By Laura Stephens Reed

Ministers have the privilege and responsibility of accompanying people through all kinds of joys and hardships. We can offer a comforting presence and serve as a guide in making meaning of all of life’s events. Sometimes, though, something so devastating happens that we might feel less equipped as we’d like. Sometimes we are struggling as others are reaching out to us for help. Covid-19 certainly gave us layer upon layer of personal difficulties and as ministers assisting church members who were hurting. The pandemic will not be our last encounter with crisis, so we could all benefit from a primer on trauma.

The word “trauma” is thrown around casually these days, so it’s important to start with the actual definition: trauma is a person’s ongoing response to a perceived crisis. Our brains and bodies are tuned to sense and protect us from danger. When sensory data comes in, the alarm (amygdala) sounds in our brain, all our body’s resources are directed toward survival. All conscious thinking shuts down in favor of the body battling, running away, playing possum or trying to appease the threat. This is useful in the short term. But when the original event goes unprocessed, the experience of it lingers in the body, subject to being reactivated again and again when sensory input triggers memories of the original threat. This is how people get mired in trauma.

Trauma has many causes. Some are obvious, such as physical abuse, war, natural disaster or worldwide pandemic. Others are more localized, such emotional abuse or neglect or bullying. And trauma caused by injustices in systems, such as racism or poverty, weigh on us constantly even as they are almost invisible.

What all these sources have in common are feelings of shame, helplessness, defeat and unappreciated. The effects of trauma include an inability to live fully in the present, isolation and alienation, a permanent sense of stress, the potential for enacting violence on self or others and physical illness.

Healing begins when someone experiencing trauma is able to connect with someone who accepts them as they are, to sift sense memories into a story with a past and present (since the traumatized person blends the two), and to claim a sense of agency in their lives.

There are different kinds of trauma that we as ministers need to be aware of. Primary traumatization can occur when we ourselves experience a terrible event or when we see it happen. Secondary traumatization can come when someone we care about recounts primary traumatization, and we feel powerless to change the situation. When we repeatedly undergo secondary traumatization, it can morph into vicarious traumatization, where we take on another person’s trauma as our own. Related terms are compassion fatigue, in which we become weary from frequently dealing with others’ traumas, and burnout, in which any of these issues can accumulate without proper attention to self-care.

Why is it important, though, for us to know all of this about trauma? First, as mentioned above, ministers we are called to witness others’ trauma. We need to have a basic understanding of how trauma works so that we do not inadvertently retraumatize through our well-intentioned interactions.

Second, it is important for us to know our “lane” in cases of parishioner trauma. A grasp of trauma basics allows us to see that as ministers there is some help we can offer (such as compassionate listening, praying and helping people connect their story to God’s story), and for other help we might need to make referrals to community resources such as therapy.

Third, we might run into church members who have seemingly outsized responses to minor issues that could relate to their trauma history. Knowledge about trauma allows us to have grace for and extend connection to these people in our care.

Finally, we need to know about trauma for our own sakes. We are human too, and we must be able to seek care for ourselves both proactively and responsively.

Fortunately, humans are designed to be resilient. Remember that God clapped in delight at the end of each day of creation, including the day that people were made and called everything good. Think about how our bodies and brains protect us from imminent threat. Consider that your own track record for survival is good (you’re still here) and that some days you could say you are thriving. We have the capacity to be resilient, and we can grow that capacity through our attention to the following:

Our bodies. Our bodies are wise. We must stay grounded in and pay attention to our bodies to glean that wisdom.

Our brains. We know a lot. We can be thoughtful about our theology so that our interpretations help us both understand and heal. We can do something as simple as breath exercises to open neural pathways so that we have access to all our brain’s creative resources, not just the self-protective ones.

Our relationships. We are made for community, not for rugged individualism. When we weave a circle of care, each one of us has a safety net that can buoy us in tough times. This is the Church when it’s living fully into its identity as Christ’s body on Earth.

Our resources. Each of us has resources we can access. These assets include professional caregivers, institutions, processes, practices and more. We might have already or not yet tapped (or discovered) the resources that are available to us.

Our choices. Agency, on whatever scale, is essential to resilience. Maybe the only choices we can make right now are small ones. That’s okay. We can start there and build.

I encourage you to map all the assets available to you in each of these five categories. After you have done this, design one strategy or flow to use these assets for yourself and another one that you can draw on as a minister to hurting people. We might live in a world filled with trauma, but we can chip away at that hurt when we notice and draw on all the good that God has given us, and as a result, more fully embody God’s love toward ourselves and others.

Two books to check out if you want to read more are Trauma-Sensitive Theology by Jennifer Baldwin and Trauma-Informed Pastoral Care by Karen McClintock. Both were sources for this article.

Laura Stephens-Reed is a clergy and congregational coach based in Alabama. She has been credentialed as a Professional Certified Coach through the International Coaching Federation and as a Certified Mentor Coach, and she sits on the faculty of two coach training schools. She has also been trained as a Congregational Consultant and an Intentional Interim Minister by the Center for Congregational Health.