When you have had a traumatic experience, or sympathetically shared in the trauma of another person, the feelings can be so deep to be almost paralyzing. Victims of Post Traumatic Stress or secondary traumatic stress frequently relive those feelings again and again and again. They try but are unable to move beyond them. The traumatic feelings become so dominant that they take control of a person’s life.
To move beyond that paralysis, a person must place those feelings in the context of a larger view of life. The negative experience must become a part of rather than the whole of life. The purpose of therapy is to assist a person in making sense out of their experience in a way that allows them to be released from its dominance.
A pastor may be so overwhelmed by the pain of a parishioner, the failure of a particular ministry, or the indifference people show to the injustices of the world, that s/he feels hopeless. To overcome such feelings, the pastor must be able to place his or her feelings into a larger narrative that can be shared with others. They need to be able to tell their story, complete with the emotions that threaten to overwhelm them, in a way that makes it part of the larger story that transcends their particular moment.
The first step is to try to put words on their experience. To be able to verbalize about how one is feeling allows you a measure of distance so that you can evaluate your response to what you are feeling. When you speak words to describe how you are feeling, the feelings have less power over you.
The second step is to try to place those described feelings in the context of a larger story. Your whole life is not summed up in that moment of traumatic feeling. It is critical that you gain some distance so that you can integrate the experience into your larger story. Later we will speak about the importance of seeing your story as part of an even larger story.
