Trauma Care in Youth Ministry

I remember my first day in Pastoral Counseling class. I was antagonistic and thought I knew how to talk with people, why did I need a class about listening and giving advice from the Bible? On top of that I was not impressed with our professor. He was a good guy, well intentioned and a pretty good counselor but I was not tracking with his approach to the topic. So when he started trying to tell us that mental health was a medical issue just like diabetes or a broken bone, I was less than impressed. I even said, “You can control your behavior, I can’t control if I have diabetes or not. This sounds made up.” How arrogant and naive I was.

Had I been attentive and humble, what I would have realized is that there is both science and spirituality behind what we call mental health. I may have also caused myself a lot less stress and heartache in Youth Ministry had I payed attention to what was being taught. Since those days in Pastoral Counseling class I have learned that mental health is a huge part of a teenager’s life because it is a huge part of a human’s life. Teenagers specifically come with unique things due to the hormonal and physical changes their bodies are going through during adolescence. If we are going to be shepherds of our families and students we need to be aware of the mental health of them both and learn to help in ways to contribute to their health not cause more harm. What we have to be aware of is that mental health does factor into the way we approach our students. If we blow it off we may inadvertently be blowing off our students and their families.

“You can control your behavior, I can’t control if I have diabetes or not. This sounds made up.” How arrogant and naive I was.

My experience with mental health issues has shown me that if we handle them with care it can reveal the love of Jesus, if we don’t it may very well turn off our students to Jesus. For instance I remember taking two students, cousins, to camp one year. They had both come from very tragic backgrounds, causing them both to struggle in different degrees with trauma. One of them was hyperactive and squirrelly, his cousin was not, but did show signs that something was profoundly at work in him.

When we got to camp, we asked everyone to get things set up before we lost the light. As soon as I made the announcement, everyone jumped into gear and found something to do so we could get camp set before the sun went down. Everyone but these two, they were literally sitting in the van, in the two front seats watching everyone put tents up, unpack chairs, get food ready, etc. I asked them on multiple occasions to please help, never realizing they were being triggered by this activity. It wasn’t on my radar. Looking back now I can see their struggle, but in the moment my radar was not pinging with mental health or trauma competency at all. I just got mad, blew

up on them, and told them had clean up duty for the rest of the week if they didn’t help. They both never helped and never did clean up duty for the week. Once I got home I talked to their parents about things and they informed me that it was on camping trips that they were both mistreated by someone. Of course setting up camp would trigger them. Had I known, I would have held my tongue and treated them differently.

Those lessons have been invaluable for the ministry I have done with students, but I think to a greater extent it has allowed me to walk closer with Jesus as he calls me up towards his Kingdom.

This was a first for me. Since then I have leaned into the effects of trauma and undiagnosed mental health issues in students. Those lessons have been invaluable for the ministry I have done with students, but I think to a greater extent it has allowed me to walk closer with Jesus as he calls me up towards his Kingdom.

If you pay attention to statistics, especially those put out by Barna Group and others the mental health of our students is not great. They are feeling pressure to succeed (whatever the definition of succeed might be) from all around them. This is not different from other times in history, but now they are not only bombarded at school and maybe at home, but constantly online. They are told they are not good enough if their following isn’t to a certain level, or if they don’t look like their favorite influencer. Then the pandemic hit, ramping up feelings of FOMO, which on top of every other kind of pressure, something broke, many times it was the students themselves. They didn’t know how to keep up with the perceived “pretty people” online, they had lost their peer groups at school, while mom and dad tried to manage the transitions they felt. This plus an ever present conversation about mental health has pushed the issue to the forefront.

I say all of this to say, if you think mental health is a bunch of snowflakes not wanting to grow up, you are way off the mark and may end up hurting the people you want to serve, leaving a pile of ‘metaphorical’ bodies behind you. That is less than optimal and definitely not the way of Jesus. Our goal as pastors and ministers to the families and students under our care should be to utilize all the tools at our disposal to embrace the “Ministry of Reconciliation” as the Apostle Paul

put it.

So let me share with you what I have learned and how it has helped me love and minister to students and their families.

TRAUMA IS REAL

Trauma is real. It may be used way too much and applied way too broadly but what you will find out is that Trauma is a very real thing. First of all imagine being hurt by the people who are the closest to you in the world. Parents, family members, best or lifelong friends, people who you believe have your best interests at heart, that then turn their back on you, maybe even perpetrate the harm. Some of these people are well intentioned and never mean to hurt the people they love, that doesn’t excuse the hurt, it is to try and help us see that when people hurt it usually isn’t because they are evil incarnate. What it means is that “hurt people, hurt people.”

Now if you can imagine these people hurting you, imagine what that could do to you. Neuroscientists tell us that it releases cortisol into your brain at a rapid rate. Cortisol is the chemical your amygdala produces to tell you brain that something bad is happening, so be alert — if a bear is in the room, get out of the room, your amygdala says. As you can see that is a very important function, a built in detector that our creator gave us to protect us. This is what we call the fight, flight, freeze or fawn, mechanism in your brain. It is an auto response that your body just does. You may have heard of the amygdala as well, its a gland that sits at the base of your brain and helps govern the chemicals released into your brain. The amygdala is sometimes called the reptilian side of our brain or “lizard brain” because it is the main thing we have in common with reptiles, our fight, flight, freeze or fawn response.

The issue becomes when you are constantly bombarded with cortisol. We are supposed to have a safe places where we do not need to be on the look out for bad stuff taking us down. We need to rest and be safe. For humans that is within the family or at least a safe environment where we can let our guard down. But when our closest care givers are the ones who are harming us, then our brain is constantly filled with cortisol — constantly on guard. What neuroscientists have found is that the more cortisol we have in our brain the less likely we are to move into the reason part of our brain, the pre-frontal cortex, where the highest functioning parts of us exists. It is where we reason, rationalize, think and learn. When our brain is soaked in cortisol it cuts us off from the pre-frontal cortex. Causing us to make boneheaded decisions and irrational leaps of logic. Think about it, when you have made bad decisions its because you were anxious, afraid, mad or upset. You couldn’t rationally decide what was best so you reacted the best you could. Your brain was in the fight, flight, freeze, or fawn mode instead of being governed by the pre-frontal cortex.

Imagine living life with the person who traumatized you from the youngest moments of your life. All you know is fear or anger or stress or anxiety. You struggle to get to the front part of your brain. It stunts your growth academically, emotionally, relationally and even physically in some cases. Now imagine having kids in your group at all those stages of development. This is mental health and this is why it matters.

Imagine living life with the person who traumatized you from the youngest moments of your life.

You are dealing with hormonal teenagers that may have a history of trauma, or another mental health issue and not even know it. When a student acts in a way you find inconsistent in the group it is easy to get upset or angry at that student. When in reality the simple logical step they need to take, may neither be simple or logical to them. If they are not thinking with their pre-frontal cortex but instead are full of anxiety or fear with their amygdala taking over, our anger and frustration may be adding to their trauma instead of addressing it.

What do you do? What I did was spend some one on one time with the cousins I told you about above I listened to their story and tried to understand where they were coming from, hoping to help them. As I listened and won their confidence it created a safe space for them. I had become a safe person that didn’t want to hurt them. Then we talked in youth group about how to make the group a safe place because everyone needed it. Then I sought out training fro trauma. I took a seminar from an organization we had gone a mission trip with the previous couple of years. TCC gave me such insight that I couldn’t think about doing ministry any other way.

What I would encourage you todo is enroll in a Trauma Competent Care seminar. It may cost a good chunk of money, but it is so worth it. Then adjust your ministry based on those temperaments and techniques you will learn. Make your group a real safe place, not a place that is trying to grow bigger than the ministry down the street, a true place where kids can be heard and loved.

Please go to https://traumafreeworld.org/ learn more about trauma and its effects. Watch the videos, read the stories, then sign up for one of their trainings, it will change you.

So we took those two people back to camp the following year. I had learned a lot. We needed a few things that were not at our site but could be picked up at the camp store, I gave them specific instructions to run get some wood and roasting sticks while the rest of us set up camp. They felt less triggered and more helpful. Then during the hottest day I noticed one of them was really having a tough time in his friend group. I pulled him aside and asked him one simple question and he began to melt down right in front of me. Before I would have tried to give him advice and or go yell at his friends, instead I identified a trauma trigger, so I responded with my training and asked how much he had eaten that day. He said, “nothing.” So I got an apple and some grapes and made him eat before we did anything else. The food did wonders to his attitude. I showed him the group was probably just hot and thirsty so we took them some water. They all made up and had a great rest of the week. Trauma informed care is transformative. It will seem like magic, but in reality it is the love of Jesus at work in people’s lives.