Listening To Trauma's Echoes
I was five when a man came to rob our family’s house and hurt my mother. I was walking home from school that afternoon and not there to save her. For decades after the crime, even though Mother recovered from her physical wounds and lived into her mid-nineties, the child in me carried the secret shame: I had failed her and my family that day.
Life went on, but shame haunted me until, in the third stage of life, I was led to break my family’s taboo surrounding the violent invasion of our home. I was tired of not knowing what really happened, tired of hiding my guilt. As the adult me asked questions I’d never dared ask, researched the crime, and wrote about the event and its aftermath, the child me began to heal.
According to my colleague, author, speaker, and trauma-informed writing coach Lisa Ellison, “Trauma is a physical and psychological response to disturbing events that affect our memories and nervous system.” Trauma memories are visceral, stressful, and emotional. Memories of hidden wounds amplify fear and anger while muting thoughts or feelings that might mitigate.
While my traumatic experience is unique to me, trauma itself is not. We all carry traumas in our bodies—especially from early loss, rejection, or inexplicable disruption—and evade them at great cost. But if we face those wounds, there is hope of healing. How? We can talk about them with a trained therapist, pastor, spouse, or trusted friends. We can exorcise the past by writing those stories, retelling and reliving them to move us toward forgiveness. We can accept that traumatic events are part of what made us and at the same time realize that they do not define us. We can give our wounds to God, for only He can deliver us.
For me, bringing past trauma from dark secrecy into the light was similar to slowly ripping a thick bandage back to expose a deep, seeping wound. It was a long, often painful process, both terrifying and freeing. But by putting words to my hidden trauma, I externalized the event and moved my thoughts and feelings from the child’s narrow self-condemnation for something beyond her control to a mature, faith-based, adult perspective. Relieved of the burdensome wound I’d tried to ignore, hide, and deny, I was able to step into a hopeful present rather than remain in the fearful past.
In this month’s newsletter, Sage Forum founder Michelle Van Loon tells her story of religious trauma. Below the main article, you’ll find additional resources on the topic, plus a bouquet of media picks from our contributors…and if you read to the bottom, a chance to win a resource designed to be a help as you consider experiences of trauma in your own family story. . .
In Him, in healing, in hope,
Carole Duff for the Sage Forum team
(Editor’s note: Carole’s memoir, Wisdom Builds Her House, explores trauma and faith through the lenses of two interconnected family stories. It releases August 20th, but you can pre-order your copy now.)
When Trauma Comes To Church
by Michelle Van Loon
It was my first meeting with the children’s ministry team at the church my family had been attending for about six months. Attending was my tentative next step toward more fully committing to the congregation. As I walked into the church building that summer evening, I spotted three men from our former church walking toward the office door. One nodded politely in my direction, then the three turned and headed inside.
A jolt of electricity surged through me. This couldn’t be a good thing. Why were they here? I hadn’t seen them since the church we’d attended with them split more than a year earlier.
I am a survivor of spiritual abuse. It had happened a decade earlier at a church in another state. I marched onward like a soldier, and believed for years that any ill effects I was experiencing in my life had to do with my own lack of forgiveness for the church leaders responsible for what I’d experienced. At other times, I wondered if I’d allowed bitterness to take root in my soul. Though those are worthwhile lines of self-examen, they did not address the effect of the trauma I carried in my broken heart.
As a result of that unaddressed pain, I blamed myself for the evil those leaders perpetrated on me and my family, though I doubt I could have articulated it clearly back then. There were few resources available in those days to process with compassion the grief, damaged trust, and misplaced shame that followed in the wake of the abuse.
When our family relocated after that crisis, we joined a church that I hoped would bring peace and healing to my aching heart. We had a couple of calm years there – until the church went through a slow-motion division and eventually closed its doors. If you’ve ever been through a church split, you know it carries trauma of its own as accusations fly and relationships are dismantled. We were now carrying an additional bit of emotional baggage to add to the matched set I’d been lugging with me for years.
After again being churchless for months, we made our way to a new congregation and took our time testing the water. Where were the relational and doctrinal landmines? Was it safe for us to be here? We knew that being a part of a local body was an important part of our discipleship journey, but we also knew that some church leaders were wolves in sheeps’ clothing.
When I saw those three men who’d created so much chaos at our last church as I entered our new church that night, it was as though a surge of lightning shot through my body. My adrenal system was screaming at me to run for the exit door. Those men represented harm, danger, and hurt. Of couse I didn’t feel safe.
Instead, I willed myself to act like I was fine…just as I’d done for so many years since the spiritual abuse happened. But my will could not overpower all that adrenaline. I was shaking violently, on the verge of tears, and could barely catch my breath. I could barely get the words out to try to explain what triggered my first-ever anxiety attack.
To their credit, those gathered in that meeting didn’t ask any questions, but surrounded me, waited with me for the adrenaline storm to dial down a bit, and prayed over me.
It wasn’t until I found myself in a counselor’s chair some time later that I began to understand the nature of religious trauma. The Global Center for Religious Research explains, “Religious trauma results from an event, series of events, relationships, or circumstances within or connected to religious beliefs, practices, or structures that is experienced by an individual as overwhelming or disruptive and has lasting adverse effects on a person’s physical, mental, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being.” The trauma often takes place in the context of high-control groups or congregations where leaders abuse their authority through guilt, manipulation, shunning, gaslighting (to name a few) to keep members under their influence. Some signs of religious trauma include hypervigilance, religious perfectionism, deep disillusionment, irrational shame, depression, and anxiety disorder. One recent study suggests that around a third of adults in America may be carrying religious trauma.
That means some of you reading these words may be carrying religious trauma. And if you’re not, and you are involved in church life, the person sitting next to you may well be. Or your neighbors or friends are.
It behooves each one of us to recognize how church trauma may manifest itself in another person’s life. (Hint: It doesn’t always look like an anxiety attack!) We don’t have to all become trauma experts, but in these days where so many are carrying pain from difficult church experiences, learning how to love your traumatized neighbor as yourself is an expression of true hospitality..
That group of children’s ministry volunteers provided meaningful care for me by
Being fully present: They set aside the agenda for the meeting in order to care for me.
Refusing to try to “fix” me: They didn’t rush in with Bible verses or shame me with Christian cliches in order to get me to snap out of it. (I knew the Bible verses, and would have loved to have been able to get myself to snap out of it.)
Praying for me: Their intercession was gentle, empathetic, and compassionate.
Taking action: I thought the worst–that these men had come to cause the same kind of trouble in this church that they’d caused in our last one. One of the people in the Children’s ministry meeting quietly left the room and headed to the church office to find out more about why the men had come. It turns out they’d come out of pure curiosity. They wondered why the church was growing quickly.
Eventually, I found my way to a counselor who helped me understand and grieve what had been done to me and my family by leaders mired in sin, and a congregation torn to shreds by a power struggle. Counseling also helped me come to terms with the fact that was never going to return to the state of trusting innocence I once had. God has used counseling rofessionals, the care of compassionate friends, and the passing of time to transform those moral wounds into scars, and the pain of unaddressed trauma to become hard-won wisdom.
Additional reads about trauma
What is trauma-informed therapy?
The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma - This isn’t an easy read, but if you have experienced trauma or know someone who has, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk’s work will orient you to the way we’re affected by it, even years after the event.
9 Ways To Start Your Journey as a Trauma-Informed Church
What books or podcasts have you found helpful around the topic of trauma?
May Media Picks From The Sage Team
[BOOK] Humble Roots: How Humility Grounds and Nourishes Your Soul by Hannah Anderson. Framing each chapter with natural and personal stories, Anderson weaves lessons about life, identity, and faith. A beautiful and inspiring read. (CD)
[BOOK] When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse by Chuck deGroat. Did you know that the incidence of Narcissistic Personality Disorder is significantly higher among clergy? (If you’ve ever been in a toxic church environment, this may not surprise you.) Counselor deGroat offers insight and hope for congregations willing to face the problems head-on and cultivate health for all.
[BOOK] I Take My Coffee Black: Reflections on Tupac, Musical Theater, Faith, and Being Black in America by Tyler Merritt. I read this book on the recommendation of a friend and I’m glad I did. Merritt tells of the beginnings of his many talents in an engaging and eye opening way, He founded The Tyler Merritt Project and speaks often “challenging audiences to see our differences as a unifying force for humankind and to ‘get to know me before you call the cops.’” (JA)
[VIDEO–Netflix] Falling For Figaro. This lighthearted British story follows a young businesswoman’s choice to pursue her dream of becoming an opera singer by studying with a harsh mentor in a remote Scottish village. (MV)
[BOOK] The Frozen River: A Novel by Ariel Lawhon. Martha Ballard, a midwife in Maine in 1789 with solid medical training, a strong personality, and a supportive husband, Ephraim, is called to examine a dead man and determine the cause of death, which she treats as murder. We learn about her past, learning to read, her family, her training as a midwife and healer, and about the numerous other tasks that she undertakes, like making candles. For anyone feeling overworked, this novel will make you grateful to live in a time in which we have cars, candles ready-made, microwaves and dishwashers! (JA)
What are you reading, listening to, or watching this month?
Enter Our Drawing For A Helpful Summer Read
Michelle Van Loon’s book Translating Your Past: Finding Meaning in Family Ancestry, Genetic Clues, and Generational Trauma offers readers the opportunity to consider the threads that combine to create their history, identity, and legacy.
We’re giving away two copies this month! To enter the drawing, click here to send us your name and U.S. mailing address before midnight Eastern time on Monday, June 10.
Coming in The Sage Forum newsletter next month: Making sense of changing friendships in our Sage years
The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. The righteous person may have many troubles, but the Lord delivers him from them all. (Ps. 34:18-19)
Photos by Rosie Sun, Aaron Burden on Unsplash
Another area where I believe some have experienced trauma is in a very charismatic church, where the phenomena around them doesn't seem to make sense.
Thank you for this. So needed.