​Have you ever said to someone or had someone say to you, "I know exactly how you feel" or "I completely understand"? While you may have had good intentions, the truth is that you don't know "exactly" and you cannot "completely" understand. We are all complex human beings with intricate wiring. Psalm 139 describes us as "fearfully and wonderfully made" (Psalm 139:14, NIV). If we cannot exactly or completely understand people our own age ponder the possibility of trying to understand the thinking of someone significantly older or younger. 

In this generation of "push" we have managed to make adolescents into little adults we expect to think and act like us. When trauma enters our lives we are tested in our understanding of how someone may respond. 

As youth leaders and / or parents we are further tested in how a teenager may respond to any given traumatic event. We could say, on any day, we are challenged to guess how an early adolescent would respond! 

Most researchers generally agree the early adolescent can still be found in the concrete operational thinking stage defined by Jean Piaget. This is the third stage in Piaget's theory of cognitive development. It spans the age of middle childhood through early to mid-Middle school.

Let it be noted some of them – especially 8th graders – are entering formal operational thought. This means, depending on a whole host of factors, they are straddling two stages. This will be addressed in a few paragraphs!

We'll now take a look at a few characteristics of this stage, make a few observations on how it may play out in the post-trauma situation and suggest a few action points in our care of the middle schooler. 

CHARACTERISTICS

• Inductive Logic or Reasoning – This entails going from the specific to a general principle. At this stage the thinker begins making a connection between a situation and what a future response might be. An example of this might be observing every time you drink certain sodas you have lots of "extra" energy and don't sleep well. 
• Reversibility – Concrete operational thinkers understand actions or awareness can be reversed. In this piece a person is able to "reverse" the order of relationships between mental categories. One example I saw from one of the referenced websites below said "a child might be able to recognize his or her dog is a Labrador, that a Labrador is a dog, and that a dog is an animal."
• Conservation – This is the understanding that when something is broken into pieces it is still the same amount as the whole. It may look different but it is still part of the whole.
• Ego-centricism – Thinking about oneself only begins to disappear. Now early adolescents are aware of what others may be thinking about them. 

Formal operational thinking – the next stage – is also possible in these ages. Early adolescents may move into abstract and more complex thinking abut are sitting on the bridge between the concrete and formal. In times of adversity it is quite possible they will default to concrete thinking, their familiar home ground. 


APPLICATIONS

What are the applications we might be putting into play in times of trauma with this age group? I do not claim to be an expert in cognitive development theories but working on the front lines with youth I can offer the following practical thoughts. 

1) With their ability to do inductive logic or reasoning comes the capacity to look at the traumatic event and tie in their fear or sadness with any future event just like it. Even before the immediate trauma of the present has diminished it is possible they are fearing a re-occurrence. The loving youth leader / parent will encourage the early adolescent to stay in the present and respond to the here and now. Fears of the future can be validated but addressed later. 

2) Reversibility gives a middle school parent / youth leader the opportunity to look at the trauma through a logical lens – when possible. For example if an early adolescent is traumatized by a local wildfire the conversation could be had about the root of the fire: the fire was fueled by dry brush, caused by a random lightning strike and all are a part of nature. Where an arsonist is involved one might take the conversation back to understanding mental health issues. While this does not erase the trauma it gives the youth an opportunity to be a little more objective in the conversation. 

3) Conservation reminds the middle schooler there are many pieces to trauma including feelings, responses, physical symptoms and more. They are all a part of the traumatic event. The caregiver can help the early adolescent to identify these.

4) As ego-centricism moves "back stage" the parent / youth leader can help the middle schooler to imagine the feelings of those who are or who have responded to the same event. This is where the power of community and youth groups are helpful in processing the traumatic event for early adolescents. 

You may have more applications. Feel free to add those in the comment section. 

NEXT TIME: What a High Schooler Thinks of Trauma

Other sources on Concrete Operational Thinking – 

http://www.webmd.com/children/piaget-stages-of-development?page=2#1
http://psychology.about.com/od/piagetstheory/p/concreteop.htm

Doug Ranck is associate pastor of youth and worship at Free Methodist Church of Santa Barbara, CA.  With three decades of youth ministry experience, he serves as ICTG Program Director for Youth Ministry, as well as a leading consultant, trainer and speaker with Ministry Architects, the Southern California Conference, and, nationally, with the Free Methodist Church. He has written numerous articles for youth ministry magazines and websites, and published the Creative Bible Lessons Series: Job (Zondervan, 2008). Doug is happily married to Nancy, proud father of Kelly, Landon and Elise, and never gets tired of looking at the Pacific ocean every day. 

The returning back to college and university campuses at the start of the year is an exciting time for many students. The energy, like static electricity, moves through the air in those days and nights leading up the start of the semester; this feeling is truly magical. There is so much anticipation, joy, and excitement going around that it almost feels electric.

While some wait till the last minute to return to campus, many choose to return Saturday morning, some even Friday night, eager to move back into the dorms in hopes to squeeze a couple more drops out of summer, enjoying this time with their peers whom they have missed and are now trying to reconnect with. It feels like this is what college is all about and excitement for the school year builds, opening student’s hearts and minds to what is ahead.

It is one of the most exciting and anticipatory times on campus, but for some it serves as a reminder of how different they are, now, than from when they left that space months ago. Instead of excitement being their dominant emotion they feel isolated from the joy their peers seem to bask in as grief and loss run their course. They have come back to campus but they are not the same, something in their lives has changed. 

For these students whose summer has been interrupted by loss, grief or crisis, these days of joy and excitement can be difficult and isolating. Regardless of the experience – parents divorcing, a death of a loved one or pet, loss of a home, a community torn apart, a major life event that has altered their story, or a messy and painful breakup, these students are in the midst of their dark night and are walking through the shadow of death – and perhaps they are going unnoticed.

As our academic communities re-adjourn this fall let us remember to support those who are hurting from trauma experienced over the summer. There are many things you and your communities can do, including simply being there for these students, but here are some suggestions that might truly communicate to students in need that you care and can support them through this difficult time.

Create Space for Grief and Lament

This space can be physical or structural. This might mean reserving a hall/campus chapel for those experiencing grief and loss or for those who might want to lift up prayers or lament. It may mean creating space in a morning worship session for moments of remembrance so people can call to mind their grief and allow them to lift thoughts, names, or prayer to God. It may mean offering a space to light candles to honor others, regardless, sacred space is important in working through our grief.  I have found that even some of the folks who desire to stay away from religion still are drawn to beautiful, holy things – if you create a space like this people will come.

I remember when our favorite cat passed away. Her illness came on quick and for whatever reason she was not responding to any of the help we obtained for her. When I asked if she was suffering and the vet looked at me with sympathetic loving eyes and told us yes, we knew we had to say goodbye.  While enduring such a difficult moment the animal hospital was incredibly helpful and supportive to my family and I. It was both beautiful and amazing how this organization handled death with such incredible dignity.

In the facility there was a beautiful sacred room that had been created for goodbyes and they gave everyone a pet loss journal which for 30 days would walk someone who had experienced the loss of a pet through their grief, while leaving many pages for one’s own lament. Additionally they offered memory days where you could go once a month to the hospital and sit with art therapists who would help you design a memory box or picture frame to remember your little loved one by. Their approach to others grief and lament was holistic as our approach should also be.

Let them know that they are not alone

Especially at a time when students are sharing eagerly their summer adventures with each other, students who have stories of loss or trauma can feel like the odd woman/man out. Because of this it is important that we continue to let our struggling students know that they are not alone – both in grieving on campus and within their own suffering – as Jesus walks with them through every moment, sigh, and tear.

If support groups in your community or on your campus exist, please make sure this resource is widely available. Campus vigils dedicated to loss of loved ones are often held throughout the semester- especially if a student in the college or university community has passed away.  Advertising open moments for gathering at a sacred space will also allow your students to see that they are not alone and that others are also on their own journeys towards healing.

Finally, working with the student affairs community on campus or meeting with hall directors briefly at the beginning of the year and sharing about resources from your community or your work will be helpful in promoting opportunities for students to find others who are experiencing loss and grief.  

Let them know that their story will not end here

When the moment is right, after much discerning on your part, encourage them to remember that this is not the end of their story, although it may feel like it. Working through loss, grief, and trauma is a long process with many stages, but movement through these stages is very helpful and students will eventually get through all of them.

It is in this place we can evoke the phoenix metaphor; rising from the fire and ash we are transformed, different people who have come back but are not the same. This too adds to our stories and it is important that our students understand this. From my own tradition, and in my work among Catholic and Protestant Christians at the University of Notre Dame, I find it is also important that students know that they are never alone in their suffering, that Jesus was with them every step of the way. In this moment the famous prayer by Thomas Merton is made manifest…

"My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone."

With open arms and warm hearts let us walk prayerfully with those who have experienced deep loss or trauma over the summer and help them transition well into the school year and beyond. 

The following post is excerpted with permission from "A Deacon's Eye for Healing Congregations," Currents in Theology and Mission, 42.3 (July 2015): 213-19. Copies of this themed issue on "The Future of Diaconal Ministry" can be ordered for $5 each, including shipping, by mailing a check and request to Currents in Theology and Mission, Attn: Back Copies, 1100 East 55th Street, Chicago, IL 60615.

Congregations require intentional ministries of healing in order to overcome traumatic events. As an ordained deacon in The United Methodist Church, I offer a deacon’s eye for compassion and justice to assist congregations wounded through prior incidents of ministerial sexual abuse. The following, excerpted from a longer article, describes the congregation as the wounded and wounding Body of Christ and healing congregations as a vital ministry of the church in mission to a hurting world.

The apostle Paul writes, “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. …If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (1 Cor 12:12 and 12:26-27). Paul’s words to the congregation in Corinth remind us that the body of Christ can suffer even now. We are the body of Christ, wounded and wounding, at times betrayed by one of our own members.

One of the most devastating wounds to the body of Christ today is sexual abuse (of adults, youth, or children) in ministry. This occurs when a person in a position of ministerial leadership, lay or ordained, violates the sacred trust of that office by inappropriately crossing sexual boundaries. Sexual abuse by persons in ministerial leadership is an abuse of the power. When a church leader engages in sexual behavior with someone, whom they should be serving in ministry, that leader is no longer serving the best interests of the other person but instead using that person and the position of ministerial leadership to gratify his or her own desires. When a ministerial relationship becomes sexualized, it ceases to be a ministry of the church, and the aftereffects can be devastating not only to the exploited congregant but to the entire congregation.

A congregation wounded by its own trusted leader suffers a type of trauma distinct from other traumas in the faith community: the perpetrator is in a position representing God. The very resources that a church typically draws upon—its pastoral leadership, judicatory personnel, and integrity as a community of faith—are thrown into disarray and distrust, hampering recovery. Every ministerial leader--everywhere—becomes tainted by distrust, stemming from one minister’s offense.

To recover vitality, a wounded congregation needs an intentional process of healing. The congregation must be able to come to terms with what happened and move forward in faith. A past that is not fully acknowledged has lasting and binding power over the present, which hampers our ability to imagine a better future. We must find ways to re-tell our congregational narratives to open us to the vast possibilities of God’s future, so that we are neither continually reacting to a traumatic past nor obsessed with nostalgia for a previous era.

With a deacon’s eye, I see a way to that future through specific practices of justice and compassion. The church can learn to identify, name, and address the wounds of violation due to sexual abuse in ministry. The church’s authenticity in tending to its own woundedness is essential to being a credible and reliable witness to the Gospel in a world, in which domestic violence, sexual abuse, and violence against women and children continue to be the existential reality for millions of persons. The ministry of healing is a moral imperative for the body of Christ, wounding and wounded.

The work of healing congregations is transformative. When a wounded congregation becomes a healing congregation, the wounded body of Christ becomes an agent of grace in the world, once again bearing witness to the Good News of Christ Jesus.

From Rev. Dr. Stephens: My continuing work in supporting the ministry of healing congregations depends on hearing from wounded, healing, and healed congregations. If you have ever known about or been part of a congregation wounded by its ministerial leader, I encourage you to share your story with me. How was healing hampered? Who proved to be an agent of grace? What resources did you find to help your congregation? What resources did you seek but could not find?

The Rev. Dr. Darryl W. Stephens is an ordained deacon in The United Methodist Church and Director of United Methodist Studies at Lancaster Theological Seminary. He is co-editor of Professional Sexual Ethics: A Holistic Ministry Approach (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013) and author of Methodist Morals: Social Principles, Marriage, and Sexual Sin in the Public Church (University of Tennessee Press, forthcoming 2016).