Can Self-Regulation Help You Access Spiritual Practices?

Trauma in the Pews 2.0. Section 2: Part One (Second Half)

How Can Self-Regulation Help You Access Spiritual Practices?

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From yesterday’s post:

The answer Trauma in the Pews 2.0 provides is based in the study of neuroscience—how God created our bodies. It isn’t necessary to be a neuroscientist! The basic information about how our body responds to a stressful event was covered in Chapter Two. Now it is important to understand how healthy nurturing relationships as children build a healthy nervous system, what happens when this doesn’t occur, and what you can do to build the missing foundational building blocks you may have missed. 

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Regulate to be Calmer
Pause to Consider
Use Agency to Choose

If you are a survivor of childhood trauma or neglect, your expressions of need probably resulted in shame or punishment. These experiences are so deeply internalized that you probably don’t realize not everyone feels the way you do. As a result, you probably walked into church and/or therapy with little concept of why you were unable to rid yourself of the constant inner turmoil—a dysregulated nervous system. A therapist will focus on self-regulation skills, a pastor who is not trauma-informed will most often identify the problem as sin and spiritual practices as the answer. This is not helpful!

The strategies we learned to meet our needs as children may feel like what the church calls sin. Addictions begin with a need to calm the nervous system. We either move toward something as a solution or we avoid something to protect ourselves from additional harm. But what does this have to do with spiritual practices?