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Last week, we concluded our conversation on the spiritual implications of PTSD, Moral Injury, and Soul Wounds. We will now begin to explore the various components of spirituality and how it effects our veterans. This week our conversation will take us to understanding the “why.”
BACKGROUND
I shared in a previous conversation about my first visit to the Marines in Afghanistan, at Regional Command Southwest (RC-SW). Captain Brown, the Navy Command Chaplain for RC-SW took me to visit the Concussion Restoration Care Center, (CRCC). It was at the CRCC wounded warriors would have an opportunity to begin their healing following a trauma event. In 2011, a behavioral health team of a psychologist, psychiatrist, and social worker realized after months of counseling wounded warriors that there were three issues; why, guilt, and fear, that could be better treated by a chaplain. They decided to bring a chaplain on-board as part of the team and sought Captain Brown’s advice.
The chaplain selected had to be the “right” chaplain. Not all chaplains have the temperament to collaborate with a behavioral health team in order to partner with the team and the wounded warrior. From my 30 years of experience in the military chaplaincy, I know many chaplains who would have tried to answer the warrior’s “why”, rather than walk with the warrior through their journey of finding their own answer.
Bringing a chaplain on board as part of the healing team had two important implications. First, this certainly was unusual since the spiritual domain is not a common field for the medical and mental health models for treating the symptoms of combat trauma. All too often the spiritual and the soul are relegated to the purview of the religious counselors and religious leaders as a separate entity of care. The wounds to the soul are not addressed as part of comprehensive whole person care. Also, combat trauma has not been treated traditionally as a spiritual or moral injury.
Second, trauma affects the human capacity to make meaning in life and how meaning-making systems can function as part of the healing process from trauma. The answer to the question “why” most often is complex. The “right” chaplain has the capacity and sensitivity for trauma care in order to journey with the veteran. The chaplain understands that God will not simply step in and by coercive force make things right, and neither should the chaplain. During the veteran’s journey to find an answer to why, a relationship between faith, spirituality, and trauma should be explored.
MEANING MAKING
During my Pathways Program I learned that meaning making is how people understand life, life’s events, relationships and self. However, trauma is the ultimate challenge to meaning making. Trauma rips apart people’s meaning-making processes because it tears them away from the comfort and confidence of their meaning-making systems. Once this occurs, most often the survivor plunges into chaos and volatility in ways that cannot be denied or ignored, but often are hidden except to those closest to them. People of faith are not immune to the effects of trauma.
Meaning and purpose are central in human life, particularly when individuals confront highly stressful and traumatic life experiences. Some researchers have suggested that traumatic events frequently challenge one’s core beliefs about safety, self-worth, and the meaning of life.
For individuals whose core values are spiritually grounded, traumatic events may give rise to questions about the fundamental nature of the relationship between God and humankind, and between God and self. Survivors may question their belief in a loving, all-powerful God when the innocent are subjected to traumatic victimization. In this way, traumatic experiences may become a starting point for discussion of the many ways in which survivors define what it is to have “faith”.
Trauma can shake one’s faith. The veteran wants to understand why? Why did the traumatic event occur? Why did they survive? The journey to understand the why can be a long process for the veteran.
CONSIDERATIONS TOWARD HEALING
Meaning making is a key component in trauma healing. Recovery of meaning in life may be achieved through changed ways of thinking, involvement in meaningful activities, or through rituals experienced as part of worship services or some other spiritual involvement. As we consider the spiritual issues that affect the veteran’s soul, a place to begin is how spirituality provides meaning in life.
Trauma interferes with the practices that embody our systems of belief. The soul of a veteran often demonstrates the ineffectiveness of our prayers, our worship, our scriptures, and our faith. For many of our veterans, their traumatic experiences with which they struggle will affect their understanding of God and faith.
For many people, the presence of a meaning-making system, such as faith, serves as a protective factor when trauma strikes. Paradoxically, faith can be counter-productive as well. The pain and terror of trauma can infuse such doubt in God and God’s faithfulness that the veteran reaches a point of denying God and their faith. The veteran can question God’s ability to intervene in the situation. The veteran can feel that God is punishing them and blame God for the loss. This becomes a way that the veteran may create meaning.
But the opposite can be true as well. Faith and spirituality can assist the veteran in developing a sense that love shapes God’s activity; patient, persevering, and long lasting. It is through love that God responds to a broken world. Also, it is through spirituality and religiosity that the veteran experiences a community with shared beliefs. This becomes another way to create meaning.
What ways have you experienced in creating meaning? How can the faith community become a part of the veteran’s journey to find the answer to “why”?
Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl writes in his 1946 book, Man’s Search for Meaning, that the primary motivation of a person is to discover meaning in life. Throughout this powerful book Frankl insists that meaning in life can be discovered under all circumstances, even in the most miserable experiences of tragedy and loss. Through his own experience Frankl shared that people can discover meaning through doing a deed, experiencing value, and even by experiencing suffering.
This is a part of the process known as Post-Traumatic Growth. Next week, we will look at spirituality and suffering. Until then, thank you for the conversation…
