It all begins with a promise. The baby signals a tentative or even distressed signal upon entering our strange new world, and a parent responds. The parent brings comfort, touch, and soothing, which help the child feel safe and protected. Thousands of these back-and-forth interactions occur during the first couple of years of a baby’s life. Each one speaks a promise to the child, mostly without words. “You are not alone. I will take care of you. You have nothing to fear because I will protect you. You belong to me.” These promises form the bedrock of safety and settled confidence within the child, which we call secure attachment.1 This form of attachment provides the optimal environment for cognitive growth, language development, and emotional regulation. 

As babies, we are entirely dependent on our caregivers for our basic physical needs. Babies also depend on caregivers to help soothe the “big emotions” they experience in their first years of life. The caring presence and touch of caregivers communicate the important message that pain is temporary and distress can be relieved. If our caregivers are consistent and attuned, our brains can better develop their wise and compassionate regions instead of simmering in their reactive modes. We acquire an internal grid that maps out these experiences, teaching us what to expect from others during our moments of greatest need.2 Our particular set of bonding experiences helps to determine our attachment style.  

Attachment is God’s design for us in this fallen world. It is our first line of protection. The promise is fulfilled each time we reach and find safety, provision, or comfort to meet our needs. Each promise kept increases our ability to trust and enhances our sense that life’s troubles are manageable. These experiences echo God’s promise that He will “never abandon us.”

The Nature of Trauma

Traumatic events violate the promises of safety because they literally threaten our lives or give every appearance of bringing us close to death. At the time, no one prevented us from being totally terrorized and overwhelmed. Our first line of defense was not available. In traumatic moments, a wise mind and verbal centers are deactivated. Our secondary, or even tertiary, systems of defense are predominant, including hyper-arousal and hypo-arousal, respectively.   

The “fight or flight” response is the second line of defense, and it mobilizes us to deal actively with sources of threat via massive surges of adrenaline. Rapid heart rate, circulatory changes, increased respiration, and tunnel vision are some of the components of this hyperarousal response.

The “freeze” response is the final line of defense, functioning to minimize damage when we cannot escape harm. We become hypo-aroused, numb, mentally dissociated, and even shut down and slide into self-induced coma states.

When these systems are activated, we only have a partial view of the traumatic event because the verbal centers and wise regions of our brains are not engaged. We know that something happened, but words evade us. Even the time-keeper of our brains is turned off when we experience trauma. In some instances, we may have difficulty remembering much of anything at all, especially when our minds revert to the freeze mode of responding. Yet, our nonverbal brains and bodies do remember that something awful happened.3 In fact, they keep bringing it forward in our minds to warn us if we encounter similar circumstances again. In an effort to make sense of the experience, they may repeatedly bring forward pieces of the material through the channels of flashbacks and nightmares. In some cases, our central nervous systems get stuck or switch intermittently within hyper-arousal or hypo-arousal settings. All of these are the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Simple Trauma vs. Complex Trauma

Simple trauma includes single occurrence events that threatened our lives. Complex trauma occurs when we face multiple or repeated threats, and it also involves those instances where the very people we trusted for protection were the perpetrators of harm. 

The map for simple trauma is by no means simple, but navigating it entails only tracing one thread of harm and the triggers within our minds and bodies. Complex trauma leaves an imprint that is exponentially more difficult to disentangle because of the multiple sources of harm. It is like walking through a field of landmines, not knowing if we can trust anyone to be our guide.  

Trauma differs from other mental health symptoms because so much of the imprint is nonverbal. Therefore, traditional talk therapies may not be sufficient modes of treatment. This is especially true of complex trauma where the basic trust instincts have been damaged. Fortunately, God’s original attachment design served to bond preverbal humans to caregivers, and the back-and-forth exchange between parent and child built trust from ground zero. So, we have a familiar model already in place to heal the wounds of trauma.

The Promise Restored

Counselors who want to help traumatized clients will be stepping into delicate places where trust and basic safety assumptions have been shattered. Much like a nurturing parent, counselors can embody a secure attachment framework by being gentle, wise, and patient. This is especially important for clients with complex trauma.

Therapists act as an incarnational bridge between the hyper and hypo-aroused states in which the client is stuck and there is a slow return to trust and safety: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; … they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned…” (Isaiah 43:2, NIV).

Counselors must expect that the first step in the process will be to establish rudimentary levels of trust. The remaining steps of the healing process will incorporate attachment ingredients called “The 5 P’s:”

  1. Present Moment Grounding. Counselors must train clients in skills to anchor themselves to present reality when the waves of the past come surging. Deep breathing, visual scanning of the therapy room, body awareness, and postural cueing are some tools that can be applied in session and at home. Counselors can tailor their own breathing and posture to foster feelings of calm within the session.
  2. Pacing. It is the counselor’s job to make sure clients do not get flooded as they process their pain. Too much emotional intensity will merely translate into re-experiencing parts of the trauma. Counselors can slow the pace, simplify the focus, or invite clients back into a more cerebral space when the intensity gets too intense.  
  3. Piece Together a More Coherent Narrative. The brain needs to integrate the fragmented experiences that occurred during trauma. Proceed slowly, layering in small bits of the plot line, realizing that it may not be possible to get all the details. The goal is to have clients activate verbal centers and higher-level cognitive processing while feeling small doses of the experience’s emotional intensity. All this takes place within the attachment framework of the counselor being present with clients. 
  4. Process Memories and Nonverbal Sensations. Counselors must observe whether clients manifest symptoms within their bodies or behavior patterns that are actually “body memories” of the original trauma. Help clients notice their bodily sensations with compassion and kindness. You may help them reframe body symptoms and behaviors as leftover adaptions to their traumatic past.4 In other instances, you may intentionally have them reprocess memories in a structured manner.5
  5. Promote Engagement with the Attachment Centers of the Client’s Brain. With children, we have multiple ways to engage them into bonding activities—singing songs together or with a group, acting out stories, using our imaginations to creatively express difficult issues, stretching, breathing, playing with toys, and caring for animals. You may seek out groups that clients can join to experience these things, bringing them back to the “land of the living” again. You may find ways to weave these themes into your counseling, such as the well-timed sharing of laughter or an appropriate story together. All of these methods invite our clients to reengage the attachment centers of their brains. 

The use of the “5 P’s” reaffirms the promise of safety and presence in the midst of pain. Trauma is resolved when the body and mind agree that the story is told and the past is no longer intruding into the present.

W. Jesse Gill, Psy.D., is a Christian psychologist who practices in Hershey, Pennsylvania. He is passionate about integrating Scripture with attachment theory and applies these truths to clergy care, counseling, and marriage therapy. His book, Face to Face: Seven Keys to a Secure Marriage, teaches couples to embrace God’s attachment design (www.facetofacemarriage.com).

This article originally appeared in Christian Counseling Today, Vol. 25 No. 1. Christian Counseling Today is the flagship publication of the American Association of Christian Counselors. To learn more about the AACC, click here.

Endnotes

1 Ainsworth, M.D.S. (1979). Infant-mother attachment. American Psychologist, 34, 932-937. 

2 Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and loss (Vol. I). London, Hogarth.

3 Van der Kolk, B. (2015). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. New York: Penguin Books. 

4 Ogden, P., Minton, K., & Pain, C. (2006). Trauma and the body: A Sensorimotor approach to psychotherapy. New York: W.W. Norton.

5 Parnell, L. (2013). Attachment-focused EMDR: Healing relational trauma. New York: W.W. Norton.