Faith leaders must acknowledge spiritual trauma is real, author says

When Hillary McBride was growing up in a Baptist church in Alberta, her parents stood up for a member of the congregation who had been abused by a much-adored pastor.

When confronted in private, the pastor acknowledged the abuse. Later, in public, he denied it. When her parents continued to believe in and support the victim, they were ostracized by other members of the church.

Eventually, the church split over the issue, with many leaving to attend a new church started by that pastor.

“We lost our faith community over it,” McBride says, recalling that time. “The amount of vitriol directed at my parents cost them so much.”

While her parent’s courage to stand with the survivor deeply shaped McBride’s understanding of what it means to have authentic faith, it left scars.

Those scars remained buried for years. But later, as a registered psychologist and therapist who specializes in helping people who have experienced trauma, McBride was forced to face her own trauma from that past experience.

In her case, it was because of a popular podcast about a well-known evangelical pastor in the U.S. who had resigned over allegations of abuse.

“I was triggered by the podcast and began having flashbacks,” said McBride, who lives in Victoria, B.C. “I wondered why I felt so agitated and upset.”

At the same time, she was encountering clients from religious backgrounds who had been hurt by their churches. Their challenges didn’t fit into standard psychological categories — they weren’t only dealing with anxiety or depression, but also with fear of God’s anger and judgment.

The result of her own trauma, and that of her clients, is Holy Hurt: Understanding Spiritual Trauma and the Process of Healing (Brazos Press).

In the book, which was published in April, McBride defines spiritual trauma as hurt caused by abuse in a religious setting, along with hurt that results from doctrines that emphasize a harsh and punitive God and the worthlessness and wickedness of individual believers. It can also be caused by negative and hurtful interactions with other church members — like what happened to her parents.

McBride’s goals with the book include helping those experiencing spiritual trauma know they aren’t alone, and that there is a path for recovery, and to help faith leaders understand that spiritual trauma is real and that they have a role in preventing it. She also wants to bridge the worlds of psychology and religion that are often kept far apart.

Her tone in the book is empathetic and pastoral. McBride is not writing as a dispassionate expert, but as someone who has also experienced pain due to religion and who is on her own quest for healing.

McBride says that recovery from spiritual trauma often comes in three phases, starting with safety and stabilization.

“The first thing people have to do is get away from the source of harm,” she says, noting that could mean stopping going to the church that caused the pain. “There’s nothing wrong with getting away as far as possible. The goal is first to feel safe.”

The second phase is processing the experience, perhaps with the help of a therapist. “It’s a way of sorting through it, understanding what happened,” she says.

The last phase is the remaking of oneself. “It’s about finding new meaning and purpose in life,” McBride says.

There is no uniform timeline for the recovery from spiritual trauma, and it can mean different things to different people. Some of her clients find a new connection to God or the divine, and some find a new spiritual community. But many leave organized religion altogether, choosing to be spiritual through meditation, spending time in nature, or other ways.

The trauma can also be second-hand, as with the terrible sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church and in some other denominations. For many Christians, the result was a traumatic loss of faith in the church and, in some cases, in God as well.

McBride’s message for faith leaders is to start by acknowledging that spiritual trauma is real. Too often, she says, religious groups are silent about the trauma that has been caused in the name of God, or deny it and seek to silence those who have experienced it.

Faith leaders should also see if systemic changes need to be made to avoid having it happen again. “They need to ask what things are being done in a faith community to normalize trauma,” McBride says, adding this includes an examination of the power held by clergy or others in the faith group.

For those who are traumatized by religion, McBride says there is hope — but they have to go at their own speed.

“Give yourself time instead of jumping back into a faith community,” she says. “Find your own internal compass and connection with God or the divine, whatever word you use, whatever sacred thing your spirit is searching for … maybe you need to expand your idea of the sacred. Feel free to explore.”

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