectful care. In the aftermath of a horror, we can offer a scaffolding of support.
Stepping in with practical support, even if rejected, is an act of love, and therefore worth doing. “What do you need?” “How can I help?”
A little kindness goes a long way. This is harder to do when the person is objectionable, prickly, or difficult. There are many traumatised people in our world who may have behaved badly, who may also be locked into their own halls of misery, unable to connect with good things, reactive and volatile, difficult to manage and easily judged.
Can we develop the grace of attentiveness, so that we may “hear the voices that will not be drowned” (Montagu Slater, from Benjamin Britten’s opera Peter Grimes).
6. Offer spaces of safety within institutions
Point 5 is a great challenge. Why? Because trauma does not just happen with individuals: it happens in families, in societies, in organisations, and down generations.
When something is painful and too much, we tend simply to switch off knowing about its impact. This process was called “one of nature’s small mercies” by the clinical psychiatrist, author, and university professor Judith Herman, in her groundbreaking 1997 book Trauma and Recovery.
Switching off is a mechanism that saves us from knowing about our pain, and helps us to survive the terrible. The technical word is dissociation: we do not associate with the terrible thing. Our minds create a gulf between us and the experience.
Institutions can easily minimise the impact of trauma to preserve themselves, to survive the terrible, and avoid facing the reality of pain. They can become places to hide. Dissociation is a survival mechanism that is protective, but can lead to our being tone-deaf as an institution.
Are there places where we strain our ears in listening for the drumbeat of trauma which may be drowned by the white noise of denial, complexity, or disconnection? Whose cries am I/are we missing? Where has violence caused hurt? Where has power blinded us?
How can we open up safe spaces and set up processes so that those who are hurt can be heard, where those who feel unsafe in this world (or in the Church) begin to feel safe? Like sheep sheltering by a wall in a storm, we need robust boundaries. How can safeguarding processes be refined, rigorous, and trusted?
7. Trust in what is possible
Working with trauma and understanding its workings can become glorious and full of hope, bringing release and new life. When we face our wounds openly, courageously, and honestly, goodness, new life, and purpose can emerge from chaos, disintegration, and darkness.
Supporting others and facing what is true for ourselves can take courage and be painful, but we make the hidden visible. With open hearts, we can, rather like the Japanese practice of Kintsugi, claim what is broken, join ourselves up, burnishing our cracks with gold, attentively and slowly moving towards post-traumatic growth and claiming back our beauty.
Trauma is a thief of joy. Understanding trauma better can help the Church to fulfil its call to heal and bring peace.
Philippa Smethurst is a UKCP registered, BACP senior accredited psychotherapist. Her latest book, 20 Ways to Break Free From Trauma: From brain hijacking to post-traumatic growth, is published by Jessica Kingsley at £14.99 (CT Bookshop £13.49); 978-1805013105.
philippasmethurst.com/bookshop