Wrapping Our Heads Around Trauma
Spiritual abuse and religious trauma, and DC recap!
Hello friends! I am back from an amazing trip to DC and a very enriching EMDR conference. Thanks to everyone who commented on last week’s post or otherwise connected with me — I’d mentioned how much I hate social situations like that, and having internet friends (who are REAL friends in our own special way, am I right?) “present” with me was quite validating. And guess what! I even met some interesting people and reconnected with an old colleague, so to me, I got all I was looking for socially out of the event!
I went to some really interesting workshops, but I’m guessing you all might be the most interested in the one about EMDR and religious trauma. I’ll share some of what I learned (you can find the speaker on Instagram at therapywithcassidy, to give appropriate credit). Much of the material I’ll share from the presentation is drawn from the Religious Trauma Institute and Dan Koch’s work on spiritual abuse.
Terms can be thrown around and I think we usually have a sense of what we’re talking about, but it’s really helpful to get solid on these concepts. So, here’s some definitions we’ll use (with my own paraphrasing / modifications):
Spiritual Abuse: “Exploitation of a person’s spirituality for domination or control.” This is the thing that happens to you.
Religious Trauma: Event, system, relationship, etc that is overwhelming to your [nervous] system and has a profound impact on your health and well-being. This is your body’s response to the thing that happens to you. As such, trauma is pretty relative, and what is traumatizing for one person may be brushed off by another.
Another distinction that I’m finding super helpful, identified in various workshops at the conference, is the difference between trauma from a stressful event and trauma from an attachment wound.
Stress trauma: Occurs when something bad happens to you and your nervous system responds in a maladaptive way. For instance, can be caused by: physical, emotional, sexual abuse; natural disasters; accidents; etc.
Attachment Wounding / Attachment Trauma: When something doesn’t happen to you that should have happened to you. For instance: receiving sufficient care / responsiveness / attunement from a caregiver. This can range from full-blown emotional neglect to chronic patterns of misattunement from a well-meaning but misguided caregiver.
The distinction felt so simple, but really revelatory to me! I also appreciated that when we’re using EMDR, which desensitizes a person to a traumatic memory and lets them store in appropriately in narrative form in their brain, you can desensitize to a stress trauma… but you can’t desensitize away something that never happened. Instead, we therapists work with clients to help them build their internal resources so they can learn to reparent themselves and really be able to take in the care and nurture they deserve but didn’t get!
I want to share more, but to be honest, I’m pretty spent after the last two days of three being 8 clients apiece, doing some heavy-duty trauma work. I LOVE what I do and also… I’m tired! So just real quick, I’ll share some joys from the week:
I don’t often feel these days like I get to tap into spiritual experiences, at least not the way I used to. But as I reflect on my trip a few moments stand out as particularly joy-filled, and dare I say, spiritual??
Being in DC reminded me of the year I spent in Boston, taking public transit to get around, enjoying my own company, exploring historic cities, and generally feeling like a quirky free spirit. It was good to get in touch with her again.
Riding my bikeshare bike underneath trees filled with screaming (and I do mean screaming) cicadas. I despise the once-every-17-year-brood that showed up in 2021, but man do I love August cicadas and the cacophony they make. It brings me such joy!
Riding the bike (again) along a strip by the airport right along the river between DC and Alexandria, and noticing there were tons of people gathered outside in this empty field (with music-playing food trucks beside it). Huh?? I came to realize… they’re just there (I think) to watch the planes land! It’s actually incredible to have a gigantic plane soar so close overhead it feels you could practically touch it, then watch it land a couple football fields away. Wow! I see why they gather!
The sight of monuments lit up in the dark, the sight of sunset casting its last rays on the tips of treetops… gosh I love summer, and I love being outside.
All right, that’s it from me today. How are you all? Any unconventional spiritual moments you’d like to share? Were you struck by any of those definitions above (or maybe will take it to your therapist?? :D )
This post is so helpful. Thank you for laying out definitions of these key terms. Wow! So powerful for getting clarity! I appreciate definitions, always. Thank you for that attitude of yours, the life-long learner. Thank you for your willingness to share with others what you have been learning.
I struggled for a bit, at the conceptual level, with the use of the word "wound" in the term "attachment wound." This is because I was confused about how the *absence of* something that is needed (e.g. responsiveness from a caregiver) can cause a wound. I know how blows can wound. But how can some lack of action cause a wound?
But then I imagined my infant and toddler self, and how incredibly tender and/or "thin-skinned" I believe I must have been, how sensitive, how very fragile. Tender as can be, I reached out again and again, and rubbed up against a mother who was like sandpaper, harsh, simmering with resentment, as sharp as a pile of needles. Over time, brushing up against her, I wore down what little skin I had, emotionally speaking, 'til what was exposed was the quick, my innermost core, the most soft and tender part imaginable. In other words, you could say, I injured myself trying to deal with her. I kept touching her, grasping at her, trying to connect with her. But it was always excruciating, her non-responsiveness.
So, yes, in that sense, even had she never *done* any of the things she actually did that wounded me (such as dousing me with the acid that is shame and of course when you are a tiny, not-fully-formed, tender, sensitive little being, that will be scalding), her just being who she was, her sandpaper rough self, was enough to cause massive abrasions on me by virtue of my reaching out to her, having contact with her, brushing up against her trying to get some sort of foothold in the world but finding in her nothing but bitterness, scorn, sharp edges, and the burning, acidic disgust she felt toward me.
Dealing with a parent who is non-responsive can be wounding to a little child without much in the way of armor, I guess you could say. What little armor I had, much of it got abraded off, leaving me with giant gaping wounds.
Thank you, Christine. What you write is clarifying and empowering. I appreciate you and am always interested to know what you're up to because you are excited by ideas and learning and gaining insight and finding healing. All of these are so important for dealing with religious trauma. I am grateful for you and this fantastic blog.
Your joy and feelings of freedom at being outdoors in a fascinating place in the summer and in the context of exciting new learning shines through like a beacon, Christine. Especially this: “…enjoying my own company, exploring historic cities, and generally feeling like a quirky free spirit. It was good to get in touch with her again.” One can’t help exulting with you! That sure seems like a spiritual experience to me!
About what you learned, this really strikes me as a huge insight: “…you can’t desensitize away something that never happened.” Of course that’s why attachment CPTSD is so hard to treat! You make it so clear! And your answer is so clear too—we have to learn the tools that let us love and reparent ourselves in order to fill in the love deficit we feel from our childhood. That single paragraph may be the most succinct statement of the attachment trauma problem and solution I’ve ever read!