Talking about God with Trauma Survivors

Introduction

Survivors of severe, chronic childhood trauma commonly endorse a set of negative core self-beliefs. These include cognitive distortions about God that can be addressed in a secular psychotherapy. There is evidence that religious beliefs can improve the response to psychotherapy for anxiety and depression (Haghighi, 2013; Rosmarin, Bigda-Peyton, Kertz, Smith, Rauch, & Bjorgvinsson, 2013; Rosmarin, Pargament, Pirutinsky, & Mahoney, 2010), but in the present context, the opposite problem is the focus: distorted, negative beliefs about God keep the person stuck in anxiety, depression, and other comorbidities. The purpose of addressing the cognitive errors about God is not to change the person’s religion, nor is it to align the person with the therapist’s religious beliefs, which do not enter the therapy. Rather, the purpose is the correction of core negative beliefs about the self, which are stated as beliefs about God.

The role of spirituality in psychotherapy has been discussed from various perspectives (Bartz, 2009; Jankowski, 2003; Langs, 2009; Loewenthal, 2007; Mijares, & Khalsa, 2005; Miller, & Delaney, 2005; Nelson, 2006; 2009; Pargament, 2007; Peteet, 2009; Richards, & Bergin, 2004; 2005; Shafranske, 2009; Sperry, & Shafranske, 2005). The purpose of the present paper is not to review this literature, to offer a perspective on the place of spirituality and religion in psychotherapy, or to explicate the author’s religious perspective. Rather, it is to present a set of hands-on therapeutic strategies for use in talking about God with trauma survivors. The therapist works within the client’s belief system and church doctrine, which is almost always Judeo-Christian monotheism.

The Locus-of-Control Shift

The locus-of-control shift (Ross, 2014; Ross and Halpern, 2009) is based on the primary narcissism and concrete operations of the magical child’s mind. The young child is at the center of her universe, everything revolves around her, and she has a magical power to make things happen. In a healthy family, the child receives unconditional love, there is no trauma, and the child learns that she is worthy and loveable, the world is safe, and people are trustworthy.

In families experiencing severe chronic trauma, with varying mixtures of sexual, physical and emotional abuse, neglect, family violence, chaos and loss of primary caretakers, a very different lesson is learned: I am bad; I am causing the abuse; I deserve the abuse; I am unworthy and unlovable. The child shifts the locus of control, from inside her parents, where it really is, to inside herself. This happens automatically because of how the child’s mind processes information. Once the locus-of-control shift is in place, it creates an illusion of power, control and mastery: I am in charge; I am causing the abuse; the cause is contained within me; I can stop the abuse by deciding to be a good girl.

Thirty years later, we might hear the locus-of-control shift in the speech of a woman leaving a battered spouse shelter: my husband will not be so stressed out, and will not have to hit me, if I just perform better as a wife. This belief is reinforced by the honeymoon period that occurs upon her return home. When the abuse begins again, it provides further proof that she is not being a good enough wife. Ross (2014) discussed how the locus-of-control shift operates in suicidal combat veterans. It is a general psychodynamic principle across a wide range of DSM-5 disorders.

When the locus-of-control shift is reversed in therapy, the badness of the self dissolves, but the person then feels the underlying powerlessness and helplessness of the sad, scared, lost, lonely child. She must then grieve the loss of the childhood she never actually had: a normal childhood with stable, loving parents. The locus-of-control shift can be held onto tenaciously as a grief-avoidance strategy, and because of the illusion of power, control and mastery it confers. It also solves the problem of attachment to the perpetrator (Ross, 2007; Ross & Halpern, 2009): how to form a secure attachment to primary caretakers, who are also primary perpetrators. Shifting the locus of control creates the illusion that the perpetrators are safe attachment figures, that the badness has been shifted from inside the parents to inside the self, and that the parents are running a kind of tough-love program on the child, who deserves such treatment.

In terms of talking about God with trauma survivors, the locus-of-control shift is a primary therapeutic target or theme. According to a locus-of-control shift-driven belief system, God declined to protect the child, or deliberately placed her in an abusive family because she was unworthy of His love and protection. There are a number of different permutations on this theme.

God Could Have Done Something but He Didn’t

Survivors of severe, chronic childhood trauma are often angry at God because He didn’t intervene to stop or prevent their abuse. There are usually several cognitive errors operating behind such statements. First, the person often believes that she has been singled out and personally targeted by God for abuse and neglect. I counter this belief by pointing out that many children have died from cancer, tsunamis, war, disease, famine and other causes. It simply is not true that only this one person has been singled out for suffering: God has equally neglected millions of other children.

If God has failed to intervene, and failed to save or protect millions of other children, then perhaps the person I am working with is not uniquely evil, or unworthy of God’s love and protection. I then ask a series of questions: Who is bigger, you or God? Who is stronger, you or God? Who built the universe, you or God? Who is smarter, you or God? So far I have not met anyone grandiose enough to answer “Me” to any of these questions.

So, if God built the universe, presumably He could have reached down, put his hand in the ocean, and prevented the tsunami from reaching land, if He wanted to do so. The person agrees that this is the case. The question then becomes, why does God not intervene to prevent all abuse, neglect, and suffering of children? To find an answer, I might ask whether God hates some children? No, He loves all His children. So then we have a mystery: is it fair to say that we don’t understand why God does things, because our minds are much smaller than His? Is it fair to say that God’s motives and plans are a mystery that surpasses human understanding? Is that statement consistent with the doctrine of the person’s church? Does she agree with it?

So, then, it is not true that the person knows God’s motives. This means that the person does not, in fact, know that she was targeted by God for abuse and neglect based on His feelings about her. She felt this was true as a child, but is that really a reasonable conclusion to reach from an adult perspective? The actual problem is that God’s reasons for not intervening are beyond the person’s understanding. Clearly, He didn’t intervene, but this doesn’t mean He didn’t love her. God loves all His children. Therefore whatever God’s reasons are, one of them cannot be that He did not love the person.

The problem is not that God hated the person when she was a child. The problem is that human beings have free will. That seems to be part of God’s design. All of these propositions are part of the person’s faith, not something I have imposed on her. The goal of this line of reasoning is to reverse the locus-of-control shift, in the form of the belief that: I was unworthy of God’s love and protection. This cannot be true if God does not exist; the person believes in a loving God, so this option does not have to be considered. People who do not believe in God are not angry at God, so there is no need to talk about God in their therapy.

The survivor of severe childhood trauma is angry at both herself and God. She has projected the image of her perpetrator onto God: she has made God in her father’s image, one might say. God the Father is her father, the ostensibly loving Father who is actually a perpetrator of abuse and neglect. It isn’t polite to point out in public that dad is a perpetrator of incest, however, so the victim colludes with the perpetrator and hides the private reality of her family behind a public façade. She has to, otherwise the loving Father may rape her or send her to Hell.

A trick here is not to get caught in a doctrinal dispute with the survivor’s faith. By focusing the conversation on the loving God, one does not have to debate the accuracy of the biblical portrait of an angry, vengeful God who turns people into pillars of salt if they break one of His rules. It would be counter-therapeutic and outside the role of a secular therapist, to challenge or debate the survivor’s religious doctrine. The strategy is to finesse around philosophical conundrums and use the survivor’s faith in a loving God as a fulcrum, and to make a judo move that uses her faith to win a contest against her locus-of-control shift. The therapist’s beliefs about God are not relevant to this task.

“Is God a loving God?” “Yes.”

“Does He love all His children?” “Yes.”

“Are you one of His children?” “Yes.”

“And you’re not a salamander, you’re a human being?” “Yes.”

“So you are worthy of God’s love?” “I guess so.”

“You guess so? So there’s some doubt? Maybe God hates some children and loves other ones.” “No, He loves all His children.”

“Are you one of His children?” “Yes.”

“So is there any doubt, then?” “No.”

“Maybe the problem is not that God hates you; maybe the problem is that you feel unworthy of God’s love. Could that be true? Is God’s love freely available for all His children?”

God Won’t Notice How Bad I Am if I Don’t Go to Church

The locus-of-control shift arises from the concrete operations of the normal child’s mind. When the trauma survivor is developmentally arrested in her childhood locus-of-control shift, her cognitive errors and negative core self-beliefs dominate her thought, speech, behavior, decisions and choices of relationships in the present. The same is true for the woman leaving a battered spouse shelter for a happy reunion with her perpetrator.

An example of such concrete, magical thinking is a woman who told me that she doesn’t go to church so that God won’t see how bad she is.

I said, in response, something like, “Oh, does God take naps sometimes, or coffee breaks?”

“No, God doesn’t take coffee breaks.”

“Oh, well is God in some places and not other places?”

“No, He’s everywhere.”

“I see, so does your church have some kind of lead roof that God can’t see through?”

“No, God sees everything all the time.”

“Right, but then won’t God see how bad you are no matter where you are?”

“I never thought of that.”

“Are you thinking that God is a bit dumb and He won’t notice you’re bad if you’re not in church?”

“He’s not dumb.”

“So maybe you’re not fooling Him by not going to church. Maybe God sees you all the time and maybe God loves you because you’re one of His children. Maybe it’s you who feels bad about you, not God.”

“Well, when you say it like that, it must be true.”

“That’s why I say it like that. So, would you agree that not going to church doesn’t prevent God from seeing you? He can see you no matter where you are, right?”

“Right.”

“Then let’s look at the cost-benefit of your not going to church. You had been thinking that not going to church protected you from being seen by God. But now we’ve agreed that that doesn’t in fact work. Also, we’ve agreed that it’s you who thinks you’re bad, not God. True?”

“I guess so.”

“You guess so. What part of that are you not sure about?”

“I still think I’m bad.”

“So God hates some of His children?”

“No, He doesn’t.”

“Can we agree that you think you’re bad, but God disagrees?”

“I know that’s true.”

“Good. I’m glad to hear you say that. Back to the cost-benefit, then; staying away from church has no benefit because God is everywhere and can see you no matter where you are, plus He doesn’t think you’re bad anyway. And staying away from church has a big cost. It deprives you of important social connections and support and it reinforces your mistaken belief that you are unworthy of God’s love.”

“Well, that doesn’t make any sense, me staying away from church, I mean.”

“How about starting to go to church again as soon as you are discharged?”

“I’m going to do that.”

“Why?”

“For the reasons you just said.”

“Excellent! Very good work. Congratulations.”

One of the techniques used here is for the therapist to be more concrete in his thinking than the abuse survivor. When the survivor sees that the concrete examples are ridiculous (such as God not being able to see through the church’s lead roof, or God taking coffee breaks), she must now look at whether her own thinking has been concrete and inaccurate. A similar strategy would be effective for a woman with bulimia who says that she throws her feelings up in the toilet. I might ask what color the feelings are and whether they sink or float in the toilet. Are they chunky or just a uniform paste?

This is the first step towards getting the bulimic woman to consider the possibility that her feelings don’t literally leave her body and go down the toilet. Really, she just stuffs them inside temporarily, then they come back again, and the binge-purge cycle repeats itself. The content is different from talking about God, but the tasks and strategies of the therapy are similar.

God as a Moody Tyrant and Voyeur

The trauma survivor’s picture of God may include the belief that He put me in this family to make me stronger. A variation is He put me in this family so that I could learn important lessons. The basic idea is that God was subjecting the person to abuse for her own good. This means that the incestuous biological father was actually doing God’s work by abusing his daughter.

I therefore ask, “Oh, so instead of putting pedophile sex offenders in jail, we should give them awards at church for doing God’s work?” “No.”

“But that’s what you just said. You said that God put you in this family to make you stronger, which means your dad was doing God’s work by abusing you.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“I know it is, but it follows logically from what you said.”

“Oh, so I’m stupid, then?”

“No, it has nothing to do with being stupid. It’s the locus-of-control shift. Remember, we went over that. It’s a normal belief for a scared, abused child to have, but that doesn’t mean it’s actually true from an adult perspective.”

“OK, I get it.”

“Good. One more thing: if God put you in this family on purpose, and if God sees everything, that means he is some kind of pornography watcher in the sky. He wants you to be abused because He thinks that will make you stronger. So he agrees with the abuse, maybe even gets off on it. Are you sure that’s the picture of God you want to believe in?”

“No, it’s not.”

“Well, then, maybe you should let go of the belief that God set you up for abuse on purpose. Maybe it’s your father on earth who did that, not your Father in Heaven.”

“That makes sense.”

The procedure is not to impose the therapist’s belief system on the client, rather it is to point out the contradictions and implications of the client’s view of God, which has been distorted by her childhood abuse. These trauma-driven cognitive errors are inconsistent with the doctrines of her church.

It’s OK to Kill Myself and Be With my Loved One in Heaven

Many people have stated to me during therapy sessions that one of their motives for suicide is to be with deceased loved ones in heaven. There are several strategies for disarming this belief, which is based on the locus-of-control shift. First, I inquire about the doctrine of the person’s church and her own belief system. Some people believe that their loved ones are in heaven but people who commit suicide go to Hell. In such cases, pointing out the contradiction disarms the motive for suicide.

Other people are not sure whether suicide results in going to Heaven or Hell. In such cases, the therapeutic strategy is to discuss the risk involved and whether this is a rational gamble. For people who believe that suicide does not bar entry to Heaven, different strategies are required. If the person had a sister, niece or daughter who wanted to commit suicide in order to join a loved one in heaven, what would the therapy client do? Almost always, the answer is, do everything in her power to prevent the suicide. This then takes us to a double standard concerning suicide, driven by the locus-of-control shift, with suicide is OK applying only to the self.

Another discussion might focus on the physics of Heaven, so to speak. I ask what time is it in heaven right now?

“There is no time in heaven. Oh, so people don’t age in heaven and don’t experience the passage of time, because they’re in eternity?” “Right.”

“So, for your loved one, you’ll show up in heaven at the same time, whether you die now or forty years from now? I guess so. So, then, killing yourself isn’t about what’s best for your dead relative, it’s about you. I guess. And what would your dead relative want you to do, live a full and happy life or kill yourself? Live a full and happy life. So you would be going directly against the wishes of your relative by killing yourself—you would be depriving her of getting to watch your life on earth improve as you recover.”

“I never looked at it that way.”

“Maybe you should.”

In talking with trauma survivors about God, the goal is not to change the person’s religion, it is to challenge and correct core negative selfbeliefs, or, in psychodynamic terms, understand that the projections onto God are a consequence of being sexually abused by one’s earthly father. One might say that the target of the therapy is a transference neurosis about God. Whether God does or does not exist, is irrelevant to the healing of the transference distortions. One works with the client’s belief in God, not with the therapist’s religious views.