Recently I read an interview with Susan E. Craig who authored the book, Trauma-Sensitive Schools: Learning Communities Transforming Children's Lives, K-5 (Teachers College Press). Her primary thesis is to reach struggling students, schools need to be more 'trauma-sensitive.'

In any given teaching environment whether in the classroom at school or the youth room at a church what we see is only a small piece of the bigger story. While this may not be news to us it could still be argued most teachers/leaders respond to those they are guiding often without considering what is causing the person to act as they do.

In my opinion, the key question and answer of this interview is the following,

QUESTION: "Why do you think people in education are not more aware of the importance of the relationship between violence and children’s cognitive development and its effect on learning?"

ANSWER: “It’s because teachers haven’t been invited to the table. I go to a lot of research conferences on childhood trauma and the people that are there tend to be either researchers, or sometimes mental health experts and psychologists. Even when I raise questions about why teachers aren’t invited, it’s like they fall back on me with ‘Well, teachers teach, they don’t deal with mental health.’ My argument is that yes, teachers do teach, and one of the ways out of the effects of trauma is to help them teach in a manner that works for the brain to overcome trauma.”

Every week I work with youth of different races and across the spectrum of economic backgrounds. I see these kids for such a small portion of their week and try as I might the truth is I will only see a small portion of their bigger life. It is quite possible these youth may come in the youth room or the class where I tutor carrying the weight of some trauma big or small. For me to be with them and not be sensitive to this possibility, limits my ability to point them to the God who restores. It blinds me to the greater story of tragedy or loss they may have experienced and in times where discipline is needed for misbehaving, compassion may take a distant backseat.

This interview goes on to suggest a few understandings helpful for teachers to change the mind-set of their learning environments toward a more trauma sensitive classroom. Ms. Craig offers that “overcoming people’s denial about the role trauma plays in children’s lives” is difficult.

She also challenges people to change their thinking about classroom management. She asserts we think all children will have high motivation to work for rewards forgetting kids who have been traumatized are not operating in the normal patterns.
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Finally Craig cautions teachers to take care of themselves while they are taking care of those who are traumatized. Mental health issues arise for the care-giver and support needs to be offered.
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As we consider these points it is beneficial to consistently evaluate how we are approaching those for whom we are caring and those we lead and teach. What assumptions and categories are we bringing into the setting? How can we work more effectively with mental health professionals in caring for those we teach and shepherd?  How can we more adequately equip ourselves to be sensitive to trauma and respond adequately?

If you want to read the full interview go here.


* For more information on caring for children and youth after trauma, visit our youth ministry tools and training page.

Last month, one of the leaders in my spiritual direction group said to me, “Cynthia, God is as interested as doing something in you and for you, as He is through you.” 
 
I sat there feeling a deep relief, but also a strange unfamiliarity about really holding on to this promise.
 
As a seminary teacher and psychologist, I am familiar with the idea of “being my best instrument” and the importance of my own “self-care.” Yet the drive to serve, give, and minister can be “blinders” to these notions. God’s call to us for ministry is not a call to bring healing to others at the expense of our own healing.
 
Ministry is a call to “mutual transformation.”[1] God actively desires our wholeness and health, as much as he wants to see that transformation in our ministry community. The act of opening ourselves to that work… is where transformation begins.
 
Yet, what happens when the need for our own or others’ healing seems to overwhelm us?
 
Maybe we feel a deep, pervasive weariness, which makes it difficult to find the energy to even stop the known routine.  Or, perhaps an unexpected tragedy knocks us off our feet. What if we do not really know where to start because there are so many, and such extensive, needs?  Or, what about when the quiet disclosure of a family trauma from a community member triggers something from our own history? We might find ourselves struggling to stay attentive to this dear soul sharing a secret when our minds are flashing to images of our own pain.
 
Being a witness to acts of violence, tragic accidents, or life-threatening illnesses reminds us that life is precious and fragile. We may feel shaken as we realize that we cannot hold onto a sense of permanence in our relationships. Where does our transformation fit into these places? How might God desire for us to deepen in joy even as we walk in sorrow?
 
I believe that one crucial aspect of creating a foundation for ministry is mutual transformation. In the deep work of trauma recovery, understanding the human response to tragedy and grief is especially important.
 
This knowledge orients us to a position of grace as we work to create places of safety, rituals of grief and connection, and opportunities to connect for trauma survivors. Understanding what trauma response looks like in ourselves and in others will help us to stay engaged and emotionally present (and perhaps even physically present!) in our ministry settings. The human experience is full of deep joy and deep pain, and we are often called to hold both of these with equanimity. Walking with others through trauma, attending to our own pain, and engaging in God’s healing work can certainly grow us in mutual transformation.
 
The work of ICTG is an extraordinary resource for this learning, and I am grateful for ICTG’s deep, reflective, and psychologically minded materials. In an effort to expand these resources and to inform others in ministry, I am working with a team of graduate students at Fuller Theological Seminary, Graduate School of Psychology to survey clergy members about their own encounters with trauma care. We will use your insights, experience, and reflections to continue to build “trauma-informed ministry.”
 
With an investment in learning, we desire to move us into that mutual transformation – the work of God “in and for you,” as you serve others.
 
Please consider adding your insights, the survey should take approximately 30 minutes of your time:  Trauma Informed Ministry Survey

[1] Eriksson, C., Wilkins, A., & Tiersma Watson, J. (2015). Caring for practitioners: Relationships, burnout, and sustainability. In B. Myers, E. Dufault-Hunter, & I. Voss (Eds.). Health, Healing, and Shalom: Frontiers and Challenges for Christian Health Missions, pp. 197-213. Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library.


Learn more about self-care, managing stress, and becoming an agent for healing by becoming an ICTG Affiliate. ICTG Affiliates have access to dozens of resources, including the 2016 General Ministry Resource Guide and assessments.

Sometimes the greatest acts of wisdom come not from knowing what to do, but simply coming to an understanding of what is going on.  A proper assessment can inspire creative methods of pastoral care that can lead to health, hope, and healing.  In Part 2 of this series on depression, I reflect on my experiences with depression in a way that integrates the data from my own experiences and empirical research to offer suggestions, tools, and insights for congregational care.  Since the experience of depression can be diverse, with no one case being similar to another, there may not necessarily be a systematic outline of “what to do.”  However, I would suggest that determining what to do and where to go should be co-determined by the care seeker and the care provider.  For example, a person with depression may not have a goal of “getting better”, but may have a goal of not feeling alone.  This can only be discerned by seeking first to understand – and this requires curiosity, patience, and attentive listening skills.

The interpretive phase, where a pastor or congregational care minister assesses what is going wrong is one of the most important phases.  To use a golfing metaphor, if a golfer fails to determine where the pin is located, they may aim in the wrong direction.  Likewise, assessment is crucial because it informs diagnosis and treatment.

Cognitive distortions are concrete obstacles that I faced, and do face, in my experience of depression.  Defined, cognitive distortions are firmly held beliefs that have no basis in reality (Ellis, 1959).  At this link here, you will find a list of 20 common cognitive distortions.  I encourage you to look at this list and consider how or in what way you may have engaged in distorted thinking.  This can create an awareness and sensitivity that can empower care.  Cognitive Therapy believes that how a person thinks will influence how they feel.  Therefore, changing how and what a person thinks is a primary method used to create change (Beck, 1976).

Two cognitive distortions I commonly engage in are fortune telling and mind reading. Fortune telling is a process where a person negatively predicts the future.  While I was applying to doctoral programs, I engaged in fortune telling by saying to myself, “You’re just not smart enough. No one is going to admit you.”  Mind reading is similar to fortune telling.  Rather than predicting a future event, I attempt to predict what other people are thinking or feeling.  Here, my insecurity and fear or rejection becomes commandeered by the belief that a person must not like me or secretly thinks I’m worthless.  Mind readers make negative predictions regarding the thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes of others.

Taking time to reflect on your own thought processes and patterns and learning about what and how your congregants with depression think will aid you in assessing depression related issues within your congregation.  Important note: If you are not a trained ministerial counselor or clinical therapist, be sure to reach out to a licensed expert for advice before providing care for congregants with depression.  A licensed trauma trained therapist should already be part of your professional care network. You can learn more about developing a professional care network in the 2016 ICTG General Ministry Resource Guide.

One resource you and your therapeutic consultant may find facilitates your understanding of how and what people think, related to distorted thinking, is a handbook by Robert Leahy. This book is most useful because it defines core concepts and then systematically and methodically shows you how to translate them into real-life therapeutic practices. This book is an excellent resource to help ministers in their practices of care if they are professionally and clinically trained.  For non-clinical practice, this resource can help ministers to learn more about the experience of people who experience depression.

Learning about, and coming to understand, the internal dialogue of individuals who experience depression can inform practices of care.  Specifically, related to ministry, preaching, teaching, worship, and liturgy can be used to construct counter-narratives that people who experience depression face.  In addition, these tools can be constructed and used to challenge cognitive distortions people with depression face.  Below are some examples and ideas of how to address depression within your congregation:

• A sermon of the Imago Dei could cognitively challenge congregants who experience depression to reconsider and evaluate their identity and self-concept. 

• Teaching can be used to construct a “theological anthropology”, or a view of human nature, that ascribes inherent value and worth. 

• Worship can be used as a form of confession, opening opportunities for individuals to cry out in their distress and express their feelings (to God). 

• Liturgy can be a powerful practice and help congregants finds the words when no words seem to exist.  Sometimes, the throes of suffering can be so deep and overwhelming that an individual cannot finds the words enter into communion with self, others, and God – liturgy can facilitate this encounter.

Follow the entire 5-part series here:
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Tell Your Story and Create a Culture of Hope and Healing - Part 1 
Understanding Change - Part III​
What to Do: Insights and Reflections in the Practice of Pastoral Care - Part IV
Demystifying Norms for Leadership and Sharing My Story - Part V

As our hearts ache, again, following another terrorist attack, many of us feel that restlessness that forms in the aftermath of atrocity. What can we do? How can we help? ​Many of us are far away and feel so much sorrow. We are challenged, again, to know how best to encourage, support, and enact care. 

Here's a few practices that ICTG staff, directors, advisors, and colleagues have found most useful following human-caused disasters that occur far away: 

• Spread love locally
  • Gather together for prayer, singing, and lighting candles
  • Spend this week expressing love to your loved ones
  • Reach out to your neighbors with acts of goodness and kindness
  • Extend acts of care to strangers you meet this week

• Spread love throughout the country and the world
  • Call a loved one or an old friend you haven't talked to in awhile to share how much you still care
  • Gather with family and friends to create preparedness kits or to create care kits for a nonprofit that collects them for sudden events like this one (a few examples, Ready.Gov, Red Cross, Presbyterian Disaster Assistance)
  • Make a donation to your favorite nonprofit in honor of those who have died. Many denomination relief agencies are combining and sending monies together to help with foreign aid – give to your denomination's relief agency and make a greater impact. (If you don't know if your denomination has a relief agency, now is a great time to find out.) 
  • ICTG makes resources available online for ordained and lay ministers to access anywhere they have internet service. Further training also is available for ICTG Affiliates – like resource guides for ministers, youth ministers, and spiritual directors, and congregational assessment guides and response go lists. Today is a great day to become an ICTG Affiliate and start accessing these tools immediately. 

With these acts you get involved in countering terror locally and globally. These acts make a difference. Be a blessing this week. 

Rev. Dr. Kate Wiebe is Executive Director of ICTG. With almost twenty years of experience practicing pastoral therapy and providing congregational care consulting, Kate sees congregations as catalysts for healing. 

One of the most powerful tools a minister or congregational care leader possesses is their story.  Specifically related to the experience of depression, sharing one’s story safely from a position of leadership, without using or manipulating the congregation as a source of healing, can open avenues for coping, healing, and spiritual growth.  From my experience, telling your story of what has occurred and how healing took shape, can create an opportunity for your congregation to begin to acknowledge and address the hardships they face from the stories you share and recognize achievable pathways for healing.

First, sharing is important because it produces a bridge that help people to connect with their story, the story of God, and the story of others.  In many cases, a person may lack a context to consider their struggles.  As Gachago et al. (2014) says, sharing provides a “counterstory” or an alternative “window” through which people can understand and interpret their experiences.  In many congregations, a “window” to view and address depression may not exist.  By telling your story, you create a new “window” for your congregation to begin to acknowledge and address their stories.

Second, sharing is important because it builds a supportive community.  Bernard Rimé suggests social sharing creates social support, empathy, and non-verbal comforting behaviors from others (Rimé et al., 1998; Rimé, 2009).  When a leader, or a hurting congregant, shares their story the congregation often responds with empathy, gratitude, and social-spiritual support.  Sharing builds community around a particular experience and has the ability to create and/or transform the culture and norms of your congregation.  For example, an implicit norm in a church may be, “everyone is okay and we expect everyone to be okay.”  It would be
counter-normative to have a problem, if everyone “seems” to be “okay”.  Sharing our struggles can create and/or shift the norm so that “not being okay” is not counter-normative, but normal.

I used to go to a church that used the motto, “It’s okay to not be okay.”  This motto came from their collective narrative, which assumed most of their congregation was “not okay”.  This motto created a norm and a culture where it was “okay to not be okay.” People who struggle with depression may already feel vulnerable, judged, and ostracized.  Therefore, they may be less likely to seek help if it will make them stand out, feel judged, or be uncomfortable.  Creating a counter-cultural norm demystifies the norm that “everyone is okay” and creates space for authentic and genuine living to occur.

Creating a counter-normative culture is significant because research has shown that people who are unable to express their spiritual distress may be more likely to “walk away” from their faith or religious tradition.  In opposition, individuals who are able to express their spiritual struggles and concerns are not only unlikely to walk away from their faith but they are likely to experience coping and spiritual growth (Exline, Kaplan, & Grubbs, 2012).  Thus, sharing your story can create new opportunities for others to share their stories and begin the process of acknowledging and addressing their hardship.

To summarize part 1 of this series there are three things you can do to begin to acknowledge and address depression in your congregation.

1. Get to know the stories in your church.
2. Be courageous and share your stories.  Integrate your personal struggles into the stories you share. If nobody shares the stories of hardship an implicit norm can be constructed that says, “Everyone is okay so it would be ‘weird’ to have a problem”.
3. Consider creating a supportive outlet among trained pastoral caregivers for individuals safely to share, study, and explore their difficult experiences.

Here is a link with additional stories that can help pastors and congregational care teams gain a greater understanding of people’s experience with depression


Follow the entire 5-part series here:

Understanding What is Going On - Part II
Understanding Change - Part III​
What to Do: Insights and Reflections in the Practice of Pastoral Care - Part IV
Demystifying Norms for Leadership and Sharing My Story - Part V