Bearing the Unbearable: Trauma, Gospel, and Pastoral Care

by Deborah Van Deusen Hunsinger

A Christ-centered approach to dealing with trauma on both a personal and a communal level

Traumas abound. Post-traumatic stress disorder, emotional and sexual abuse, unbearable anxiety and fear, and a host of other traumas afflict people everywhere. In this book Deborah van Deusen Hunsinger weaves together threads from the fields of psychology and pastoral theology as she explores the impact of trauma on people’s lives and offers practical strategies and restorative practices for dealing with it.

Not only a teacher of pastoral theology but also an experienced pastoral counselor herself, Hunsinger draws on the resources of depth psychology, including object relations theory, trauma theory, family systems theory, nonviolent communication, and restorative circles. She then places her findings in a Christian theological context, emphasizing God’s work in and through Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection, to present a cohesive, faith-based vision for healing.

Genres: Christian, Theology, Counselling, Psychology, Christianity

179 pages, Paperback

First published June 18, 2015

Reviews

[James Wheeler · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a bit uneven. The first four chapters were excellent: a theologically driven understanding of trauma. This intersection between the experience of trauma and a biblically derived anthropology is loaded with potential for a robust theology of healing. The problem is that anthropology, especially in churches and popular Christianity, is sometimes idealized, dehumanized or platonized. All of these avoid acknowledgement of the deep pain and ongoing PTSD experience that many people live with. I also think the truncated anthropology can actually aid the dissociative and coping strategies that people use to avoid dealing with trauma. How tragic is that? The church is intended to be a community of genuine healing and recovery but instead functions as a coping strategy.

Hunsinger does try to hold both a healthy theological anthropology and trauma theory together without watering down either. She does a great job. So the first four chapters which focus on this deserve 4 stars but the last three chapters focused on more practical matters. And i enjoyed the practicality especially her advocacy for Non-Violent Communication but it seemed that the practicality of these latter chapters was not tethered very tightly with the content of the first three chapters. I would give the final three chapters 2 stars.

But this is a great read overall, and was well worth it. I love the sprinkling of Barth quotes.

[Tristan Sherwin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good resource, but difficult to follow at times.

The earlier chapters are informative and helpful, especially the chapters entitled ‘Rooted and Grounded in Love’ and ‘Prayers of Lament.’

However, I found it difficult to focus through the final two chapters. Admittedly, this could have been down to my own faculties, but the content of the final two chapters became very technical, and, I feel, would be better suited to a course and a learning environment beyond a book (especially the final chapter on restorative practises).

[Matthew Loftus · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent book that covers important aspects of understanding trauma for pastors, counselors, or medical professionals. It is not really designed for those who suffer trauma, though they may find some insights. The last two chapters, as others have noted, veer off into a discussion of restorative practices for churches that feels somewhat incongruent with the rest of the book.

[Lori Shinkō Snyder · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was for a theology of the developmental person course for chaplaincy. There are some wonderful resources for priests and spiritual leaders and two chapters devoted to NVC and how helpful that is to discerning the challenges of directing others.

It is written for the christian community, and as a Buddhist i am able to navigate that language without insult or offense. Perhaps maybe one day we all will open our minds and hearts with acceptance.

[Kathleen Krynski · Rating 3 out of 5]

Generally helpful advice for pastors on dealing with people who have faced trauma. Some chapters didn't seem to have much to do with trauma though, but were helpful I guess. Methodologically I'm not sure about examining a psychological concept and then stuffing a theological lens onto it, but it worked okay. Not bad but not special.

[Deb Baker · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the perfect book at the perfect time for me and my Clinical Pastoral Education cohort. I recommend it most especially for its chapter on lament.

[Mitchell Traver · Rating 3 out of 5]

Portions had me saying, “wow.” Others were just okay. I learned a lot, and appreciate the insights provided here. Heavy read simply because of the subject at hand, but a valuable resource for sure.

[Becky Douthit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Must read for Christian therapists!

[Aimée van den Heuvel · Rating 4 out of 5]

leest fijn weg, goede inzichten. ook bruikbaar voor communities/kerken die te maken hebben met lijden/conflicten

[Nathan Albright · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is written by a pastoral theologian to an audience of people engaged in the ministry, largely contained of previously released articles. In discussing trauma and its unbearable nature, the author speaks to people who are intended on being familiar not only with the Bible, but at least somewhat interested in aspects of non-violent communication, discussed in a couple of the articles, rituals of restoration within congregations, as well as counseling and the need for ministers to take care of their own spiritual state to avoid burnout and sexually acting out. This is a book that is written with pastors in mind, because it is unlikely that most pastors would particularly relish this sort of material being read by members, and it is likely that few members, unless they had a background in seminary language, particularly strong interests in communication, and the sort of personal background that would lead to one reading about trauma. Such readers exist, but they are not likely to be a large number of people, even though this is likely to be a somewhat helpful book for such people, with some caveats.

In terms of its contents, this book is divided into seven articles, six of which have been published before in Theology Today, Forgiveness and Truth, A spiritual Life, Pray Without Ceasing, and Theology In Service To The Church. The seven articles deal with pastoral care, compassionate witnessing, forgiveness, self-empathy, prayers of lament, practicing koinonia with believers, and building a restorative church that is able to overcome crises and personal conflict. After the articles there are two appendices, one of which gives the DSM criterion for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and the other which provides a diagnostic for secondary trauma/burnout among pastoral counselors. This is theology with a practical bent, yet at the same time it is designed to appeal to a certain type of pastor, one who has experience and interest in counseling, one who wishes to be more skilled in communication and conflict resolution, and someone who is comfortable with being a Christian but who is also comfortable with seeing matters such as faith and living together in a perspective that matches with Buddhist concepts like interbeing and the African idea of ubuntu. Not all pastors are going to appreciate the author's focus on socially liberal matters, including a distinct lack of concern about biblical standards of personal morality.

Nevertheless, despite these issues that are likely to detract from the interest of some ministers, and the fact that the language is sufficiently dense to scare away most readers who lack a firm grounding in counseling and therapy from a practioner's standpoint, this book does have a lot to offer. For one, the book gives plenty of reminders that the experience of trauma is related both to context and to the feeling that someone is impossible to handle where there is no belief in protection or assistance available at the time, and that forgiveness is something that comes out of experiencing God's grace, not something that can be coerced effectively. The author is quick to know that what is impossible for man (or woman) namely forgiving the sorts of traumatic deeds that people have to deal with, is nevertheless possible with the assistance of God's Holy Spirit, and that genuine reconciliation, where there is repentance (including a change of behavior) is the goal, even if that goal cannot always be realized because of the hardness of people's hearts. For all of this book's jargon and politically correct mindset, this is a book that seeks to present gracious treatment of people suffering from evil, and reminds us that but for the grace of God, we are full of great evil and darkness ourselves, and that our burning against the injustice of evil is simultaneously a call for ourselves to repent and be reconciled to God. That is a point worth reflecting on.

[Amber Thiessen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book teaches how to apply the restorative power of the Gospel to those who've suffered past trauma. For the pastor, the lay leader, the small group leader and Christian counsellor, you'll find both foundational principles and practical strategies to walk alongside others. She utilizes secular research but strongly applies the Gospel.

I really appreciated this work and it gives considerable food for thought to our church practices and communication.

Highly recommend for anyone in leadership!

[Luke Hillier · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book started really strong and after the first three chapters I was pretty confident that it would be a four-star rating. Unfortunately, the essays seemed to lose steam as it went on, and as the focus began to widen away from the spotlight on trauma and onto more general conflict and interventions. The introduction, the chapter on compassionate witnessing, and chapter on forgiveness for adult survivors of child abuse were all really compelling and rich, giving me a lot to chew on, argue with, and get excited about. The later chapters, however, which deal with showing one's own self empathy, practicing lament, and then two on healthy Christian community felt a little bland to me, and not really as relevant as the first three.

I believe the intention of this collection was less to write for those experiencing trauma but rather for those ministering to those who have, which is a valid and necessary concentration and simply less gripping for me as a reader. It also felt a little like the last two chapters were added because of a peripheral relation rather than an immediate connection, and for me they weighed down the entire project. I could imagine them being much more interesting to a reader who actually leads a church congregation, though.

As a whole, this is definitely worth reading, but primarily as a general introduction to pastoral care and the theology of that rather than a more in-depth exploration of trauma and its theological implications. For the latter, I would highly recommend Spirit and Trauma: A Theology of Remaining and Trauma and Grace: Theology in a Ruptured World. One unique strength (depending on the reader) is that van Hunsinger approaches this material from a relatively (mainline-) conservative perspective and continually professes an ardent belief in the supremacy and necessity of Jesus for the healing work she describes. This would definitely appeal to a lot of more conservative readers in ways the other two referenced works would potentially scare them off.