Triage.
The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.
~ Gloria Steinem
stages of healing, 2.
Medically speaking, triage is a period of assessment. It is a coming to terms with the reality of one’s injuries—recognizing and naming what has been damaged in the body. Or for our purposes, what has been damaged in the soul. It is a movement out of ignorance into understanding, out of denial into acknowledgement. And it sucks.
Last week we explored the cost of ignoring or refusing to own the soul injuries we have experienced. We said that, until we do, we cannot find healing. Once we do, our need for healing becomes greatly apparent; now we have to decide what to do about it. The first thing that almost always happens during soul triage is something both instinctive and necessary: Anger.
The process of opening our eyes to reality comes with the awareness that people—often people we love and who love us, as well as the systems supporting those people—have indeed hurt us. Rarely was it conscious, less often was it intentional, but it was real. Very real. In either a large one-off encounter or through a string of a thousand small encounters, we were hurt, diminished, misled, marginalized, and/or devalued. We were stripped of dignity and agency. We were commoditized, utilized, and manipulated to meet other people’s agendas at the expense of our own well-being. It was deeply and truly wrong, and once we see it, it is not wrong to be mad about it.
Anger, in its better forms, serves us in absolutely essential fashion: It alerts us to injustice. It lets us know, loudly, that we (or someone or something we care about) has been transgressed upon. This alarm system is meant to happen at the actual time of the offense, but that alarm is often muted because of a power differential between the victim and the perpetrator. We may feel that we don’t have the right to be protected, we may feel we even deserved the transgression, we may even question our perception of reality as to what actually did happen. In more severe scenarios, the trauma triggers dissociative coping mechanisms in the soul. But once we open our eyes and acknowledge the trauma and the traumatizer, then the anger kicks in.
Whether loud and explosive or quiet and tamped down, anger is usually the precursor to grief. Grief is the healthy, human way to name our losses. Our injuries might have been emotional or spiritual or developmental or relational or all those things, but the result is that the path to becoming our True Selves was diverted, damaged, or downright obliterated… and subsequently, we had to compensate in ways that were likewise harmful.
Personally, I think this is what Moses was describing when he talked about God “visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation” (Ex 34:7). While God does not personally multiply injury and punishment, the cascade of multiplying consequences of wrongdoing does, naturally and inevitably, flow from one generation to the next. Some call this ancestral sins or generational sins, and you and I are all recipients. Mercifully, the healing also flows exponentially to “a thousand generations” (Deut 5:10)… but we’ll explore that more in later posts.
When you find yourself in the Triage Stage, finally willing and able to name the injuries that have hampered your soul’s development, two things are necessary: 1) withdrawal from the damaging context, and 2) support in the healing process.
For example, if you were injured by a parent, you need to step back hard from that relationship. If you were injured by a faith community, you need to step back hard from that community. If you were injured badly enough by a spouse, you need to step back hard from that relationship. Occasionally, the offender is able to accept responsibility and do the necessary work for restoration, but even then, a certain amount of distance is generally important. If you were injured by a coach or a teacher or a childhood authority, you have probably already moved out of harm’s way. The damage must stop being perpetuated in order to make it to Stage Three.
Next, you need safe and skilled support as you intentionally begin your healing journey. You need an ally—perhaps a mentor, a spiritual director, or a therapist.* Or all three. You need a space where you will be heard and seen with compassion and nonjudgment. You need space to unpack your story, to name your losses, and to process your anger and grief. Without both of these essentials—protection and support—you cannot move forward towards health and wholeness. With them, however, healing is not only possible but probable.
Healing is not a guarantee, yet it is the natural course for motivated souls in a caring environment. Just like our bodies move naturally toward recovery. As we know from Jacob’s story, we may well walk with a limp, but through this healing process, our eyes finally open and we can become a wounded healer ourselves. Like Jesus! And that’s a pretty great redemption story to follow.
growing your soul
What formative soul injuries have you been able to name so far, and how have you been able to move into a more nurturing environment to foster the healing journey?
serving our world
How have you perhaps been that safe, nurturing presence for someone else reeling from their own trauma?
takeaway
Open your eyes.
*To state the obvious, I am neither a medical doctor nor a psychotherapist. Instead, I write and minister as a pastor, a spiritual director, a professional coach, and a theologian. Nothing in this blog series should be construed as psychiatric advice nor a substitute for professional medical care around the experience of trauma.