Shepherding Survivors of Sexual Abuse • EFCA Today.
Click the above link for a good read: 6 myths about shepherding sexual abuse survivors. Written by Andrew Schmutzer, OT prof at Moody and editor of the forthcoming multiauthored The Long Journey Home: Understanding and Ministering to the Sexually Abused (Wipf and Stock).
Filed under Abuse, christian counseling, counseling
A friend recently asked me about the characteristics of the kind of church someone with PTSD should seek out in looking for a safe place to heal. I’d like to ask that of my readers. What special characteristics might someone look for as a good church family when they suffer from hidden damage? If YOU were looking for a church and wanted to find a safe, compassionate, sensitive church, what would you look for? What characteristics would tell you that the church was what you wanted?
Preaching and teaching? Interpersonal characteristics? Resources? Characteristics of leadership?
How would you define humiliation? Is it something done to you or a experience/perception of yours? This might seem like semantics but consider this definition offered up by Richard Mollica in his Invisible Wounds (Harcourt, 2006, p. 72),
Humiliation…is primarily linked to how people believe the world is viewing them.
In this definition I hear that it is the result of objective harm but also related to how we think others see us. So, is it possible to be violated, mistreated, objectified…and not feel humiliation? Could you be stripped naked before a crowd of people and not feel humiliation? I suspect it is possible but not likely, not typical.
At one level, no one cares about the definition. If you feel it, you know someone has done you wrong. Someone has defamed you. Someone has acted in an ungodly way toward you. At another level, maybe it does matter. Does it (in a small way) take the power out of the abusers hands and place it back in your own. Does it enable one to say as Joseph, “what you intended for evil, God intended for good.” Of course, that is very hard to say if you aren’t now the prince of Egypt!
It is probably good to think about how we come to view ourselves and how much power we give to the perceptions of others. However, let every counselor or friend remember, humiliation is real…not something in the fantasy of the victim.
Filed under Abuse, counseling, counseling skills
Those who follow the Christian faith wholeheartedly believe that God is the “great physician” and eschew the belief that humans heal themselves. As a result of this belief, Christians sometimes react rather strongly to humanistic language of “self-healing.”
But before you do, consider this: if we assume that God is indeed the creator of all things, then we must also assume he puts into place the many corrective features found in the body. The liver and kidneys remove toxins from the body; blood clots when we cut ourselves; we sneeze to get rid of irritants; we sleep to rejuvenate what has become run down. In better words, Richard Mollica says,
This force, called self-healing, is one of the human organism’s natural responses to psychological illness and injury. The elaborate process of self-repair is clearly seen in the way physical wounds heal. At the moment of injury, blood vessels contract to staunch bleeding. Chemical messengers pour into the tissue, signalling a multitude of specialized cells to begin the inflammation process. White blood cells migrate into the wound within twenty-four hours, killing bacteria and triggering a process of cleansing and tissue repair. A matrix of connective tissue collagen is then laid down, knitting together the ragged edges of the wound in a repair that may not be perfect but is highly functional. (p. 94)
He goes on to say,
The healing of the emotional wounds inflicted on mind and spirit by severe violence is also a natural process.
I find his writing on this subject rather helpful. Sometimes we look passively to God to resolve our traumas, as if it were entirely up to Him. Other times we either resist what we can do or attempt what is not healthy for us. Dr. Mollica (an MD) provides many examples in his book of how the body naturally tries to heal/respond to trauma (e.g., DHEA counteracts toxicity of too much cortisol), where the system goes wrong, and what we can do about it from a therapeutic standpoint.
Dr. Mollica is right in that our bodies are designed to respond well to traumatic experiences. However, I’m pretty sure he also agrees that we are not designed to do this unassisted. The community must participate in the process. We are social beings and thus our healing must be socially situated.
Part of the problem, says Dr. Mollica, is the emotional memory system. When we experience a trauma, our cortex forms declarative memories of the event. These are where we store the “facts” (where we were, what we felt, and how these events connect to previous experiences). But there is another memory system, one he calls “emotional memory” (p. 96). Declarative memory involves the cortex and hippocampus while emotional memory involves the amygdala.
The amygdala is the fear-response command center of the brain, and it does not wait around for the conscious mind, located in the cortex, to decide if a threat is real or not. The amygdala can activate an emergency response throughout the body within milliseconds by calling the stress-response system into play. (p. 96)
Unfortunately, traumatic events can create emotional memories in the amygdala that keep on replaying and are difficult to extinguish over time. (p. 97)
Another toxin is the re-telling of the trauma story in a way that retraumatizes the victim. Dr. Mollica, in chapter 5, describes the problem of poor storytelling. Poor storytelling evokes only the trauma, the shame, the degradation experienced. Storytelling should cause us to form images in the teller and listener’s minds. These images need to symbolize the whole person/story and not only the most damaging details. The problem is we tend to tell stories that fixate on the intense emotions and thus elicit toxic emotions and maintain the experience that the trauma is still ongoing.
Many traumatized persons are plagued by the two poles of humiliation–sadness and despair on one side, and anger and revenge on the other. (p. 122)
Mollica says, “A proper clinical approach to emotional memory avoids triggering the emotions stored in the amygdala and enables the cortex to assert conscious control over the recollection of traumatic events. (p. 97)
How do you do this? With the help of a storytelling coach, a person tells their story in a factual, direct, but not grotesque way that would cause the listener to turn away. Why does this matter? Because part of the healing process is to be heard, seen, and empathized with. Fixating on the most grotesque details only enhances the emotional memory system and pushes others away. Good storytelling still tells the truth but does so in a way that reconnects people with the world, enables them to feel sadness but in community with others, and helps them see that their lives are not solely defined by the traumatic events. Further, good storytelling points to larger values that are still held and not lost due to the evil done by others. Surely trauma does shape and change us. Recovery and healing to the point of living as if the event did not happen would be to live in a world of denial and self-deception. But good storytelling reminds us that we are not ONLY defined by and/or limited to being victims. And good storytelling reminds us of God’s sustaining power that is greater than those who can only destroy bodies.
Dr. Mollica summarizes this chapter this way,
Strong emotions comprise the traumatic memories that are imprinted in the survivor’s brain. One of the mind’s key tasks after trauma is to take these strong emotions and gradually reduce them over time through good storytelling. A poor storyteller tells a toxic trauma story, unhealthy to mind and body with its focus on facts and high expressed emotions. In our society situations that demonstrate this type of storytelling are common, including superficial, sensational media reporting of tragedies and debriefing therapy by misguided mental health workers. In contrast a good storyteller is able to express tragic emotions with the artfulness of a musician playing an instrument, engaging the listener’s interest and involvement. (p. 133)
I commend to you the book. He discusses both good and bad dreams, the role of “social instruments” of healing and a call to health. Very helpful book if you are interested in international trauma recovery.
I’ve written before on the damage done when a community fails to respond to abuse in a justice oriented way. But here is a more succinct and apt quote by Miroslav Volf:
If no one remembers a misdeed or names it publically, it remains invisible. To the observer, its victim is not a victim and its perpetrator is not a perpetrator; both are misperceived because the suffering of the one and the violence of the other go unseen. A double injustice occurs—the first when the original deed is done and the second when it disappears. (italics mine)
Abuse victims sometimes tell us that the most significant damage to them is when community members (family, leaders, peers) fail to “see” or act justly when they hear of the abuse. It was bad enough to be sexually abused (yes, that is real damage too) but far worse to be told it didn’t happen or be told to take it for the sake of the larger community (e.g., you wouldn’t want to harm his reputation, destroy the family, cause others to fall away from Christ, etc.).
I saw this quote in the first pages of The Long Journey Home: Understanding and Ministering to the Sexually Abused, to be released soon by Resource Publications, an imprint of Wipf & Stock. I have the typeset PDF and the editor, Andrew Schmutzer, says the book will be released in August. This book (over 500 pages!) may become the place to turn for Christians seeking to understand the scourge of sexual abuse in all its ugly forms. Chapters are written by those who are expert in the social sciences, theology, and pastoral care. The line up is phenomenal. You can see the title page/table of contents (TOC Long Journey Home) to see the gamut of chapters and authors.
Diane Langberg and I talked recently about the concept of shame. She mentioned reading an interesting mystery that had a couple of lines about shame that might be powerful imagery for some. The novel, C.J. Sansom’s Sovereign, is about a hunchbacked lawyer. About 200 pages in the lawyer has an encounter with King Henry the 8th. The King scorns the lawyer publicly for his hunch (at which everyone laughed).
His first reaction?
“Now I had met him. I felt for a second that he shown me what I was, an unworthy creature, a beetle crawling on the earth.” (p. 221)
Then anger arises in the lawyer. Why? for he recognizes the weight on him is not his own shame, but that of the king.
Whose shame do you carry? Most often we carry either the clear shame of our own misdeeds OR the shame foisted on us by the misdeeds of others. And it seems that the shame put upon us by abuse and maltreatment weighs us down the most. Often those who mistreat us do so in ways to make us believe that in fact we are worthy of shame or that they are righteous in their treatment of us.
What would happen if you saw it not as your own but thrust upon you by those who mistreated you? If you could hand it back (metaphorically), would your own back straighten? Would you feel less dirty and self-negating? If you suffer from shame due to mistreatment, try to imagine that the feelings are not yours but in fact the abusers. Imagine what life might be like if you were to shed that shame that does not belong to you.
Don’t know if you have seen the news that former IMF chief Mr. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, accused of sexually assaulting a chambermaid and ordered to house arrest while awaiting trial, has been freed from house arrest and it appears that the case against him is evaporating. Why? It appears that his defense team has done a good job in providing evidence that the chambermaid has a credibility problem. Lies on her asylum application, lies to the investigators as to what happened after she was assaulted (what she did next), and lies on her taxes. There may be other lies too.
But of course none of these lies are about that actual assault. It will be sad if (a) she did fabricate the assault, or (b) he did assault her but previous lies allows him to avoid being found guilty. While you and I do not know the truth, we do know that some of the evidence has not been explained (forensic evidence, his prior history of sexual harassment) away. But, due to the legal system values we protect the possibly guilty over the possibly abused. Better to let a guilty man go free than an innocent man be jailed. Note that the victim is not in this equation.
I do not know who is telling the truth. I do know that those who have means and power tend to be able to launch all out defenses and so destroy the credibility of victims so as to either make them appear to be lying or make it appear to be consensual. What I do know is that victims with checkered backgrounds probably receive little justice and that offenders with power or prestige are more likely to get off. What I also know is that one day, lies and truth will be revealed.
Filed under Abuse, news, News and politics
Join Meredith Andrews, Dove Award winning Christian artist, in a concert to benefit She’s My Sister and celebrate the conclusion of the She’s My Sister Bike Tour. Each $10 ticket will provide Scripture-based trauma care to one abused woman in the Congo. The concert will be held at Calvary Baptist Church in Easton, Pa. on Friday, July 8 at 8:00 p.m. Purchase tickets online at www.congosister.org or contact Hannah Wildasin for group sales at 610-360-3864.
Filed under Abuse, Christianity, counseling
Those interested in trauma recovery work in international settings where rape is used as a tool of war will find this article on CNN to be of interest. WARNING: Not for those who are easily triggered by trauma stories!
Here’s a couple of reasons to read the article.
1. Why do this work?
They believe that listening is acknowledgement — and that acknowledgment is a kind of apology. Listening, they say, is the least the world owes.
2. Impact of this work?
You will experience secondary trauma. Don’t think you won’t.
3. How to do this work?
Start with an open question: Tell me about your experience. Look them in the eye. Don’t look at your notepad. If they say, “No, I don’t want to talk,” then leave. If they say, “Yes,” and tell you horrible things, wipe the emotion from your face. Get over being surprised they would tell a stranger, you, such intimate violations.
Know they are telling you because they need to tell someone, for whatever reason. And bearing that in mind, make no promises. Different victims want different things — revenge, financial compensation, asylum, prosecution of their attackers. Tell them that you can only listen, and do only that.
Filed under Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Rape
My supervisor, mentor, and colleague, Dr. Diane Langberg has been telling us for some time that “trauma is the mission field of our time.” Recently, however, a few Christian NGO/Missions leaders have heard this line in one of her talks and have become electrified by it. I cited it last week in a board meeting at Biblical as I was trying to make the case that developing postgraduate trauma training at Biblical fits our mission: following Jesus into the world.
But, some of you have not heard her give one of these talks. For you, I point you to the World Reformed Fellowship website so you can read a report she made on June 5 regarding the problem of trauma and the opportunity of the church to have a hand in healing this man-made scourge. Below is an excerpt of that short report. Do go to the WRF link and read it in its entirety. The report is not long but it is powerful and includes a couple of specific comments from two leaders in Africa.
We are the church. That means we are the body of Jesus Christ and He is our Head. In the physical realm, a body that does not follow its head is a sick body. That is also true in the spiritual realm. We are His people and I believe with all my heart He has called us to go out of ourselves and follow Him into the suffering of this world bearing both His character and His Word. And we do go – we send missionaries and the Scriptures; we provide food, clean water, education and jobs for many. And we should. We have rarely, however, seen trauma as a place of service. If we think carefully about the extensive natural disasters in our time such as earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunamis and combine those victims with the many manmade disasters – the violent inner cities, wars, genocides, trafficking, rapes, and child abuse we would have a staggering number. I believe that if we would stop and look out on suffering humanity we would begin to realize that trauma is perhaps the greatest mission field of the 21st century.
Musings on Faith and Psychology 