Spirit and Trauma: A Reflection

This semester I have been taking three independent studies, and I plan on sharing my final papers mid May. Until then, I thought you might get a kick out of some informal reflections.

For Theological Reflections on Trauma, my overseeing professor and I wrote in the syllabus that I would read five books and write a 3-4 page reflection each, and how it tied to my overarching theme of “theological reflections on trauma.” They are not formal papers by a long shot, but people might be intrigued enough to read the books for themselves.

Each essay got an 86, which feels about right.

Spirit and Trauma: A Reflection

“The storm is gone, but the “after the storm” is always here.” These opening words of Spirit and Trauma are attributed to Shelly Rambo’s friend and Deacon, Julius Lee, as the two gazed across the lingering upheaval after Hurricane Katrina, a full two years after the storm. People were returning or had relocated, houses were continuing to be built, and yet the city and the people were far from moving on. The “after the storm” was still there, and there was no visible end in sight. In Spirit and Trauma, Rambo sets out on a two part mission: First, “to explore what it means to witness to this aftermath, to witness beyond that shattering of the categories we employ to make sense of the world... The crisis is one of living between life and death, of living in the middle.” And second, to “examine the ways in which theological language, newly conceived through the lens of trauma, witnesses to that remains.” Of the two, this reflection will focus on Rambo’s first claim that rather than isolate the pain of the cross, or hurry on to Easter Sunday where hope is fulfilled, we who are hurting should abide in the painful and uncertain middle ground of Holy Saturday.

Rambo defines trauma in three parts: The injury or event preceding the trauma, the trauma itself, and the healing or reintegration of life. She uses Holy Week as described in the Gospel of John, and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans to illustrate. I will apply her parallels to the self-harmer. The first stage, or the traumatic event, is the crucifixion, the storm, and the act of of self-harm. The trauma or “the middle” is that ambiguous land between death and life: the continuing life in New Orleans “after the storm,” the withdrawal period for the self-harmer, and Holy Saturday. The healing/reintegration is found in Easter Sunday, the uncertain and ambiguously named future in New Orleans, and I would argue the continued recovery for the self-harmer. Rambo’s primary source for the argument in favor of Holy Saturday stems from the book Heart of the World by Hans Urs von Balthasar and Adrienne von Speyr. Regrettably I had never heard of or read their work before and as such I feel ill-equipped to speak towards their claims that each year Speyr would experience a supernatural trance where she witnessed Jesus’ journey into Hell, thereby learning in pieces the mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection. Psychologically though, and through my own experiences with trauma, I agree with their conclusion that the traumatic pain cannot typically be contained in a single moment, nor should the healing process be rushed.

The first danger in responding to trauma, Rambo claims, is the tendency to isolate the event. Christians are especially guilty of focussing exclusively on the cross as a lone minute in time before immediately moving on to the empty tomb, feeding the illusion that trauma and healing can be cleanly defined and controlled. Life however, as Rambo describes, is not combined of isolated events, they are continuums that overlap, offering gradual shifts in perspective to our pasts and new reality. To isolate an event, be it the cross, Hurricane Katrina, or the action of self-harm, is to set oneself up for a distorted view of time and reality. While there are moments an observer might be able to call upon as monumental (when on the cross Jesus breathes his last, when the New Orleans levees broke, when the self-harmer cuts her skin for the first time) to confine the traumatic event to these single moments and ignore everything preceding and proceeding is unrealistic and ultimately harmful. And yet in an unconscious effort to make sense of our pain and hurry recovery, this is what we as a people are prone to do.

The second and most prevalent danger of the Christian, Rambo argues, is the tendency to prematurely jump from the cross to the empty tomb. To do so is to dismiss the pain of the cross and the trauma of the middle ground, or “the suffering that remains.” As people of faith, Christians are often compelled to look at all heartache and tragedy through the eyes of redemption and hope. We who profess to believe in the God who trampled death and sin on the cross, how can we possibly justify abiding on the ugly, painful realities that look and feel as though God couldn’t or wouldn’t intervene? Variations of “God must have had a reason” and “everything will work out” are commonplace phrases uttered by Christians in moments of utmost upheaval and tragedy. Though meant to be encouraging, this can instead be a disservice to those in the midst of hardships, unconsciously projecting that the suffering person is doing something wrong when their personal Easter Sunday doesn’t appear in accordance to the church’s inner clock: When it’s Saturday and Jesus is still dead, when the water is gone but so is the house, when the pains of withdrawal cause the self-harmer to want to cut again. Rather than rush to an Easter Sunday that is not yet theirs to have, Mary Magdalene, the people from New Orleans, and the recovering self-harmer must learn to simply abide, even and especially when it hurts and makes little sense. Translating this to a recovering self-harmer, I would suggest that assisting them to linger in the pain of withdrawal, leaning into the agitation and learning from it, would prove invaluable as their recovery continues. Addiction after all follows a person their entire lives. To give the self-harmer the misinformation that they need to “hurry up and get over it” would ultimately do more damage than good. They need to learn the importance of living in the uncertainty of this middle ground, this Holy Saturday.

Ironically as I read Spirit and Trauma, Rambo stirred a question that had little to nothing to do with her arguments and yet has rendered her book invaluable to me: Is addiction, specifically the action of self-harm, a man-made trauma? And if so, is the withdrawal experienced by the recovering self-harmer a form of PTSD? At this time, addiction is not formally recognized as traumatic by the National Institute of Mental Health. Even so, a comparison of the NIMH’s official PostTraumatic Stress Disorder symptoms and the unofficial yet common experiences reported by withdrawing self-harmers are eerily similar. Neither the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Center for Biotechnology Information, OR the National Addiction Studies Accreditation Commission seem to have anything to say on the matter. They all agree most if not all self-harmers hurt themselves in response to an experienced trauma from the past, but I have yet been unable to find any stance as to whether or not this specialized form of self-abuse is considered traumatic, nor if the withdrawal experienced by the recovering self-harmer is medically considered a form of PTSD. Again, the actions and symptoms are similar, the only inhibition it would seem is the traumatic event are self-inflicted. I admit, my thoughts here are garbled and I do not have a conclusion. But Shelly Rambo’s book Spirit and Trauma brought the question into the forefront of my mind, and as such, her book has proved invaluable. Because of her, I might have a future thesis.

Works Cited

Rambo, Shelly. Spirit and Trauma. Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010