Is the Trauma Narrative Helpful?

Very good article. As someone who has and is going through intense trauma this year, this resonates in my journey. One of the reasons why it is increasingly becoming highlighted, especially with men is that it is often overlooked. Men are told to just "suck it up", and men shouldn't be wimps, and so we supress it, which creates a whole host of other issues. There is great value in the secular side of things in this regard, but there is equal value in what this article discusses. The church continues to be weak in mental health areas, when it should be leading the charge. Trauma impacts us on so many levels including spiritually, regardless of where your faith falls.

....it seems that our subculture can cause a lot of problems because in a lot of contexts, we are supposed to be "shiny happy people", and if someone speaks up about pain, somehow we become the problem. Agreed with David that the church ought to be leading where we are currently lagging.

For years the church, especially in fundamenalism pushed narratives and solutions to various mental health issues that were not appropriate and in some cases bordered on unbiblical. We had teachers and faculty members with no degrees in this area and no formal training, teaching the next generation on how to deal with mental health issues. Most of it centered around the fact that mental health issues were rooted in sin. I don't know the level of harm that this has done to countless generations, but it is clear that it did harm. I don't know all about Beth, but I did appreciate that she appears to be a trained clinical psychologist. As I have been on my journey this year, I have been leveraging both secular psychology as well as Scripture. And it has been refreshing and a breath of fresh air compared to what I grew up in. We don't go to a pastor when we need treatment for cancer, but we do go to a pastor to help our spiritual self travel through this process. We have for too long treated mental state outside of a secular sphere, to our detriment. There is value in balancing both, just as we do in many other areas of our life.

I was counseling with a man in his 30s who came to me and said he wanted to grow in his relationship with God but was unable to practice the spiritual disciplines of Bible reading, prayer, Scripture memory, and Christian community because they were detrimental to his emotional health.

He told me that he tried to get closer to God in his 20s, but when he did things just got worse in his life, so he gave up. That experience scarred him emotionally and made him distrust God and what he was taught in church.

I told him, you can't grow closer to God without being in his word and spending time in prayer. To which he responded, "You are forcing me to prioritize my relationship with God over my emotional health."

He chose his emotional health and ended our counseling sessions.

>>He chose his emotional health and ended our counseling sessions.<<

And people wonder why evangelical Christians are skeptical of modern psychology…

Scripture makes clear that there were cases of people who were lunatics, etc. because of demonic activity. Any approach to mental health issues that does not take demonic activity as a serious possible consideration for being the cause of the issues of at least some people is an unbiblical approach.

Herein lies the problem. We tend to go straight to the idea that if someone is having a mental health issue it has to be the result of sin or demonic activity. Come one, really? Let's go right back to the 1500's where someone getting sick was the result of sin. We live in a broken world. Things are broken. People are born with a missing limb and people are born with mental challenges. Should we ignore Scripture entirely? No! Should we be naive to believe that Scripture has a solution for every physical ailment? No! I don't look to Scripture in how to deal with my cancer. I go to a doctor to help with cancer, and I go to Scripture on how to deal with living with my cancer.

Herein lies the problem. We tend to go straight to the idea that if someone is having a mental health issue it has to be the result of sin or demonic activity.

Who said anything about going "straight to the idea" of anything?

This is what I said:

Any approach to mental health issues that does not take demonic activity as a serious possible consideration for being the cause of the issues of at least some people is an unbiblical approach.

Notice that my statement speaks about "demonic activity . . . for being the cause of the issues of at least some people" [bold added to the original].

If you are going to say that demonic activity is never the cause of mental health issues for anyone, you are taking an unbiblical position.

From what I've read, the top reasons people seeking professional counseling are these:

• Coping with a traumatic event
• Experiencing negative thinking patterns
• Experiencing symptoms of a mental health condition
• Feeling sad, stressed, anxious, overwhelmed, helpless, depressed, angry, or worried
• Going through major life changes (a break-up, a job change, a move to a new city)
• Having trouble concentrating and/or fulfilling day-to-day obligations
• Having trouble sleeping
• Seeking greater fulfillment and happiness in life
• Struggling to achieve your goals
• Using maladaptive coping mechanisms, such as drinking alcohol or using drugs
• Wanting to improve your relationships

Of these, which cannot be dealt with by an experienced biblical counselor or pastor?

I will grant you that some mental health issues are biological in nature. For these, one should go to a physician. Some mental health issues are due to poor habits (e.g. lack of sleep, poor diet, etc.). However, many mental health issues are caused by heart issues that psychology only covers over and doesn't actually solve (e.g. guilt, shame, idolatry, etc.). Instead of dealing with the root heart issues, psychology often teaches people how to bypass or ignore these negative feelings. At worst, the symptoms are treated via medication while the underlying heart issues are left unresolved.

If you've never heard of Cynthia Swindoll's experience with dealing with her depression and anger, it's worth a listen (click the second message here). She went to "mental health professionals" for years to get help with her struggle with depression and anger only to be medicated, told to blame others, and made much worse. The reality was, she was holding on to unforgiveness, and when she finally dealt with unforgiveness biblically, she was freed from her shackles of depression and anger.

Since we are dealing with trauma in this post, I will keep it to that. So one example is “black out” PTSD. Leveraging things like EMDR to assist during episodes of PTSD. This would be an example of something that would not be addressed in your typical biblical counseling session with a pastor. I am also not saying that this is one or the other. They are not exclusive and you need to be educated to know the limits of each. Medicine is not always the answer, and most times it is not the answer. A lot of things need to be addressed spiritually. No doubt in that. The secular world does not have all of the answers. You don’t always need to go to a secular therapist, but you need to be smart enough to know when to leverage certain things in your life. So to deal with the trauma of loosing my first born child in a very traumatic way, I look to and immerse myself in Scripture on how to live with this day in and day out, how to move on with my life and how to frame it in a broader perspective with my faith. And all of that is 100% important in dealing with it. I work with a licensed psychiatrist (who happens to be a Christian and a former pastor) on how to deal with PTSD. I work with secular grief groups on how to deal with the practical aspects of dealing with these things in my daily life. And those have been very valid. Getting through trauma is not just about trusting God. When Elijah was contemplating suicide, God didn’t just come to him and say trust him. He practically took care of him in a “secular” sense and then told him to trust Him and move on with His work that God had for him. There is much bad in how the world addresses certain things, so you need to walk circumspectly, and Scripture should always be the lead, and a Scriptural approach is always needed to overcome our problems, but there are times when it should be recognized that secular approaches need to be leveraged to help someone getting through trauma.

Here's another approach to dealing with trauma-induced PTSD.

Part of that approach is bunk. Memories are a part of it, but just saying you can control your memories and you can control PTSD is a severe lack of understanding. Some PTSD can be controlled with your thoughts, and not everyone experiences PTSD. But for many who suffer it comes on suddenly in moments when you are not even thinking about the memory.

Let me be clear, I am not opposed to biblical counseling and we should use Scripture first in all things. But the article you posted is a clear example of the problems with biblical counseling. It looks at all problems as a sin problem. So if we look at Christ in the Garden before his crucifixion, he was suffering from classic symptoms of an anxiety attack. Was Christ sinning? Did he have a sin problem of the heart?

The article that you posted goes straight to what much of biblical counseling teaches. That it must be a problem of the heart. The lack of experience by the author is clearly outlined. PTSD is not about trying to stop thinking about the memories. The memories are not the problem. I can sit at my desk typing this and think about all of the memories that trigger my PTSD and I won't have any issues. In fact, I have never had a PTSD attack as the result of thinking of any of the memories.

So how do I approach my trauma. I sit down with my Pastor, other Christian men and Scripture and I work through how to frame my trauma in light of Scripture. How to pray through it. How to understand how it fits into God's plan and how to understand how to live through it. Immerse myself in God's Word. Scripture is always the first place to go.

But how do I handle the very specific attacks. I work with my licensed Psychologist (who is a great Christian), and we work through how to handle the attack with various tools. So when I am sitting at the table playing Monopoly with the family and having fun, and then out of no where an intrusive thought overwhelms my capacity to absorb it and I begin to have an attack, I understand how to de-escalate it by breathing, trying to stay in the moment (as sometimes a PTSD attack will cause you to disassociate from reality for a period of time outside of any control you can have), having my wife help me when she sees it happen. The attack has absolutely nothing to do with the memory in general, it has nothing to do with my lack of faith, it has nothing to do with how I view God's sovereignty over my life and over these events. In fact, looking at it through the lens of sin, can actually make it worse. Most Christian Psychologist that I have talked with say that trauma is one of the key weaknesses in biblical counseling, even from those who support biblical counseling.

Can I overcome something like PTSD attacks in the long term and how they relate to my trauma? Maybe. Maybe not. Paul couldn't overcome his "thorn in the flesh". What I do know, is that despite my ability to overcome its manifestations in my life, I can have control over whether it controls my life. Christ's grace is sufficient. And as long as my thoughts are tied to that, it will not overcome my life, but it may significantly impact me for the rest of my life.

David,

Here's the whole post T Howard:

Favorite Line So Far new

I was counseling with a man in his 30s who came to me and said he wanted to grow in his relationship with God but was unable to practice the spiritual disciplines of Bible reading, prayer, Scripture memory, and Christian community because they were detrimental to his emotional health.

He told me that he tried to get closer to God in his 20s, but when he did things just got worse in his life, so he gave up. That experience scarred him emotionally and made him distrust God and what he was taught in church.

I told him, you can't grow closer to God without being in his word and spending time in prayer. To which he responded, "You are forcing me to prioritize my relationship with God over my emotional health."

He chose his emotional health and ended our counseling sessions.

You quoted the last line, and I think you took it to mean that this man should have neglected his "emotional health" by continuing the sessions with T[om?].

What are your thoughts on this from the first paragraph?

...he wanted to grow in his relationship with God but was unable to practice the spiritual disciplines of Bible reading, prayer, Scripture memory, and Christian community because they were detrimental to his emotional health.

...that I saw in an American Legion magazine, I believe, is that someone out there has figured out that many people (90% of returning soldiers with PTSD in their sample) can recover good functionality by doing something that is basically akin to practicing "watching the event" as if it were a movie. Sounds really weird, yes, but apparently it works a lot. I'll see if I can dig up the reference and resource.

What are your thoughts on this from the first paragraph?

...he wanted to grow in his relationship with God but was unable to practice the spiritual disciplines of Bible reading, prayer, Scripture memory, and Christian community because they were detrimental to his emotional health.

I don’t think it makes any sense. There is no doubt a bunch of crazy on the secular therapy side. Let’s be honest, much of secular therapy will propose meditation for improving mental health. How is reading the Bible, prayer and Scripture memory, not similiar to meditation techniques?