Historically, the Christian church hasn’t talked much about PTSD, or if we have — at least anecdotally — it’s with a side-eye.
How many times have we heard things like, “That person just needs to grow up,” or “get it together” or “stop letting that thing that happened 20 years ago affect today?”
In fact, historically, more often than not, many congregants have seemed to treat PTSD as a convenient way to avoid responsibility.
“I have PTSD” is often seen as a get-out-of-jail free card. An almost phantom condition.
The question is — why has the church been like this?
Maybe it has to do with the Protestant Work Ethic.
The Protestant Work Ethic probably isn’t a fan of the reality that some frightening event could disable someone so completely that they have trouble coping with life for the rest of their lives.
After all, the Pilgrims had a lot of traumatic things happen, and it didn’t seem to slow them down.
So we hear things like, “Oh come on, just get over it and stop being a snowflake.”
But PTSD in humans is an enduring, involuntary response to trauma or fear — just as it is in the animal world.
I particularly think this new study in Scientific Reports is important because it shows that animals (specifically, black-capped chickadees) experience PTSD that profoundly alters the course of their lives.
And animals don’t use get out of jail free cards to sit in their nests and play Fortnite all day and nite.
In the study, researchers put chickadees inside a controlled, safe environment and played 7 days worth of audio from predators. Pretty scary for those chickadees.
The researchers then stopped the predator playbacks, let the chickadees back into the wild, and monitored them.
The chickadees showed “long-lasting effects on the neural circuitry of fear,” as measured by their levels of a genetic transcription factor in the amygdala and hippocampus.
In other words, the effects of those seven harrowing days profoundly altered their brain function — even though they just went back to their normal chickadee lives.
Which, from that point on, were anything but normal chickadee lives.
On that score, prior research has shown that PTSD in animals affects their ability to care for their young, with future generations bearing the consequences.
A practical application for the church?
Chickadees aren’t trying to get on disability. Chickadees aren’t snowflakes (they’re chickadees). Chickadees aren’t just refusing to move on after a little trauma. Chickadees don’t try to game the system.
This is just another of troves of data points showing that PTSD is a real phenomenon in this world. It’s not a product of a mischievous mind.
We talk about how important it is to build a good home, and it is. But, if so, we have to take PTSD seriously.
For example, a recent study showed that mothers with PTSD showed less empathy for their young children, which affected development of empathy in those children. Trauma can beget trauma.
As parents, if we’re not addressing past trauma, we’re going to affect our home far more profoundly than whether the kids get a little more screen time. PTSD can destroy the life of the victim and the victim’s family.
And finally, if you’re interested, feel free to read my interview with Aundi Kolber on a new way of treating PTSD!
