Spiritual Trauma and Healing for the Church
Michael Wagenman
When we think about health and wellbeing, we often have the individual in mind, but we don’t often attend to the way in which institutions and communities can be healthy or unhealthy and can in turn affect the wellbeing of their members.
The Canadian psychologist Dr Hillary McBride and Sanctuary Mental Health Ministries teamed up to bring us the Holy/Hurt podcast (holyhurtpodcast.com), which explores spiritual trauma and healing. It is a key resource for Christians and churches to begin understanding the lived experience of spiritual/religious trauma and how to accompany those in need of healing. As a pastoral counsellor and spiritual director (pastoroasis.com), I had a conversation with Dr McBride and the CEO of Sanctuary (sanctuarymentalhealth.org), Dr Daniel Whitehead, about this important topic.
MW: My research on the power of the church as a civic institution began in 2010, just after the news broke in Canada about the clergy sex-abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church. With the claims about abuse of power in the church, I felt it was important to address the prior question: What is the positive side of the church’s power? But it doesn’t take long doing this kind of research to find out that abuse of power in the church is complex and widespread. Your Holy/Hurt podcast addresses this topic as well. Can you tell us how the idea for the podcast emerged for you, what it seeks to accomplish, and what its reception has been?
HM: As a psychologist, I am listening closely to the stories my patients tell about what hurts them, who they are, their inner longings, where they are wounded. I have long believed that religion and religious practices can be places of rest, comfort, meaning and stability. However, in working intimately with people with psychological injuries, it has become impossible to ignore that religious and spiritual experiences often have a role in their distress, mental-health concerns, and even the enduring legacy that lives on in their mind/body as trauma. As I listened to their stories, and I heard unifying themes, I knew I needed to learn more to better understand how to help the people I work for. I started researching, writing, and speaking publicly about spiritual trauma and did so for a few years, teaching workshops, listening to more stories, and doing more research. This demanded I look at my own experiences of spiritual trauma, which until this point had been living mostly in the background of my awareness. It was my patients’ bravery that helped me be brave enough to look at these places inside myself. Then, after hearing a popular podcast series about a spiritually and psychologically abusive church in America, I could hear the host and guests describing trauma without knowing that is what it was, without using that language, and I felt compelled to create more resources for people to understand how trauma happens, how it lives in them, and what to do to mend the wounds they carry. Although my goal is to empower survivors, tell their stories, and give them language and frameworks to make sense, I realized in creating this project that it is also a love letter to the church. The stories that have emerged since the release of this podcast have been so powerful. As people are engaging with it and are telling us about how it is impacting them, we are hearing that they are feeling relief, understanding, more trust in their bodies and space from the crushing shame they felt pinned under. I recently heard someone tell me that it is “the opposite of gaslighting.” There was such demand for more material that I turned the podcast into a book and audiobook, which are set to come out April 15.
MW: We are coming to understand better that when someone has a life experience that is overwhelming, it is traumatic. Trauma isn’t necessarily what happens to you but how you experience an emotional/relational wound because of what happens to you. Why is this growing understanding of trauma important for Christians?
HM: Although the church as I have experienced it, by and large, has longed to be a place for people who are weary and hurt to come and find rest and healing, churches have not always been at the forefront of trauma theory, neuroscience, and trauma-informed and trauma-safe approaches to building community. This has resulted in people who have trauma histories not feeling supported in a way that meets their needs. Additionally, I believe Christians, even when meaning well, can add to the trauma of their brothers and sisters. We also need to be honest about the intergenerational legacy of trauma that the church has as it relates to colonization and the Doctrine of Discovery. Our church history reveals that trauma is not something that happens “out there” but is a very big part of the way we are as churches in North America. Understanding trauma allows us to be better neighbors, create healthier communities where we can consider our wounds, even mend them together, see the beautiful and good things about the people who have suffered in our midst, and create communities where people with trauma can flourish. These things may seem to focus only on the most wounded amongst us, but the great surprise is that they actually support flourishing and health for us all. All our systems and the people within them benefit when we consider trauma.
MW: As a psychologist, you’ve probably worked with people who have been hurt by churches or church leaders. How does trauma show up in the body and why is attending to our embodied existence so important for healing?
HM: There are so many ways that trauma can show up in the body, some of them are more obvious in that they are connected to a specific memory, thought, sensation, person or event. For example, a person who has been hurt by a church leader might walk past a church and feel their heart race and chest tighten and their pace quicken. We also have the classic post-traumatic-stress symptoms, such as flashbacks or intrusive thoughts and feelings, hypervigilance and dissociation. But most people I see who have (spiritual) trauma have their bodies tell the story of the trauma in ways that aren’t immediately linkable to a specific event. They might struggle with vaginismus and never put together that their body is speaking about the long-term impact of purity culture. For others, it is the autoimmune response that comes from years of having been pushed beyond their limits while also having to numb all their feelings about it. Others might rush to the ER with what they believe is a heart attack only to learn it’s rather that their anxiety has spilled over into panic.
In faith contexts where people have been told not to listen to their bodies, or that their bodies betray them, these good, normal, and appropriate symptoms of their trauma can be used as proof of the body’s badness. It is actually the body speaking up to say “Hey, I’m not feeling safe, what happened was not ok.” It reminds me of when Jesus appears and invites people to look at his wounded body, not as proof of its weakness or badness, but as part of the story he is telling about what he has been through and how real it was. I wish we could learn to treat our bodily symptoms as messengers worth listening to.
MW: Sometimes we can make everything so “spiritual” that our belief doesn’t touch our everyday experience. When it comes to faith, trauma and holistic healing, what is your one big aspiration for the broader church?
HM: My biggest hope is that we can start to see caring for others and listening to our bodies as spiritual practices. I want a faith that is embodied, I want a spirituality that allows us to thrive, that listens to the wounded among us and within us as part of how we can come to know God more and be the love of God in the world more.
MW: Daniel, as the CEO of an organization that seeks to support health and wellbeing in congregational settings, what can you tell us about the Sanctuary Course for those who would like to participate in these conversations?
DW: I am so thrilled that more churches are talking about being trauma informed; this is such a necessary step. The Sanctuary Course takes a broader approach to mental health, helping church communities develop a holistic understanding that encompasses not only trauma, but the full spectrum of mental-health challenges that people may experience.
Churches often choose to offer the course because it addresses a crucial gap. While most church leaders encounter mental-health challenges regularly in their congregations, few have received formal training in this area. The course provides a foundation for creating whole communities where mental-health challenges can be discussed openly and met with theologically grounded wisdom and compassion.
Through eight sessions, the course brings together clinical insights, theological reflection and powerful stories from Christians who share their own mental-health journeys. These real-life testimonies help reduce stigma and create space for authentic conversations in church communities. It helps churches move beyond simply reacting to crises and toward proactively creating cultures of mental-health awareness and support. The Sanctuary Course offers a comprehensive foundation that can transform how churches understand and respond to mental-health challenges in their communities. In this sense, I see it as a great precursor to engaging with trauma-informed ministry – one that actually models what a trauma-informed approach should look and feel like.
Dr Michael Wagenman is Senior Research Fellow and Director of PhD Studies at the Kirby Laing Centre.