Thomas F. Fischer, M.Div., M.S.A.

You’ve been hurt…and hurt badly.

Church conflict has worked on you. You are an emotional basket case. You are physically drained. Your energies are depleted. Your motivation is simply to survive. The pain is great and you just want to try to make it through another day.

Through the experience of church conflict, the rejection, the feelings of failure, you have been traumatized. You feel like everything is out of control and what is not yet out of control soon will be. You’ve been overwhelmed. Your coping mechanisms have blown out. All you want to do is get out and get away. Like Elijah, you want to isolate yourself from others. You have this burning desire to find a broom tree and just be by yourself…safe, untouched, and away from the pain of being with people.

Don’t Talk, Don’t Trust, Don’t Feel

“Don’t talk, don’t trust, don’t feel” is one of the most telling responses of grief. It is a “normal” response to the shocking recognition that a valued bond of intimacy has been broken. In order to maintain the integrity of one’s “self,” individuals will frequently switch into “DT-DT-DF mode” to emotionally–and, if possible, physically–isolate themselves from others so as to avoid further trauma.

Whatever the threat, the body responds with mechanisms to preserve, protect and, if necessary, destroy the threat. It’s a normal, nature coping response in normal human beings.

“Don’t talk, don’t trust, don’t feel” may also best characterize the emotional state of those who are experiencing the devastating effects of church conflict. It is reaction to the pain of interaction, risk, and intense emotional, physical, and spiritual pain. Given the myriad of troubled relationships and threatened facets of intimacy, it’s often selected among one’s best first defense.

Don’t Talk…A Defense Mechanism

Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families (not in recovery) are characterized by the presence of the “don’t talk, don’t trust, don’t feel” defense mechanism. They relied on it to protect themselves from the anger of an alcoholic parent, the emotional trauma of sexual abuse, the rejection and guilt of an over-zealous perfectionistic parent, or an environment in which they lived with a constant sense of abandonment and distrust.

Though the raging fires of church conflict and the trauma in dysfunctional families seem much different, they are similar. What they share in common is that both types of trauma often trigger disruption to the bonding process.

For this reason, the responses of individuals from dysfunctional families and congregational leaders is similar. In some cases the trauma is magnified when individuals from dysfunctional homes find themselves as congregational leaders in the midst of congregational conflict.

Perhaps the most significant difference between the two groups is that the former is generally long-term while the latter is generally short-term. The former is chronic, the latter is acute. The former is generally life-long, the latter lasts for a relatively shorter time (months or years). The former is character-based, the latter is grief-based.

Two Types Of Trauma Responses (Table)

Adult Child-Related Trauma Congregational Trauma chronic acute life-long (even with recovery) short-term (months or years) character-based grief-based Don’t Talk “I regret my words more than my silences.” There is a risk in talking, sharing information, and communicating. That risk can range anywhere from being ignored and given a deaf ear to the most cruel forms of rejection, ostracism and, in extreme cases, death.

The experience of trauma often triggers a hesitancy whose origin is in the hurt of broken relationships. While the hurt is still bleeding, often the best initial response is to draw back to allow the bleeding to stop, the scab to form, and the wound to heal. By temporarily avoiding conversation, interaction and relationships with others, one hopes to facilitate this healing.

Don’t Trust

Self-differentiation is, to a degree, healthy. But it can be overdone to unhealthy extremes. When one is too differentiated, one is out of the flow of the essentials of healthy relationship. One of the most fundamental bases of these relationships is trust. Trust is the “glue” of relational bonding.

It is the glue of intimacy. It is the glue of fellowship. Without trust, leadership simply cannot function in a healthy way. Pastors in distrusting churches, like children in a distrusting home, may not be able to change the dysfunctional patterns in their respective environments.

Since the externals may not be subject to easy change, they respond by changing themselves. In terms of the “DT-DT-DF” dynamics, one of the most simple and effective ways to defend oneself is simply not to give trust to anyone who has the potential to harm. Rooted in fear, it is this non-trusting self-defense posture which gives rise to a characteristic distrust of leaders.

This distrust often is a significant component of congregational conflicts in which the pastor and other leaders are attacked. Almost ironically, when pastors and other leaders are attacked in such conflict, they regress to the same instinctive response as their attackers: don’t trust…anybody!

Mediators, consultants and denominational paracletes can find this to be a frustrating dynamic. How can one effectively assist one whose trust mechanisms have been shattered? How many times have the best advice and counsel to a traumatized pastor or church leader been ignored or defied? How many times has that resulted in unnecessary proliferation and intensification of congregational conflict? Often the reason is a distrust borne of trauma.

Don’t Feel

“It all seems like a dream. It’s so unreal!” said one individual recently diagnosed with a terminal cancer. This response to trauma separates the person from the reality. The feelings are cut off. It’s hard to experience emotions. They are too painful! The most natural and easiest initial response is to turn off the emotions. Just don’t feel.

Psychologists call this response “Depersonalization.” Depersonalization, first officially recognized by psychiatric professionals in the official psychiatric classification manual DSM-II, involves a “feeling of unreality and estrangement from one’s body, self, or surroundings.” Subsequent DSM editions described it as “a change in the experience or perception of the self in such a way that one’s own reality was temporarily changed or lost” (DSM-III).

Depersonalization happens as part of the initial normal response to grief and trauma. Persistence and severity are the two main factors which differentiate “normal” and “clinical” types of depersonalization. DSM-IV indicated that distress or impairments in social or occupational function are also components of depersonalization. DSM-IV criteria identifies “depersonalization” in marked or “clinically significant” levels as indicators of clinical depersonalization.

Characteristics Of Depersonalization

1) As many as 50% of normal people will experience depersonalization;

2) Depersonalization occurs twice as often in women than in men;

3) Depersonalization occurs predominantly in individuals under 40;

4) Depersonalization appears in response to life-threatening danger such as accident, serious illness, major trauma, etc.;

5) In normal persons exposed to danger, there are “no essential differences from episodes of depersonalization that occur in the context of psychiatric illness”;

6) Depersonalization is the third most-heard complaint among psychiatric patients, following depression and anxiety;

7) Depersonalization is usually found as a symptom connected with other emotions such as depression or anxiety;

8) Depersonalization is characterized by feelings of panic, anxiety and emptiness. The strange, dream-like quality can be extremely uncomfortable.

As with other reactive trauma responses, depersonalization is a valuable component of personality. Dr. Glen O. Gabbard in his book, Psychodynamic Psychiatry in Clinical Practice: The DSM-IV Edition (American Psychiatric Press, 1994), observed, “There may be survival value in developing a split between an observing self and a participating self in a moment of crisis so that a person has the necessary detachment to think of ways to maneuver out of a perilous situation” (p. 317).*

Victims of severe child abuse often experience depersonalization. In order to escape the intense feelings of fear, guilt and dread, they shut off their feelings and experience depersonalization.

When recounting their child abuse later in life, they often describe how they could see themselves from a distance being abused. In most severe cases, the description can be reminiscent of accounts of near-death experiences in which patients can view themselves and their situation from a detached perspective.

Back To Your Trauma

Perhaps if there is any value to the above discussion, it is that it describes some of the pain and hurt which leaders can experience. Congregational experiences can be cruel, vicious and heart-wrenching. The intense trauma which can be experienced in the “family” of Christ often seems to parallel that found in domestic violence. “Family” can be the best of things and the worst of things. As long as they are in this world, leaders and members of God’s family may experience both.

Perhaps the most critical thing when traumatized is to recognize that there will be a time when “DT-DT-DF” dynamics will take hold. They will dominate. They will take hold. They will be there to protect. Such is normal and expected. When it comes, welcome it…but don’t give it a home in your heart.

Recovering From The Trauma

There are many ancillary affects of “DT-DT-DF.” Whether it’s extreme loneliness, depression, anxiety, self-doubt, loss of vigor, a pervasive sense of purposelessness and, among other things, a doubting of one’s calling, unless one takes immediate steps toward recovery, one risks the intensification of this normal acute response into a more intense, chronic form.

Untreated and un-addressed, the “DT-DT-DF” response will erode the bonds one experiences with significant others–friends, family, spouse and God. The excruciating pain of broken intimate relationships will demand to be addressed. If not gained through healthy means of recovering, unhealthy means of numbing the pain will inevitably be sought.

Treating Trauma’s Pain

What will be used to cover trauma’s pain will be what works best for the individual. It could be just “innocently” having a couple of extra drinks, working harder, becoming engaged in a compulsive activity, or anything that can potentially destroy one personally and professionally. In this context, perhaps not all sexual misconduct should be considered equal.

This is not to say that sexual misconduct is not a moral failure. It is. But there may be some cases in which the pervasive effects of unresolved trauma and not the character-based habitual promiscuity are really the causes of the behaviors. At the same time, one must not overlook the possibility that promiscuity is, in itself, a trauma response which masks the pain of a multitude of chronic bonding disorders and developmental dysfunction.

When brought back into healthy forms and expressions of intimacy–and talking, trusting, and feeling return–the pain triggering inappropriate sexual proclivities is alleviated. When healing occurs, the “normal” self returns. In those circumstances in which remarkably gifted Christian leaders experience intense traumatization, it may be best for denominational overseers to take a rehabilitative approach instead of a legalistic approach.

Though the manner and degree of rehabilitation for those caught in trauma-generated sexual misconduct will vary, the approach used by denominational overseers can do much to either increase the pain or direct the individual toward healing and rehabilitation.

Some Specific Paths To Healing

One of the keys for healing trauma is to regain one’s rooted-ness in relationship. For this reason, the most obvious first steps to healing are to begin talking, trusting and feeling. Specifically, this requires the rebuilding of the “Five Types of Coping Relationships” (cf. Ministry Health Article #14 ).

Renewing old friendships, risking new friendships, repairing the breakdown of intimacy with one’s spouse and children is tough work. Counseling can be essential to repair and strengthen these foundational sources of intimacy and affirmation.

Re-learning to talk, trust and feel with members of the congregation is also essential. Undoubtedly, traumatized leaders have been rejected, betrayed, slandered, unjustly criticized, publicly scorned and broken down in virtually every area essential for a sense of well-being and flow. But one’s healing will not occur until one extends the “hard” handshakes, looks offenders confidently in the eye, and extends genuine forgiveness…even when they don’t forgive. The cumulative affects of this trauma are, admittedly, devastating. But life must go on. Even if confidants have abandoned the traumatized leader or are no longer accessible, one must seek the road to healthy relationship.

Learning (Or Re-Learning) How To Bond

For some, the reason the trauma is unbearable is that it exposed their own inability to bond to others in intimate, trusting, and vulnerable relationships. For others, the trauma caused the annihilation of years of building trusting, bonded relationships. Either way, the path to recovery is identical. One must learn to bond again.

What can one do to bond? Henry Cloud lists the following skills needed bonding skills in chapter five of his book, Changes That Heal (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing, 1992, pp. 82ff):

1) Realize The Need For Bonding. “It is not good for man to live alone,” God said in Genesis 1. Cloud recalls St. Paul’s words, “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I don’t need you!’ If one part suffers, every part suffers with it” (I Cor. 12:21, 26 NIV).

2) Move Toward Others. This is the only antidote for the emotional isolation which trauma can generate. As painful as it is, traumatized individuals do need others. The longer one internalizes the pain, the longer they go without sharing the full extent of it with another, the more invasive and long-term the trauma response will be. It’s a difficult burden. Unload it–ASAP–before it really hurts you!

3) Be Vulnerable. Part of the trauma experienced is a recognition that one is not in control. No matter how good the plans, how skillful the execution, how passionate the promotion, and how flawless the implementation, trauma teaches the universal lesson: you are vulnerable. You will fail. You will be attacked. Being vulnerable is threatening. It requires the appropriate revelation of self to others. It opens one up to attack. But no lasting bond of intimacy is created without it. As Cloud notes, “Vulnerability is a skill that opens up the heart for love to take root” (p. 83).

4) Challenge and Change Distorted Thinking. Though significant people have betrayed you, not everyone will. Though you undoubtedly made some mistakes or could have/should have done something better, you’re not a failure.

Just because you were unfairly rejected by others doesn’t mean you have a spiritual gift of angering others. Distorted thinking denies reality. It denies that fact that betrayal happens. Mistakes happen. Failure happens. Rejection happens. Anger happens.

Conflict happens. All these–and more–experiences happen not just to you, but to others as well. The reason you don’t hear about it from other pastors is that they may be traumatized. They may not be able to bond. They may not be able to challenge and change their thinking. The issue is not “Does your church have any problems?” Instead, the real issue may be, “Does your church encourage bonded-ness, intimacy and relationship to help individuals go through the necessary transformations which lead to healthy bonding?”

Other Necessary Bonding Skills

Cloud mentions a number of other bonding skills as well. These include “Allowing Dependent Feelings,” “Recognize Defenses,” “Become More Comfortable With Anger,” “Be Empathetic,” “Say ‘Yes’ To Life,” and spiritual things such as “Pray and Meditate” and “Rely on the Holy Spirit.”

Perhaps the most critical of these skills listed is “Take Risks.” It’s remarkable to think that what is feared most is the most powerful key to renewal. Whether it’s taking the risk to talk, trust and feel or resuming the important and essential role as congregational change agent, it’s taking the risk that is the hardest–and most important–aspect of bonding.

Because it is an absolutely critical component for trauma recovery, the ability to take risks becomes the most important indicator of healing. Certainly there will always be some fear. Getting hurt again is certainly not anyone’s lifetime ambition. But when one has the stamina, the purpose, the energy and relationship bonds healed, the propensity to risk overcomes the fear.

Take A Risk!

Even as risking is the primary indicator of healthy bonding and relational intimacy in individuals, it is also perhaps the most important indicator of a healthy, vigorous, relationally-bonded congregation. Traumatized as God’s leaders may become, it is the risk of ministry which defines ministry. When God called Joshua and the people of Israel to descend down the steep bank of the rapidly flowing Jordan river, God didn’t tell Joshua to find a “flunkie” to put his foot into the water to test it. Instead, He called Joshua to send the priests and their most valuable possession–the Ark–first. To enter the Promised Land was an “all or nothing” proposition. Indeed, as God repeatedly demonstrates, those leaders and congregations not willing to risk will not make it to the “Promised Land” of ministry.

God Is Calling You To Healing

God calls everyone to His service. In trauma, this calling becomes tested in virtually the greatest way imaginable. When this trauma occurs, recognize it for what it is. God is not necessarily calling you out of the ministry. He’s calling you to a deeper experience of ministry. He’s testing you. As the test draws to a conclusion, the startling awareness that results is that God has transformed us. We’re not the same as we used to be.

Instead, God is drawing us to new directions, new ministries and new and deeper relationships with others…and with Him. The Lord is your “Refuge and Strength, a very present Help in trouble. Therefore, do not fear…” He’s there in trauma. He’s there in healing. God is the one relationship which will never fail you.

Talk to Him, trust Him, and feel His presence working through the unshakable promises of His Word working your ministry. It is the regular practice of talking, trusting and feeling His present grace in your ministry which is your greatest strength. Go for it!

“Love like you’ve never been hurt, dance like no one’s watching!” and make sure to say whatever you feel at the moment you feel it, or you may never get the chance again!”

Thomas F. Fischer

© Copyright 1997, 1998, 1999 Thomas F. Fischer–All Rights Reserved

Thomas F. Fischer, M.Div., M.S.A., Editor

Ministry Health Web Site

http://genesis.acu.edu/ministryhealth

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