Skip to main content

Understanding Church Trauma

Christian communities are expected to be our safest emotional and physical spaces. Even so, there are times this sacred space become toxic, abusive, and traumatizing to a church member when leaders and members of a congregation exhibit actions that fail to reflect the love of God.

In the infographic below, four common ways church trauma is caused is identified and explained. I hope the information will help you understand what has happened to you or someone you know in church (or now no longer in the Christian community).

The purpose of this post is to promote healing among those traumatized and to highlight practices that need to stop so that a Christian community is restored once again as the safest emotional and physical space for any child of God.

As you continue educating yourself on church trauma and abuse, it’s important to remember that you are not alone. If you need to, seek a mental health professional to help you better understand your condition its impact on your relationship with God, other Christians and people around you.

If you are wondering if you have experienced church trauma, click here to take a discovery test.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Overcoming Setbacks with Seligman's 3P's

How do you successfully process negative events that hit you in life ? Psychologist Martin Seligman discovered 3P's that STUNT recovery from such events: Personalization - what happened is my fault; realize that bad events aren't entirely your fault. Not everything that happens to you happens because of you. When you blame yourself, you delay recovery. Pervasiveness - this will affect ALL areas of my life; realize bad events don't affect every area of your life Permanence - the aftershocks of this event will last forever; realize hardships won't follow you everywhere forever even though you feel that the debilitating anguish will always be there. When we are suffering, we tend to project it out indefinitely and overestimate how long negative events will affect us. One way to overcome this is to replace "never" and "always" with "sometimes" and "lately". So next time, when the next 'bad'comes, remind yourself ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Am I A Beggar, Begging?

I believe there are people out there who want to help and are able to help, so I share needs, both personal and church/ministry related. I also believe what James said in his letter, "You do not have because you do not ASK." So it was a surprise to me to be (recently) labelled a beggar and to have my sharing of needs and requesting for assistance and donations described as begging. My initial response was, "What? Me a beggar, begging? I began to wonder when did asking become begging and is there a difference between asking and begging. So I turned to Google and typed in 'difference between asking and begging', and lo, to my surprise, it was an often asked question! The articles, forums and comments listed were helpful and most importantly, eye opening, especially the dictionary definitions. It says that if I ask someone or ask for something earnestly and/or humbly, thats begging. Then I have been begging (oh no!). It also says that if I ask especially f...
Post a Comment
Read more