How Christianity Can Be Incorporated into Trauma Therapy

Trauma can have a significant effect on Christians and may interfere with their faith and relationship with God. Often, Christians prefer to incorporate their faith in therapy. Christianity can be incorporated into various evidence-based trauma therapies. Incorporating aspects of your Christian faith into trauma therapy can make it more powerful, effective, and healing for you.

Why Christians May Benefit from Trauma Therapy

Christians are not immune from trauma. Traumatic experiences happen, and the consequences of trauma can affect you. When you have endured trauma or neglect, it can have a significant effect on your life and how your brain integrates information. The fragments of traumatic experiences may not integrate properly with the other information in our brains. This is why we sometimes know something but can’t feel it. This consequence of trauma can leave Christians having a hard time feeling God’s love.

The fragments of traumatic memories can also affect your present experience. Often, fragments of traumatic memories feel like they are happening in the present, and you may overreact to the present situation because your nervous system is reacting to something in the past that was triggered by the present situation. This means that you may react to a sermon or something someone says that triggers some of the fragments of your trauma memories.

The Benefits of Incorporating Christianity with Trauma Therapy

When your faith is incorporated with trauma therapy, it can bring your healing to the next level. Your resources will be that much more powerful, and you will be able to use God’s promises to heal some of the scars left by your trauma.

How Christianity Can Be Incorporated Into Different Trauma Modalities

Grounding Techniques

Your faith and faith objects can be used in grounding techniques to ground you when you feel triggered. The goal of grounding is to get you out of the reactive and emotional parts of your brain and activate the thinking part of your brain. One way to do this is to use a cross or another faith object in somatic grounding strategies, such as describing an object in detail. Another way to do this is a listing activity, such as listing the books of the Bible or the Beatitudes.

EMDR

There are multiple ways to incorporate Christianity with EMDR therapy.

First, we can create faith-based resources that you can use when you feel triggered or need comfort. These can focus on how God’s love and grace make you feel, connecting you to the strength we have in Jesus and to aspects of your faith and relationship with Jesus that are incredibly comforting to you.

Second, we can connect to your faith during the desensitization and installation phases of EMDR therapy. If you are struggling with not feeling good enough, your place as a child of God and God’s love for you can be used to show you your worth. If you are struggling with feeling unloved, the love that God has for you can be integrated so that you can feel loved.

Lastly, we can use your Christian faith in the future template. The future template is a way to plan how to cope with specific challenges. We can incorporate faith-based resources and coping strategies to help you cope. The future template can also deepen faith and overcome challenges in your faith.

Flash Technique

The Flash Technique needs a positive-engaging focus (PEF) to desensitize and process traumatic memories. This PEF can be anything that is not connected to your trauma and is distracting enough to pull your attention away from the memory you are trying to process. We can incorporate different Christian activities such as singing along with your favourite hymn or worship song, describing important faith moments or scriptures, and what your faith means to you.

Somatic Trauma Work

Somatic trauma work incorporates using your body to help you heal from your trauma. As trauma is sometimes stored in the body, somatic trauma work can bring you healing to the trauma that is stuck in your body. Christianity can be incorporated into somatic trauma work by bringing in components of your faith that create sensations in the body.

Parts Work

In parts work, we have different aspects of ourselves and one or more of those parts is accepted as a child of God. Other parts may not feel accepted as a child of God. We often need to integrate these different parts.

How We Can Use God’s Promises to Help You Heal Your Trauma

Improve Low Self-Worth

Often, Christians may feel low self-worth despite the promises we have from God and our worth as children of God. This can usually come from emotional neglect or other challenges in our developmental years. We need to integrate the promises we have from God with core beliefs that we hold that are limiting us from fully embracing God’s love and grace. This can be done through EMDR.

Reduce Guilt and Shame

Sometimes, feelings of shame and guilt get stuck in our consciousness despite the grace we have from God. Sometimes, the last person we can forgive is ourselves. When we integrate these feelings with the promises and grace we have from God, we can let go of the shame and guilt and move in the direction that God intended us to go.

Conclusion

There can be powerful healing when your Christian faith is incorporated into the treatment of your trauma. Christianity can be incorporated into multiple trauma therapies, such as EMDR and Flash Technique.