The new PTSD: Present Traumatic Soul Disorder

If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably found yourself wishing quietly (or maybe even saying out loud): “I want things to go back to normal!” I don’t like to say this, but I believe we’re not going back. “Normal” has changed. There will be a “new normal,” even though we don’t know what that looks or feels like yet.

Outer journey + inner journey

Usually, when we go through a difficult season, it is either a challenge from culture, society or the external world around us (what I’m calling our “outer journey”) or stress that comes from personal loss, pain or suffering (what I’m calling our “inner journey”). In 2020, we’re being attacked on both fronts — both externally and internally. It seems that there is incredible pressure from both outside and inside. How are the pressures from our “outer journey” intersecting with our “inner journey?”

The challenge to our “outer journey” might best be described as “liminality.” The liminality concept comes from the word meaning “threshold” and describes the state of transition from one stage to the next. It’s when you’re in between, you can’t go back, but have no idea what it might mean to go forward. Can you see how many of the realities just mentioned make this true?

The challenge to our “inner journey” might best be described as “trauma.” Trauma is the experience of severe psychological distress following any terrible or life-threatening event. Sound familiar?

When both of these challenges collide, we’re left with a sense of fragmented languishing. Nothing feels right. Everything is out of place. We go through our days looking for something that might feel normal. But it’s incredibly hard, if not impossible, to find.

Because our normal structures are being attacked, our human tendency is to resist and fight back. Our adrenaline rises to the occasion, and our sense of goodness and justice wants to exert itself in any way possible.

I was never trained in martial arts, but my son has a black belt in karate. One principle I remember from paying for eight years of lessons is the best thing you can do when being attacked is to use the attacking energy to your advantage. If you outwardly try to resist and fight back, you’ll be at a disadvantage. But if you cooperate with the attacking reality, you can use that energy in the most helpful way possible.

Another analogy I’ve learned from the sports of snowboarding and surfing. You can’t fight a wave or three feet of fresh powder. You have to discover its energy and allow yourself to ride that matter in a way that will enable you to use it for your intended purpose. When you learn to ride snow or water in this way, it actually becomes fun!

To return to our journey metaphor again, we need to put the outer journey in perspective and institute practices that will bring healing into our inner journey. When we move in this direction of putting the liminality into perspective and work practices that bring healing to our inner trauma, we’ll begin to experience holistic flourishing instead of fragmented languishing.

Steps to deal with what our souls are experiencing

Instead of resisting or fighting what is happening around us and in us, we can accept and cooperate with it so that transformation can truly take place. I believe there are a few steps we can take that will move this process along:

1. Practice listening discernment

My natural tendency is to fix a problem as soon as possible. This pushes me toward making quick-fix decisions, which are rarely helpful as they lack the discernment that comes from deep listening and observation. I’d encourage you to face each challenge with a posture of humble listening. Ask new and different questions than you might be used to. Expose yourself to the way others are thinking about the situation. Maybe even others who you might not normally agree with.

2. Weigh all options

In addition to wanting to fix things quickly, many of us tend to be people-pleasers, which always affects the way we lead. In the sermon on the plain, Jesus exhorts, “Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you” (Luke 6:26), reminding us that many of the things we say or the decisions we make might tick people off. Sometimes the only way to address the polarization that many of us are experiencing as leaders is to take a stand for the common good and don’t shy away from clearly articulating the options and their consequences.

3. Identify new opportunities

Leaders are facing some of the most difficult challenges of our lifetimes. But we must not forget that with every challenge comes a new opportunity that we might have never seen without the challenge.

One of the most significant opportunities sitting right in front of us is to encourage people to “be the church” in their neighborhoods. Most of us have experienced small groups and possibly even a home/organic church. But this is different. We can live out both the Great Commission and the Great Commandment in more relational ways than ever.

Second, we are being given an incredible opportunity to love those who are different than us, engage in biblical social justice in a way that the prophet Micah would be proud of (Micah 6:8), and get outside our boxes and comfort zones in a way that only a pandemic combined with an uprising for racial justice could produce.