The Walking Faithless

If you are a card-carrying member of the walking faithless, the odds are extraordinarily high that you have experienced trauma in your life.

It’s hard enough to have faith even if you had a decent childhood and a trauma-free adulthood, because let’s be honest, our culture is stressful all by itself. But having faith if you suffered at the hands of a primary caregiver or significant other physically, mentally, or emotionally? Fuhgeddaboutit. 

I talk about the “walking faithless” a fair amount, and in some ways it is a nod to my love for zombie movies. Most of us with trauma feel a bit like zombies a lot of the time. We have attention issues. Sometimes, we struggle to maintain a coherent conversation, depending on our stress level. We can’t remember BLEEP. We feel numb or disconnected from our bodies. We regularly endure ailments and maladies, because systemic stress causes actual physical harm. We keep dumbly running into the same problems over and over and over again, like a zombie stuck in a revolving door (which would be hilarious, by the way). 

When we’re traumatized - and some people hate that word, but it is appropriate because it captures a systemic expression of stress in the mind, body, soul - we do all kinds of things to avoid feeling wounded, while also being traumatized over and over again, either through our own actions, thoughts, and choices or by the people we choose to associate with. 

There is something about a darkened soul that is very attractive to another darkened soul. Like cynical, irritable vampires, we find the light of those who are healed or unharmed totally unattractive. TOO NICE. NO CHEMISTRY. BOOOORING. 

One thing I learned recently from a very interesting lecture given by trauma expert Bessel van der Kolk is that active coping includes planning and action, whereas passive coping includes freezing and dependency. When traumatized, our body endures inescapable shock. Almost all trauma has to do with not being able to get away, of being forced to endure the unimaginable, be it rape, abuse, war, or disaster.

Instead of stress hormones becoming associated with being able to do something, they become about being panicked and fearful. Similar to the freeze response of a deer caught in headlights, we become “de-skilled” and trapped in a cycle of dependency and helplessness. Our bodies and minds become trapped in an endless cycle of the stress response.

Enter the zombie, staggering around, falling apart, barely functional, bumping into things, devouring others in its senseless drive to spread more fear and trauma everywhere (the more I think about this analogy, the more apt it becomes, btw). Like a zombie bite, this is how trauma gets passed on. Without healing, the traumatized traumatize others, either with or without intent, depending on the nature of their harm. It becomes a virus, spreadable and devastating. 

I have spent a lot of time reading and researching mental health, self-care, and self-help. There are many ways to care for and treat trauma, and things do actually get better if we are willing to engage with therapy. The main issue is that sometimes it takes significant, sustained practice and serious commitment to healing, growth, and self-care, which many of us do not have the patience for if we have been living in pain for a long time. 

Faith, in my opinion, is a very potent tool often left out of the toolbox for a variety of reasons. I think that’s the reason I am writing this blog. I want to be part of returning faith to the masses. All of us should feel like having faith is an option for us, whether we call it Good or God. It is one of those potent words that carries a little more weight than grounding exercises, meditation, or processing trauma - all of those things are important and necessary for growth, but do we have faith in ourselves, in our treatment, in our futures? I’m not sure we can have it if we do not practice it. 

An important distinction to be made is that practicing having faith provides an alternative to trauma. Praying is an action, and usually a hopeful one. Once we say a prayer, we naturally start looking around to see if God or Good or the Universe has an answer, and inevitably there is one. We may not like the answer, but we sure as BLEEP get one. The act of asking for things we want and need and receiving answers can build faith, which in turn can build hope. Faith isn’t a cure for trauma, but it can prove to be a very useful tool if we are willing to add it to our toolboxes. 

The one flaw in my zombie analogy is that usually in the movies, there is no cure for the infected. They just stagger around wounding others until they are destroyed or their bodies fall apart. I am reluctant to characterize faith alone as a cure or antidote for anything, but I do think faith, therapy, and a commitment to healing is the remedy to what ails us, no matter how traumatized we may be.

It turns out, unlike zombies, we don’t have to be the walking faithless forever.