Trauma and Pastoral Care


Book Description

This handbook is for leaders who are faced with leading an individual or a church community through a traumatic event and its aftermath. It arises out of the Tragedy and Congregations Project which helps churches to respond in a healthy way to the impact of tragedies through training in good practice, careful reflection, and drawing on faith resources. *Part One examines the physical and mental impact of trauma, and offers a rapid response pastoral toolkit and guidance on appropriate continuing care. *Part Two offers pastoral and liturgical strategies for collective trauma, suggesting ‘habits of the heart’ that will build resilience. *Part Three reflects on the changing story of life and faith as meaning is made from traumatising events, and reflects on recovery.




Trauma-Sensitive Theology


Book Description

The intention of Trauma Sensitive Theology is to help theologians, professors, clergy, spiritual care givers, and therapists speak well of God and faith without further wounding survivors of trauma. It explores the nature of traumatic exposure, response, processing, and recovery and its impact on constructive theology and pastoral leadership and care. Through the lenses of contemporary traumatology, somatics, and the Internal Family Systems model of psychotherapy, the text offers a framework for seeing trauma and its impact in the lives of individuals, communities, society, and within our own sacred texts. It argues that care of traumatic wounding must include all dimensions of the human person, including our spiritual practices, religious rituals and community participation, and theological thinking. As such, clergy and spiritual care professionals have an important role to play in the recovery of traumatic wounding and fostering of resiliency. This book explores how trauma-informed congregational leaders can facilitate resiliency and offers one way of thinking theologically in response to traumatizing abuses of relational power and our resources for restoration.




Trauma-Informed Pastoral Care


Book Description

In Trauma-Informed Pastoral Care, pastoral psychologist Karen A. McClintock offers clergy competence and confidence as they care for trauma victims in their congregations and communities, provides practical skills to lower the risk of secondary trauma, and suggests culturally sensitive models for healing.




Bearing the Unbearable


Book Description

A Christ-centered approach to dealing with trauma on both a personal and a communal level Traumas abound. Post-traumatic stress disorder, emotional and sexual abuse, unbearable anxiety and fear, and a host of other traumas afflict people everywhere. In this book Deborah van Deusen Hunsinger weaves together threads from the fields of psychology and pastoral theology as she explores the impact of trauma on people’s lives and offers practical strategies and restorative practices for dealing with it. Not only a teacher of pastoral theology but also an experienced pastoral counselor herself, Hunsinger draws on the resources of depth psychology, including object relations theory, trauma theory, family systems theory, nonviolent communication, and restorative circles. She then places her findings in a Christian theological context, emphasizing God’s work in and through Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection, to present a cohesive, faith-based vision for healing.




Pastoral Care for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder


Book Description

Provide effective care for the members of your congregation suffering with PTSD! This vital book is an overview of the nature of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It examines the causes, manifestations, and problems of PTSD as they relate to a person socially, spiritually, emotionally, physically, and psychologically. Stressing hope, healing, and compassion, Pastoral Care for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Healing the Shattered Soul includes specific suggestions for the prevention of traumatic events and for using peacemaking techniques to stop violence in your clients’lives. Pastoral Care for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is a practical, understandable, professionally presented and researched working guide for clergy in parishes, for chaplains, and for seminarians who have little or no knowledge of how to pastor to people who are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. It is also for lay people who minister to those who have been traumatized. Survivors will also benefit from its affirmation for the spiritual component of healing. This unique volume provides the practical means to support people through the healing process while maintaining their spiritual grounding, with: case studies that will help develop your skills a thoughtful discussion of the theological dimensions of trauma and suffering a practical methodology for crisis intervention an examination of the specific needs of veterans a look at the potential for caregiver burnout and how to prevent it ways that churches can contribute to the prevention of the trauma that leads to PTSD methods for using scripture as a source of healing for PTSD survivors Pastoral Care for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder also defines PTSD from a mental health perspective and gives examples of the kinds of trauma that may lead to it. No one working with PTSD survivors in a spiritual setting should be without this book!




Trauma and Transformation at Ground Zero


Book Description

"From personal interviews with chaplains at the temporary mortuary at Ground Zero and her own experiences as an Episcopal priest, psychotherapist, and chaplain, Storm Swain offers a new model of pastoral care grounded in theology and practice. Reflecting on experiences of suffering faced in ministry, Swain considers what it means to love in these instances and what is involved in ministering in these contexts. Within this model, caregivers can move from a place of trauma to a place of transformation, which enables wholeness and healing for both caregivers and those for whom they care" -- Publisher description.




Images of Pastoral Care


Book Description

This book is an edited volume of works that have predominated over the past several decades in contemporary pastoral theology. Through the writings of nineteen leading voices in the history of pastoral care, Dykstra shows how each contributor developed a metaphor for understanding pastoral care. Such metaphors include the solicitous shepherd, the wounded healer, the intimate stranger, the midwife, and other tangible images. Through these works, the reader gains a sense of the varied identities of pastoral care professionals, their struggles for recognition in this often controversial field, and insight into the history of the disciple. Includes readings by: Anton T. Boisen, Alastair V. Campbell, Donald Capps, James E. Dittes, Robert C. Dykstra, Heije Faber, Charles V. Gerkin, Brita L. Gill-Austern, Karen R. Hanson, Seward Hiltner, Margaret Zipse Kornfeld, Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, Jeanne Stevenson Moessner, Henri J. M. Nouwen, Gaylord Noyce, Paul W. Pruyser, Edward P. Wimberly.




Suffering and the Heart of God


Book Description

She's seen slave dungeons in Ghana. Genocide in Rwanda. Systemic sexual abuse in Brazil. Child abuse and domestic violence in the US. After forty years of counseling abuse survivors around the world, Dr. Diane Langberg, a world renowned trauma expert, remains certain that what trauma destroys, Christ can and does restore. This book will convince you, too, of the healing heart of God. But it's not a fast process, instead much patience is required from family, friends, and counselors as they wisely and respectfully help victims unpack their traumatic suffering through talking, tears, and time. And it's not a process that can be separated from the work of God in both a counselor and counselee. Dr. Langberg calls all of those who wish to help sufferers to model Jesus's sacrificial love and care in how they listen, love, and guide. The heart of God is revealed to sufferers as they grow to understand the cross of Christ and how their God came to this earth and experienced such severe suffering that he too is "well-acquainted with grief." The cross of Christ is the lens that transforms and redeems traumatic suffering and its aftermath, not only for the sufferer, but it also transforms those who walk with the suffering. This book will be a great help to anyone who loves, listens to, and seeks to help someone impacted by trauma and abuse. There is no quick fix, but there is the hope for healing through the love of God in Christ.




Trauma-Informed Pastoral Care


Book Description

Clergy are more likely than ever to be called on to respond to community trauma, sitting alongside trauma survivors after natural disasters, racial violence, and difficult losses. In Trauma-Informed Pastoral Care: How to Respond When Things Fall Apart, pastoral psychologist Karen A. McClintock calls clergy to learn and practice "trauma-informed care" so they can respond with competence and confidence when life becomes overwhelming. Weaving together the latest insights about trauma-informed care from the rapidly shifting disciplines of neuropsychology, counseling, and theology, she explains the body's instinctual stress patterns during and after trauma, guides readers through self-reflection and self-regulation in order to care for others and lower the risk of obtaining secondary trauma, and suggests culturally sensitive models for healing from overwhelming experiences. McClintock particularly attends to the fact that across a lifetime in ministry, clergy accumulate and need to regularly heal multiple traumatic wounds. As a pastor and psychologist, she is perfectly positioned to help clergy recognize symptoms of trauma and commit to healing individual, community, and generational trauma with care and cultural sensitivity.




Restoring the Shattered Self


Book Description

Heather Davediuk Gingrich applies years of counseling experience to the sensitive task of treating complex traumatic stress disorder (CTSD). Writing for pastors and counselors who have not received training in complex trauma, Gingrich integrates current trauma therapy research with discussions of prayer and spiritual warfare.