(RNS) — Trauma-informed care is a growing movement across the world, and in the past decade, spiritual directors have increasingly used its methods to deal with clients who suffer from religious trauma and spiritual abuse.
Seminaries are now including trauma-informed care as part of their clinical pastoral education programs, and religious leaders in more progressive denominations say more needs to be done to make congregations healthy and safe places.
“When I look at the church and some of the culture of what’s happening right now with so many people not even wanting to come to the church, it highlights that sense of not having trust in the church, or not feeling safe in the church, not feeling a sense of belonging,” said Lisa Taylor, a soul-care practitioner with the CHRIS 180 Institute for Spiritual Health, where she trains clergy and spiritual care practitioners. “One of my greatest desires is for the church to become a sacred sanctuary where people can feel safe to be who they are.”
Trauma-informed care became a wider phenomenon in the 1970s with the awareness of what combat veterans experienced in Vietnam and how it spread to their children, said Taylor.
Trauma-informed care posits that trauma happens in the body and that changing the mind does not address the underlying roots of the trauma.
Janyne McConnaughey. (Courtesy photo)
“Denying that something has happened is actually not very helpful to us because it’s in our bodies, …