Pastors and their spouses talked about the fear and anxiety they would feel when they ran into former members in the neighborhood. How do you greet someone who no longer talks to you? Why does it still hurt when you see them avoiding your glance at the other end of the supermarket aisle? Why does your body want to run the other way?
This last question—why we have a gut reaction to flee—is another reason why trauma is so very difficult to extinguish, even with traditional talk therapy. Our bodies are wonderfully and fearfully made so that when traumatic events occur they are processed rapidly through the amygdala, a structure buried in the center of the brain, which quickly sends messages down the central nervous system to create an immediate full-body response of fight, flight or freeze. However, it bypasses the frontal lobe, which could have processed the event with a more complex conscious understanding if there had been more time and less anxiety.
But even afterward, traumatic experiences are not necessarily woven into neural networks in the front of the brain where thought and memory occur. Recent studies of PTSD show that the incidents causing such damaging responses tend to remain just above the amygdala in the area where daydreaming occurs, never entirely turning into memories where they could be processed by the frontal lobe and cataloged as something that happened in the past.
These primitive emotional and cognitive reactions reinforce each other, making us hypersensitive to real or perceived threats. Often, when we overreact with seemingly inappropriate emotions or thoughts, it can feel like we are having an out-of-body experience with our frontal lobe wondering, Where did that come from? Our reactions to those around us can appear to be out of whack, whether it’s being quieter in staff meetings, finding ourselves giving an over-snappy response to a reasonable question, easily crying or experiencing sudden gut-punching fear when we see former friends at a restaurant.
Betrayal trauma is hard to extinguish because our brains can remain on hyperalert for years to ward off another round of crippling vulnerability. It is no surprise that in spring 2024, Barna found that only 37% of pastors reported satisfaction with their mental health.
Healing Your Heart
There is no easy way to overcome betrayal trauma. Because it sits in the more primitive parts of our brain, we simply can’t talk ourselves out of it even when we know the causes. However, we can calm down the rapid firing of the amygdala over time by paying attention to our thoughts, behaviors and emotions, especially when memories of the most anxious interactions trigger us.
First, understand that the people who left were likely experiencing their own small “t” trauma. They were probably reacting to their own anxiety with a fight-and-flight response. Picking a fight with their pastor and then leaving fits this pattern. People are biased toward expecting big causes to explain big problems. In psychology, we call this proportionality bias. We want to believe that tragic outcomes must have a disastrous reason behind them. So, people often imagine darker causes at the root of an issue. This is why people are easily drawn to conspiracy theories, being motivated to believe that there is something far more nefarious going on when pastors disagree with them. Forgiveness might mean understanding that their behavior was not entirely rational but stemmed from a place of vulnerability soaked in anxiety, fear and sorrow.
Even as you find it possible to become kinder to those who left, it’s important to be kinder to yourself. Fight and flight are not just instantaneous responses to trauma but can turn into long-term dysfunctional ways to function. In this case, “fighting” might mean doubling down on ministry work to prove one’s worth or orthodoxy. One pastor told me that when a couple of good friends left, he started working more hours, driving his staff even harder. It took him about a year to recognize that this wasn’t a heroic surrender to God as much as a triggered response to his grief.
The long-term consequences of flight can include withdrawing from others. Most notably, this might mean leaving your church or even quitting the ministry. That may be the right thing to do for other reasons, and I recommend Henry Cloud’s 2011 book, Necessary Endings, to think through that decision. But please know that the effects of trauma don’t end once you leave. Because trauma resides within individuals rather than an event, we take our trauma with us.
Like the daydream aspects of PTSD, even if we find ourselves in a new position, we can still relive anxious events or relitigate difficult conversations on any given day as a subconscious form of multitasking, barely aware that we are constantly replaying these memories as we wished they would have turned out. There are therapies directed toward the amygdala, such as cognitive-behavioral desensitization therapy and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), that can weaken memories that seem to be on infinite loops, but changing locations where memories are no longer anchored in reality can actually make their intrusiveness worse. You can’t outrun trauma.
Pastors told me how they don’t think it will be possible for them to be as vulnerable with others at church. I get it and think that needs to be honored (for now). But being made in the image of the trinitarian God, we need deep friendships. Developing trusting friendships outside your ministry, denomination or church network can be a balm for your soul. Find friends who don’t care that you’re a pastor.
I’ve been in Christian higher education as a professor and administrator for 30 years. I’ve also been part of local running and swimming clubs for two decades. Those folks know I am a Christian, but most don’t quite understand my vocation. Yet we have walked alongside each other through disease, divorce, dementia and death. These friendships are dear to me because my friends don’t know me by a role or a title. In many ways, I am my most authentic self with them. Building trusting relationships unrelated to your role can be a first step back toward vulnerability.
Next, be kinder to yourself by listening to your emotions to understand the circumstances in which you are most likely to be triggered. Pastors reported feeling stabbed in the back. While this is obviously metaphorical, there can be real pain in trauma because it is a full-bodied experience—an achiness sometimes accompanied by GI issues, rashes or insomnia. You also might be experiencing shame that you couldn’t stop this break. Yet this is not unique to you, and there is probably very little you could have done to stop it.
Don’t beat yourself up or put yourself in situations likely to cause an overly anxious response. We can’t “gut it out” when faced with anxious situations. Our bodies keep the score when we don’t listen to them, releasing cortisol and other hormones that are important in emergencies but can cause damage if we are always in a heightened state. It will get easier, but we must be aware that our bodies work on their own timetables.
Finally, God’s grace is greater than our grief. As painful as trauma can be, it is redeemable. People who have gone through trauma often come through the experience with greater resilience for the next round of life stressors, experiencing what psychologists call post-traumatic growth. They can develop a deeper appreciation for simple things and forge stronger relationships with those closest to them. They also tend to have greater empathy with others who have gone through traumatic events. In Romans 5:3–4, Paul wrote about the inner strength and more profound faith that can be the gift of grace through trauma, reminding us that “we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.”