By Claudia Hendricks
For many years the ideas of complex trauma and church were not associated inside my brain. When I thought of trauma it was related to sharp pain, and when I thought of church the image of a spiritual family came to mind, meaningful connections, and a life-giving space.
A few decades ago, my family joined a church in our community where we felt welcomed and included. My husband and I got involved leading a small group in our home and with a local outreach ministry. My husband became an elder and later a pastor of discipleship. His job description was to help new believers grow and mature in their new life with Jesus. The ministry was bearing fruit, new believers became involved in groups to practice spiritual disciplines and foster fellowship. I was excited to collaborate with him and be a part of what seemed to be a good ecosystem for growth for young believers.
A few years later, the relational atmosphere of the pastoral team became more focused on other programs and less on the hard and slow work of growth and maturity of the new people. I saw my husband starting to feel hopeless despair as he kept bringing to the table the importance of discipleship as a central task of the church. He ended up being fired from his job without any fair explanation. I regarded the people in the church and those in leadership as my friends and spiritual family. After what happened only a few of them asked us about how we felt, how our children received that news, or what would happen to us. At that moment we had three kids going into college, one surgery scheduled, and my husband was not that young to easily find new employment. Additionally, a narrative circulated that we left church because of our decision to do something different. If complex trauma is the pain caused by people with whom we share an intimate relationship, that is what we felt deep in our hearts. My husband fell into a state of sadness, confusion, and deep pain. I didn’t understand the logic behind the church’s decision, much less the lack of care or curiosity. I shared the pain of what felt like a kind of betrayal and disregard, amplified by seeing my husband’s heart, and not knowing how to share this reality with my children to protect their faith.
We attended the church afterwards because our children wanted to continue to keep worshiping there. But with every service I felt a knot on my stomach and could not concentrate on anything going on. Some people greeted us as if nothing had happened. They did not even know that my husband was no longer a pastor at the church, as it was not announced or replaced by somebody else.
We tried to visit other churches and experienced a very strange feeling of distrust with every intent. Our brains were altered, our bodies responded to a new alarm alerting us that the church was not a safe place, and we needed to protect ourselves. My mental schemes were changing without my control, the church is not what I think, perhaps my faith is not what I thought, and I do not know how to be and act as Christians after this experience. We never stopped praying and crying out to God in our house. It was around that time when God crossed our path with a couple of kind and mature people with whom we became good friends, Jim and Kitty Wilder.
Jim was at the time writing a book on how to face narcissism in leaders and ourselves, and how to love our enemies. His comments impacted me greatly. He said the church is a community where we all have a chance to grow and heal relationally and that God designed our brains with the ability to learn to spontaneously love our enemies when we are securely attached to Him and His people.
That’s how we began to hear that we were not crazy but deeply hurt and there was hope for healing. My husband had symptoms of post-traumatic stress, resting and sleeping was hard, we were confused, it was challenging to feel the presence of God and he felt unmotivated to do what he loved so much, helping others grow. We experienced painful repetitive memories, and for a long time we could not function as ourselves. I was feeling resentment, distrust of my faith, pastors and churches, chest pain, a sense of hopelessness, anger, and hypervigilance. I deleted my social media account because of the pain I felt seeing anything related to my now old church. I also felt ashamed without knowing why. Every time we drove through the congregation neighborhood a sense of grief and panic emerged in my stomach without my control.
Recovery from complex trauma depends on a relevant resource regardless of the severity of the case: the presence of a sensitive community that validates and accompanies us. Jim and Kitty were that for us along with other friends and family members. They validated our suffering and did not leave us to this day. Our neighbors, who were not believers, only knew that my husband was no longer a pastor and that he was looking for another job. They treated us with a lot of love, more than we expected.
We learn that joy, rest and secure attachment are the basic needs of the brain with which God created us. The first task Jim recommended to us was to start a daily practice of gratitude and deep breathing when we got up and when we went to sleep.
That gave us the ability to feel God’s presence with us and begin to regulate our emotions, returning to relational joy from the fear, shame, anger, disgust, and hopelessness that we felt. Jim and Kitty modeled that for us by telling us many stories and by their example, as Kitty faced health struggles. Once we practiced gratitude and felt our body calm, we paid attention to God’s active and interactive presence with us.
Only at that point, we sat together seeking God and His guidance on how to deactivate this alarm that protected us by alerting us that churches were not trustworthy or capable of sustaining a healthy bond of belonging. It was a process of more than two years of practicing using our body’s breathing to calm our emotions, recover sleep, and walk through the door of the church without feeling a sense of panic in my stomach.
Traumatic events do not escape the church community. Mine was just one example. These wounds have the power to distort our own perception of God, ourselves, and our future. Unprocessed painful experiences interfere in our lives and sense of reality. The less we are aware of them, the more they impact us.
In the last decade there are more documented cases of people being injured within their congregations than I care to know.
We need to recognize the possibility and evidence of people being traumatized by the church. When people feel and express distrust, fear or negative feelings towards God or the faith community, we can start to wonder about their reasons. Curiosity instead of judgement helps us to feel compassion and see what God sees.
I think it is necessary to include new skills in our small groups. Trauma recovery depends largely on the availability of a safe place of belonging and secure attachment. God planned for that when creating the church. Being a safe community rooted in belonging and attachment is more important than anything else, according to 1 Cor. 13:1-3. Practices of love, empathy, gratitude, rest, and emotional regulation for resilience ought to be part of our pastoral task as a church. Another thing I learned is the importance of cultivating our relational and maturity skills – those that we do not receive from our biological families – in situations of increasing intensity and interpersonal conflicts. That restores the fabric of our identities and our group identity as the people of God, our human wholeness. Many cases will need professional help, specialized care, and even legal assistance.
I thank God for the opportunity to reflect on this experience and the opportunity to heal in community my pain, identity, and relationships slowly and as much as possible. Traumatic experiences in the church hurt but they help us grow to be more resilient and Christ-like, giving us the chance to learn to love those who feel like enemies. I hardly thought that was possible but now I do.
