Reframing Trauma: A Psychospiritual Theory and Theology

As awareness of the widespread presence of trauma grows, popular culture can name everything stressful ""traumatic."" Yet, diagnostic definitions of trauma overlook cultural understandings that refine our conceptualization of trauma. M. Jan Holton and Jill L. Snodgrass argue for a theory and theology of trauma to navigate such complexities.

In Reframing Trauma, Holton and Snodgrass compile essays that expand our understanding of trauma as a stress-trauma continuum. The volume engages the challenges of racism, eco-violence, and myriad sociopolitical and interpersonal injustices that injure individuals, communities, and the globe. Each essay is grounded in a strength-based approach to trauma and contextualizes our societal negativity bias within spiritual values of hope, growth, and resilience. Meanwhile, the understanding of a trauma-stress continuum avoids diminishing the suffering that emerges from stress and trauma of all kinds.

Holton and Snodgrass also offer a reframed theology of trauma. The volume mines Christian theology and wisdom from other faith traditions for insight into interpersonal and communal woundedness that, paradoxically, both expands and narrows our understandings of trauma. This exploration helps identify implications for spiritually integrated care and counseling, chaplaincy, and pastoral education.

The result is a groundbreaking understanding of stress and trauma as an ever-evolving concept that is imbued with theological and spiritual wisdom. Such wisdom eschews the limitations of Western understandings of trauma. This wisdom offers insight into how stressful and traumatic experiences can be both life-limiting and life-giving, both despair-inducing and the impetus for growth and resilience.