Are We Too Sensitive?
exploring larger questions about the world starting with, "so what?" about trauma
Spiritual formation combines theology, philosophy, and psychology to understand personhood and change. I am reading Anatomy of the Soul by Curt Thompson for my spiritual direction training. I find myself asking: So what about our traumas? Trauma work is essential to me because it has been life-giving, but why does it matter? I’m asking this not so much because I don’t believe traumas matter but because I wonder if church leaders have time to care about any aspect of formation other than the theological aspect. Perhaps the question is why should anyone who’s not experienced the work of spiritual formation care about it in the first place. I think church leaders should care about spiritual formation because they are in the business of caring for people.
Sometimes, it seems church leaders are in the business of keeping what is right and ensuring everyone knows what is wrong as if they are truth protectors, not caregivers. A shepherd is in it to care for sheep, right? That’s his sole purpose - to keep the flock well fed, watered, and cared for? I suppose he also protects the sheep from enemies. As I imagine caring for sheep, the only time the focus becomes solely on protecting is a world full of wolves - as if wolves fill the horizon in every direction. I think we live in a time and place where it feels as if wolves are everywhere. So, we focus on the wolves instead of the sheep.
In asking if the trauma matters, I wonder if I’ve taken the focus off what matters. I think it is a question in my mind because I imagine critics of spiritual formation to say it is the gospel that matters. At the same time, these critics must care for people, and how can you care for people if you don’t know them? And once you get to know the people, you realize that everyone has a Garden of Eden story. When I say Garden of Eden, I imagine everyone has an origin story with wounds, disconnection, and shame, all of which we feel like covering up. Sin is involved and perpetuated.
At The Apprentice Gathering, Kelly Flanagan went so far as to say this Garden of Eden type story is part of human development. No one does not create a false self, and that false self must be cared for rather than fixed or tucked away. In the implications of being human, we all bear wounds. No parent can parent in such a way that wounds are not left. I found that comforting and devastating.
Similarly, I listened to an episode of Gravity Leadership where the hosts interviewed Janyne McConnaughey about trauma in the church. While listening, I wondered how far down the rabbit holes we should go. Again, not because I disagree with trauma care, but should everyone focus on it? I think because trauma is a trendy word, it makes me more curious about where it’s going. To me, everything feels like a hot-button issue right now. It feels like the word “trauma” is overused. It all came to a head when I was listening to a completely different podcast and was reminded about the many issues we are dealing with in our age. The question for me isn’t about whether trauma matters. The question is whether we are becoming desensitized or too sensitized to the world’s issues, like trauma, the end of the world, sexuality, and questions of gender.
In grad school, we took a Spirituality in Leadership course and read A Failure of Nerve by Edwin Friedman. It’s a leadership book using therapeutic principles written in the 90s, and people seem to react strongly to his views, i.e., people either love or hate him.
While his style could have been better, call me a lover rather than a hater. I’ve known I’m a highly sensitive person since 2011 when I attended Allume for the first time (it was an old blog conference that no longer runs). When I say highly sensitive, I notice more details than most people and process information differently. I pay attention to the background details most people can ignore. (It sounds a little bit like ADHD). However, 25% of the population is highly sensitive, so it is not too rare. I think my own traumas may have caused me to become highly sensitive. Keeping my feelers out kept me safe. However, a benefit is that I am deeply empathetic.
Friedman, however, believes you can be too empathetic. This is part of the reason people have mixed feelings about Friedman. How can someone be too empathetic? I like Friedman (with some mixed feelings) because I know from experience exactly how we can become too empathetic. Being too empathetic is how we lose ourselves in another. We become so caught up walking in another’s shoes that we forget who we are. Friedman calls this knowing of self as separate from another as self-differentiation. This is how it is broken down at an individual level.
However, Friedman’s book is about systems - systems in families, organizations, and even countries.1 In systems, individuals become dependent on one another in unhealthy ways for the supposed good of the whole if there is no well-differentiated leader who does not give in to sensitivities. This type of leader is called a non-anxious presence. Almost none of us are non-anxious when in a big or small crisis. Nearly all of us have some brain activation, but we need someone who can be so focused that they keep us and the system grounded rather than spinning out of control.
Here’s where neuroscience gets interesting. According to one of our guest lecturers in grad school, if someone in the room is activated, all of us are slightly activated. We need each other to regulate emotionally. These last few years have been anxious with the pandemic, social justice issues, and heightened awareness of gender and sexuality issues, and each church and denomination seems to have its own set of problems that they are heated about. I’m interested in exploring this more regarding people leaving church and church leaders clamoring to get people to stay. I would say that in the last several years, our brains have all been activated somehow. Curt Thompson postulates that “there is no such thing as an individual brain.”2
Unless there is a non-anxious presence in the room, someone who is self-differentiated, we will all spend our time reacting rather than co-regulating. The truth is our brains will either continue ramping up under the perceived threats, or we can calm one another down if just one person remains connected to his calm, core self. This is co-regulation. DBT therapy calls this emotion mind versus wise mind. To get emotion mind to become wise (calm, cool, collected, non-anxious, and self-differentiated), DBT suggests mindfulness practices. I believe spiritual formation practices equally cause emotional regulation into a wise mind. If we have regular spiritual rhythms, we will have the skills and tools to calm our emotional mind into a wise mind under dire and painful circumstances and create health and longevity in everyday life.
Jesus is the most self-differentiated, non-anxious presence in every room. He is the good shepherd who looks in adoration at his sheep. He does not try to eat them. He perfectly cares for and protects them. As persons who live the with-God life, I think all of us can turn to him for co-regulation. While some may find imagination problematic, this is where imagination is at its finest. With time and practice, we can all imagine looking at Christ’s beautiful eyes rather than the problem before us. Maybe this is what it means to fix our eyes on Him.
Friedman says we must increase our pain threshold if we are highly empathetic like I can be.3 In DBT, this is called distress tolerance. In a way, it is a therapeutic form of learning to be okay with what is - with both what is good and things we wish were different. We learn to hold the tension a little longer.
The problem I often see with church leaders who appear self-differentiated is that they want quick fix, black-and-white, easy solutions. They, too, seem to have a low threshold for pain. According to Friedman, these leaders lead “with autocracy and narcissism rather than integrity and individuality.”4 In my opinion, they want to give truth without love. They seem to have no empathy whatsoever and appear desensitized to everything happening in the world, moving like robots. They seem to have lost their humanity. Friedman and I use different language to say the same thing: a little bit of empathy can go a long way. Friedman says either too empathetic or autocratic, both are “the result of weak or no self.”5 What if leaders who depend on easy answers do so to avoid confronting their own pain? Perhaps it is not only the empathetic that should increase their pain tolerance, but all of us.
Back to the question at hand: are we too sensitive? We may be seeing a lot of reactivity from a lack of non-anxious and self-differentiated persons in our various systems. I’m excited because at least two writers have announced they are writing books about anxious or nervous systems. It’s a topic I plan to share more about here, too. Hopefully, spiritual directors, therapists, and shepherds can be non-anxious presences, and where abuse of power has occurred, more non-anxious presences are needed to bring healing and insight. Those who stick to spiritual practices can also learn to be non-anxious. I think these leaders are particularly vital in this time and age.
So, back to the first question - what about trauma, and why should pastors care about it? There likely are ways in which some of the discussion about trauma is out of hand. It can be a way to be pulled into a sensitivity. However, I think more than ever, we need more trauma-informed pastors who can handle the word of God not only as a sword but as a balm.
Before I end, I wanted to give an example of what it means to lose differentiation. You might have a child who struggles in some way. As a parent, you may be tempted to give her all that she asks for (even when it goes too far or is not good), OR you may be tempted to have no compassion for her. As believers, we are tempted to be what we see as all loving, never saying the hard thing, or all truth, never being kind or compassionate to complex situations we don’t understand. We’re called to hold the tension and attempt to love in truth. This well-differentiated leader knows when to speak and when to be silent.
Note: This book is surprisingly a good parenting resource, especially for parents of Gen Z, who deal directly with many societal problems.
Curt Thompson, Anatomy of the Soul, p.139.
Edwin H. Friedman, Failure of Nerve, p. 135.
Friedman, p.161.
Friedman, p. 163.