Spiritual Practices: Using Agency in Guidance

Viewing and practicing worship through a trauma-sensitive lens.

I am making this post (normally for paid subscribers only) available to all subscribers because it is so critical to choose our guides wisely—something that is often difficult for survivors!

What is the purpose of the Spiritual Practice of Guidance?

Guidance is a part of every faith community's service to one another and can have many forms, such as one-on-one mentoring, spiritual direction, and counseling. It is also possible to consider the church as a village that helps guide individuals. In its safest, most positive form, guidance is an important part of belonging to a community.

How can trauma impact the Spiritual Practice of Guidance?

Prevents Setting Boundaries: Trauma can disable your ability to set boundaries. Setting boundaries requires you to have a strong sense of who you are and what or who you will accept in your life. Do you know where you end and a leader, parent, spiritual guide, or pastor begins? Does it feel nearly impossible to make a different choice than the one a leader or community member advises? Does it feel rebellious or sinful? Or possibly not honoring? When people are always in your head, they are no longer guides; they are dictators.

Damages the Ability to Trust: Trauma can affect your ability to trust. As a child, when those who cared for you also harmed you it is easy to incorrectly believe that being harmed is a sign of love. Some believe God harms us for our good. What a harmful idea—especially if you have suffered abuse! Accepting harm as a demonstration of love is a trauma response. It may also be hard to trust those who love or care without causing harm because it doesn’t feel natural. Expecting to be harmed by those who love you is a trauma response.

Causes Excessive Vulnerability: Trauma—especially early attachment wounds—can cause you to be desperate to find someone to care about you. When you find those who care or appear to care, it is easy to become overly dependent. This is normal. You are looking for someone to co-regulate your nervous system. You may have never received unconditional love and finding someone who offers it feels like receiving water after crossing a parched desert. Your unmet needs cause vulnerability!

How can using Agency make the Spiritual Practice of Guidance accessible? 

There is probably no more important place for agency than in the spiritual practice of guidance. Who will you choose as guides? Note, I said guides because you need a village of those who will speak wisdom into your life. It is important to hear differing thoughts and opinions. Guides are there to provide wisdom and insights; they should never make your choices.

It is also important to not depend too greatly on one person—for your good and theirs. Everyone who genuinely cares about others likely has a busy life of their own and there will be times when they cannot be available. Also, people are human and sometimes make mistakes when giving advice. Healthy guides will never want you to place them on a pedestal!

You can use wisdom and discernment to choose your guides. You use agency to build a village. God will bring opportunities for connection, but it is ultimately up to you. Granted, finding guides is more difficult for some because of isolation, fear of asking, past trauma, and personality traits that lean toward introversion. No matter the hurdle, it is important to have a village when the storms of life arrive—and they will.

How do you know if a potential guide has done the work of understanding trauma (and healing)? When I speak in workshops or podcasts with ministry leaders, I assume they must want to know about trauma, or they would not have chosen the session. But what do they know? I ask them to raise a hand if they have read the following books. I consider this list of books a baseline for understanding the impact of trauma. I would never seek guidance from anyone unfamiliar with the four books on this list—with the expectation that they have read at least two!

Trauma-Informed Guides

How do you know if a potential guide has done the work of understanding trauma (and healing)? When I speak in workshops or podcasts with ministry leaders, I assume they must want to know about trauma, or they would not have chosen the session. But what do they know? I ask them to raise a hand if they have read the following books. I consider this list of books a baseline in understanding the impact of trauma. I would never seek guidance from anyone not familiar with the four books on this list—with the expectation that they have read at least two!

You can use agency to determine the qualifications of guides!

• The Body Keeps the Score by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk

• What Happened to You by Dr. Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey

• The Deepest Well by Nadine Burke Harris, M.D.

• Waking the Tiger by Peter A. Levine

I could of course add Trauma in the Pews to this list!

How can you adapt the Spiritual Practice of Guidance to meet your needs? 

What you need and what you feel safe saying that you need are two different things. You may also only have a vague sense of a need, though unable to explain it. Both can make it difficult to ask for guidance—especially if shame is involved. Yet, you need to start sharing something, even if it feels trivial. You are testing the waters. A therapist once told me, “The problem is never the problem.” (Read more in this article!) Usually, the problem we bring when asking for guidance is what we feel safe enough to walk into a room and say out loud.

For example, my reason for going to therapy was to get advice about signing a contract for the following school year. I did not say, “There is a dark cloud that has hovered over me since childhood and some days it drowns me, and I don’t really want to live.” You can choose to say what feels safe (though still scary). You may not even know what you need. A guide’s purpose is to provide a safe space for you to sort it out.

When seeking out a spiritual guide you may begin with something you believe is a spiritual problem. This can be especially true if you do not know how trauma has impacted you. If the guide believes the root of all problems is spiritual, you will feel pressured to ask for help in ways the spiritual guide will accept. Note! If the “guides” suggests that mentioning your childhood trauma is only an excuse, they are not the guides you need. 

When considering guides what type of advice important? I asked a related question on Facebook: “Do you view spiritual growth and the healing from the impact of trauma as two different things? How would you explain your reasons for your answer?” Another rich discussion ensued! Some felt healing from trauma and spirituality were separate, while some felt they were the same. The math teacher in me loved the following response: “Large Venn diagram overlap for me, but not the same thing.” Some felt that healing trauma needed to happen before bringing in the spiritual, while others felt it needed to be integrated from the beginning.

My takeaway from the discussion was that no two paths can look the same. You can trust yourself and use agency and determine your correct path. Give yourself permission to include or not include the spiritual. Trust yourself to follow the path that best helps you heal and grow closer to God.

"In a forest of a hundred thousand trees, no two leaves are alike.
And no two journeys along the same path are alike.”
—Paulo Coelho—

The key is to know enough about what you need to choose the correct guide. What do you sense the reaction in your body will be in these two situations? (Note, there is no correct choice.)

The guide I have chosen believes that spirituality is central to healing and includes spiritual principles in every session while also addressing the impact of trauma.

The guide I have chosen believes that healing the trauma held in my body is the priority and does not include spiritual principles in the sessions unless I initiate the conversation.

These two approaches can often be detected by whether a therapist identifies as a Christian counselor/therapist (first scenario) or a counselor/therapist who is a Christian (second scenario). On my path, I needed the second approach because of the deep well of religious trauma. Either way, it is important for the guide to be trauma informed, and utilize trauma-based therapy approaches. If you know you have a trauma history, going to any spiritual advisor who has not done the work to become trauma-informed doesn’t make sense and will very likely be harmful.

(See below for resources for spiritual directors!)

Believing that you are the one who decides who joins your guidance village is both empowering and possibly frightening—especially if you came from a religious background in which agency was taken from you. It may require leaving places that have been your village but no longer provide the type of guidance that you need.

For those who cannot leave due to ministry obligations, it is essential to gather a village outside of your ministry setting. This is a topic for another day!

Resources:

My friend, Karen Bartlett has written two books that beautifully integrate neuroscience, an understanding of the impact of trauma, and spiritual direction. Valuable for both survivors and spiritual directors.

When Spirituality and Trauma Collide: A Guidebook for Practitioners of Soul Care

My Review:
In my work as an advocate for those who have experienced childhood trauma, including Childhood Sexual Abuse (CSA), stories of unintentional harm that results from seeking spiritual help are all too common—most often due to a lack of understanding of the impact of trauma. In "When Spirituality and Trauma Collide, A Guidebook for Practitioners of Soul Care", Karen Bartlett weaves neuroscience, attachment theory, and best practices for spiritual direction into an accessible guide that needs to be in the hands of everyone who desires to provide spiritual guidance and support to those impacted by childhood trauma. I highly recommend this resource!

Healing Deepest Hurts: When God Feels Distant and Hope Seems Lost

My Endorsement:
I highly recommend this book for those who struggle to believe they are beloved by God. Her honesty and perspectives on church practices and views of God that either help the wounded heal or cause more harm provides a deep breath of life-giving hope for those, like myself, who believe that spirituality matters.