I encounter many different variations of trauma in patients who are veterans. In my own personal experience, I can say it sometimes can feel so heavy that no words can express it. The pain that comes with it can feel everlasting.
Chaplains tend to struggle with secondary trauma, involving the emotional residue of exposure experienced in working with people as we hear their trauma stories. Chaplains become witnesses to the pain, fear, and terror that trauma survivors have endured. How we manage it can affect the quality of the patient care we provide and the self-care we must intentionally practice to thrive in such a challenging, yet meaningful vocation.
Personal wholeness can lead others in trauma to wholeness
As a chaplain, I must be aware of what’s happening when a patient discloses their trauma story. I cannot address the trauma alone, but need the whole of the medical team to address the trauma that’s intertwined within the whole body of the patient. Chaplains provide spiritual care alongside many different disciplines, such as psychology, neurology, social work, and other medical specialties. As one of my C.P.E. supervisors told me, “Butler, you are not Jesus.”
In other words, I cannot do all the work, let alone deliver good quality work to a veteran without the help of other disciplines. Each of us from each discipline have something to offer each other as well as something to offer the veteran. Each of us sees through a different lens, a different clinical paradigm. In order to take care of my whole body I remind myself constantly to be intentional by staying in my lane and calling on others for help when it feels like it is time to “switch lanes.” I also have to intentionally practice my own personal self-care as well: exercising, eating healthy, spiritual community, time in nature, getting good sleep, seeing a therapist, etc. By practicing our own self-care it enables us to give the best care to our patients rather than just good care.
Spirituality is shaken during trauma
Clinically speaking, care providers must settle down the body before looking at the mind. The brain stores trauma in unique ways. If we push, dismiss, or are flippant in our responses, we can actually further the trauma.
Trauma shakes the spirituality of the patient and provider to their very core.
It’s important to note when someone is physically activated when sharing their trauma. By letting the bodies grieve as much as the brain and spirit need to- chaplains embrace the other by simply being present, and knowing when to seek further professional help.
Trauma causes a spiritual awakening and/or a spiritual deconstruction because it leads to asking questions such as: How can I exist in the world now? Where is God? How do I find community, value, purpose, meaning, my identity, and how can I feel safe in the world again?
Many who have experienced trauma have to learn how to embrace a grief that feels endless. They desperately need us to create a safe place for them to share and receive support. We must be patient. Many of us began life with what we would describe as systems of trusted support: family, community, state, God, and church. Combat veterans go to war literally experiencing hell on earth and return home to a place where they feel they no longer fit in or can be understood.
The trauma they experience hurts so much it results in existential shame about who they are and who God is in their life. For them to talk about it again is traumatic in and of itself – to feel the pain again and admit how much it hurts.
We, as a spiritual community, the church at large, and care providers serving in our various roles of ministry can create safe places for our veterans and for civilians to just be human beings returning to wholeness.
Unless we have experienced the trauma, we cannot know the depth of where they are and where they are going, but we, as chaplains, can create safe spaces for them to be who they are and truly say how they feel.
We all are seeking meaning-making; seeking a purpose, value, personhood, and acceptance. We all experience doubts and have hard questions to confront time to time regarding our spirituality. We can help those affected by trauma return to wholeness by creating safe spaces for people to be seen and heard. Rev. Barbra Brown Taylor said it best when she said, “Holiness is simply paying attention.”
For further guidance in addressing trauma and secondary trauma see the following websites:
http://www.theliturgists.com/podcast/2017/5/16/spiritual-trauma https://www.counseling.org/docs/trauma-disaster/fact-sheet-9---vicarious-trauma.pdf