Citation

Holton MJ, Snodgrass JL. Pastoral Psychol. 2023; 72(3): 337-351.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2023, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s11089-023-01063-1

PMID

37313006

PMCID

PMC10077305

Abstract

Racism, eco-violence, and myriad sociopolitical and interpersonal injustices continuously injure individuals, communities, and the globe, thereby challenging the human capacity to endure. The prevailing biomedical model of trauma, with its emphasis on pathology, fails to acknowledge the traumatic nature of these diffuse and pervasive injuries. The disciplines of spiritual and pastoral psychology are uniquely poised to reconceptualize trauma and reframe it as part of a stress-trauma continuum, given the way trauma can engender great suffering as well as resistance and the possibility of transformation. This perspective eschews the sentiment, ubiquitous in popular culture, that everything stressful is traumatic as well as the notion that "true" trauma is delimited by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5-TR). This article posits a strength-based approach to trauma that contextualizes our societal negativity bias within spiritual values of hope, (post-traumatic) growth, and (possibly) resilience while not diminishing the very real suffering, even despair, that emerge from trauma of all kinds.

Language: en

Keywords

Trauma; Distress; Stress-trauma continuum; Theologies of trauma