Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a term typically associated with the devastation on the level of the World Trade Center or war. However, the effects of PTSD can include lesser traumas, and it’s crucial that the pain of all levels of PTSD be addressed.
PTSD is a cluster of symptoms, not a medical label. A person must meet four criteria to receive a diagnosis of PTSD: (1) witness or experience an event or events where they feel threatened or experience or witness death or physical injury to self or others, with intense fear, helplessness, horror, (2) persistently re-experience the event in memories, dreams, flashbacks, or intense distress, (3) make efforts at avoidance with numbing thoughts, feelings, conversations, activities; have diminished interests, estrangement from others, and restricted emotional expression, (4) experience persistently increased arousal; sleep disruption; irritability; angry outbursts; poor concentration. Additional symptoms can also occur.
Some 9% of Americans meet criteria for PTSD sometime in their life, but of these, only 10% get diagnosed. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder commonly reawakens preexisting unhealed traumas and can trigger major depression at a 600-800% higher rate among those with PTSD than in those within the general population. PTSD can also trigger panic attacks, obsessive-compulsive disorder, addictions, marital problems, criminal behavior, suicide attempts, and a host of other behaviors. For those with Post Traumatic Stress, it’s often helpful to ask family, friends, and coworkers for their observations about symptomatic behaviors. It’s important to understand that all treatment for PTSD must be individualized, even if the initial trauma was experienced in a group.
But whether people meet PTSD criteria or not, all sizes of trauma and hurt impact us and need to be described, expressed, the feelings accepted and validated, then put into logical and spiritual perspective together with God and others. The sequence of these first steps is critical, and further steps of forgiveness, restitution, full redemption, and other steps are often needed.
For pastors also, traumas can range from tiny to massive, inflicted at the hands of a church or in the everyday experience of life, but we theorize that pastors and their families come under special attack in the spiritual war that rages around us (Matt.5:3- 12). Satan’s methods aren’t unlike those of the Mafia, and the emotional toll on pastors’ families in our culture is enormous. Pastors also need to learn the steps of healing.
James 5:16 implies that the entire body of Christ can learn how to express hurts and inadequacies, share support, and heal in the process. The skills of the listening heart can be learned. Romans 12:15 instructs us to find someone who will weep with us and who will do it with perspective, who will listen for inconsistencies and symptoms of thinking that are out of proportion. Proverbs 11:14 encourages us to take our problems to more than one counselor or friend.
As Paul and I launch our ministry, it’s our desire to help further equip church leaders, pastors, and congregations to more fully apply biblical living. Reading the science of PTSD helps us understand the clinical challenges of healing, but fullest healing comes as the Holy Spirit applies the additional truth of Scripture through the power of God.
- Dr. Hernan S. Schmidt, M. D.
Hernan Schmidt, M.D., can be reached by telephone at 614.596.4644 or by email at
hernansschmidt@gmail.com.
Paul Thompson, M.A., can be reached by telephone at 315.431.0595 or by email at
pcthompson@a-znet.com.
(Excerpted from August 2006 PastorCare Great Lakes Newsletter)
Submitted by
John Smith on 02.23.07
