“We are to care for the habitat because it is essential to our care for others. To care for our habitat is to care for ourselves,” said the guest speaker, Ryan LaMothe, Ph.D., professor of pastoral care and counseling at Saint Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology in St. Meinrad, Indiana. “We can continue to care for people who are suffering from various maladies, psychological and physical, yet we must also keep in mind these larger forces and consider ways to intervene.” 

This year, the annual conference was called “Between Hope and Despair: Caring in the Age of Climate Crisis.” In a series of three hour-long lectures, LaMothe spoke about how climate change could affect pastoral theology and care, identifying challenges for caregivers and offering solutions. 

A Lesson from Mister Rogers

The effects of climate change are more significant than ever, said LaMothe. Over the past three centuries, global carbon dioxide levels have risen from 270 parts per million to well over 400, he said, adding that today’s situation is serious. The rise of greenhouse gases have melted glaciers, increased sea levels, and created catastrophic storms; those who receive the brunt of the damage are the poor and people of color. And people around the world—including his clients—are starting to feel anxious, said LaMothe. 

Our biggest challenges toward making our world green again include global capitalism, which exploits people and natural resources in the pursuit of profit, and nationalism, which keeps us from working toward the common good on a global scale, he said. 

It’s also difficult to change our lives for the Earth’s well-being. We’re all busy—with our careers, with raising kids, and being involved in our local communities, he said. But people, including pastoral caregivers, can still make a difference. 

“In terms of pastoral theology and pastoral care, we need to become more versed in making use of our disciplines as we seek to organize and cooperate with others with the aim of caring for the Earth and its residents,” LaMothe said, to an audience of more than 50 educators, students, spiritual care providers, and clinical practitioners. 

With clients, pastoral caregivers can use spiritual practices to facilitate mindfulness about the environment, he said. He encouraged the audience to view their vocation through a more communal lens—to see the Earth and humanity as a whole. He asked the audience to practice “personal recognition”—recognizing every client for who they are—as most famously shown by Fred Rogers, an American television personality and Presbyterian minister who hosted the preschool television series Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.

Lastly, he described the importance of “inoperative care,” in which a caregiver supports a client without following the rules and expectations set by society. He said a good example is a scene in Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood where, on a particularly hot day, Mister Rogers invites a black police officer to cool his feet in a plastic pool with him. Despite the racial tensions in their lifetime, the two share a simple, routine conversation—like any two human beings, LaMothe said. 

“Inoperative care meant that Mr. Rogers was not operating out of the dominant cultural representations of the day,” LaMothe said. “Both men, in this moment of mutual care, were not operating under the delusions and contending disciplinary apparatuses of white superiority. They were operating under a mutual personal recognition and care.”

‘The Reality of Working With Human Beings’

In response to LaMothe’s lecture, Mary Beth Werdel, Ph.D., director of the pastoral mental health counseling program at Fordham, spoke about how pastoral caregivers can treat clients experiencing trauma related to climate change or natural disasters. 

Climate change can cause negative psychological effects, including a decreased sense of predictability and control that can lead to acute stress and anxiety, said Werdel. She urged the audience to help clients find meaning in their post-traumatic experiences, especially those related to climate change. 

“Stress and trauma remain intrinsically negative,” Werdel said. “But it’s moving through and enduring the stress and trauma that we come to find and feel and see something different about our world, about ourselves, and about others.” 

She also encouraged the audience to explore psychological and spiritual questions with their clients—not as separate issues, but as one.

“The reality of working with human beings is this: When someone is sitting in front of you … they don’t parcel out, this is my psychological question and this is my spiritual question,” she said, to laughter from the audience. “They just come to you whole. And so we, who spend time thinking about the realities of stress and trauma induced by climate change, have to consider both of these questions together.” 

Towards the end of the conference, LaMothe and Werdel held a panel discussion with two faculty members in the pastoral mental health counseling department: Kirk Bingaman, Ph.D., and Lisa Cataldo, Ph.D. 

Bingaman thanked LaMothe for encouraging the audience to neither look away from nor discount the impacts of climate change. Cataldo urged the pastoral caregivers in the room to enter every clinical encounter without memory, understanding, or desire—three things that could impede their work. 

‘The Simple Power of Connection’

An audience member, who identified herself as a hospital chaplain who has supported new amputees and young mothers with traumatic brain injuries, shared a personal story. She said she was a quadriplegic who was once told she would live in a nursing home for the rest of her life. But now, she works as a chaplain who provides emotional and spiritual support. She noted the importance of hope and the place where it is born—“the simple power of connection” with others. 

In the last minutes of the conference, another audience member commented on the positive ways that society is combating climate change, from efforts as wide as New York’s recent ban on single-use plastic bags, to the conference committee’s decision to use paper plates during the breakfast buffet. 

“Any last comments on how we can go forward and encourage our children to be positive and hopeful and do concrete actions to help the environment?” the audience member asked the panelists. 

On a projector screen, Werdel had shared her son’s recent elementary school assignment. He and his classmates were asked to write their wishes for the New Year. “My wish for 2020 is … save white rhinos,” he wrote, beneath a hand-drawn sketch of two rhinos smiling under a sunny sky.  

“I cannot save these rhinos, or the thousand other species that will die because the rhinos die,” Werdel told the woman in the audience. “But I can instill a sense of, hopefully, optimism and agency for what he can do, encourage him to speak out loud his sadness and his loss … Caring about other things—people and places and spaces—that are outside of what he normally sees.”

If you enter the office of the congregation, a big golden retriever might greet you with a stuffed animal while Alpha, the congregation’s betta fish, wiggles by in a tank nearby. A garden walkway is a sanctuary for wandering minds. The church also offers yoga classes to members of the Newtown community. 

But the classes are less about learning how to perfect a Downward-Facing Dog and more about providing a portal for trauma recovery, said Crebbin.

“The feeling of trauma—the depths of it—is that ‘my life is never going to be the same,’” he said. “If you have this image that ‘I’m going to be healed or I’m going to go back to the way my life was,’ that’s not helpful because people will never get there.”

Crebbin reflected on the 2012 massacre of 20 Sandy Hook Elementary first-graders and six school officials, at Calming the Chaos: Clinical and Pastoral Responses in Traumatic Times, a pastoral conference organized  by Lisa Cataldo, Ph.D., assistant professor of pastoral counseling, and Mary Beth Werdel, Ph.D., director of the pastoral counseling and spiritual care program at the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education. The March 2 event also featured certified trauma professional and Fordham adjunct professor Cheryl Fisher, Ph.D. The goal was to provide strategies for trauma care.

“It’s like you have a broken leg that has never quite healed right, and so you always have a limp, but you learn to dance with the limp,” Crebbin said, paraphrasing a quote from bestselling author Anne Lamott. “I think those images are more helpful to us than images that suggest that life will return to normal.” 

First Responders of Trauma

Roughly two weeks after the Feb. 14 shooting rampage in a Parkland, Florida high school claimed the lives of 17 people, Crebbin stressed that simply being present for people who are traumatized can be transformative.

“Over time, there are ups and downs, but slowly we find ourselves somewhere down the path to new wisdom [or]a life where the trauma hopefully for the community is integrated in such a way that there isn’t a denial of what happened,” he said.

Fisher, an advocate of nature-based interventions for trauma treatment, cautioned practitioners, as first responders to trauma, not to neglect their self-care.

“When we [ourselves]are overwhelmed, we silence the responses of our clients, patients, and community because we can’t take anymore,” she said. “If we ever had an argument for self-care, that’s it. If we’re not taking care of ourselves, we run the risk of dismissing their stories and causing harm to them.”

Activism in Traumatic Times

Taking on an activist role has helped some Newtown parents and community leaders to reclaim their power, said Crebbin. Some residents have joined gun reform coalitions while others have established foundations in memory of their children.

The Parkland teens have taken their activism a step further, he said, with a televised gun control rally shortly after the shooting, as well as a forthcoming March for Our Lives protest and nationwide walkout for gun reform.

“The response [to mass shooting]has changed from Newtown,” he said. “People were reflective. Now, people are angrier [because of]the lack of change,” he said.

Pastors and other spiritual leaders have also been called to take their ministry beyond the pulpit.

“Prayers are not nothing, and action is everything,” said Fisher. “We have to get out of our offices, off of our chairs, and take action.”

Crebbin argued that gun violence in communities of color should also be a national concern.

“If you’re only paying attention to [Newtown and Parkland] then you’re not paying attention to the ongoing issues of trauma,” he said.

 Finding Light in the Cracks

 Fisher proposed several nature-based exercises for communities ravished by trauma, including yoga, bird watching, gardening, nature walks, and bonding with animals.

Through her work, she found that these practices can create “natural examples of awe, wonder, and hope.”

“When I sit with clients and hear their stories, my role is to be a vessel,” she said. “I’m not expected to have the answer. What I do know is that at the end of the day, there is a tomorrow.”

Crebbin said in spite of the Sandy Hook tragedy, there isn’t a “dark cloud” that sits over the Newtown community.

“We have hope,” he said. “We’re trying to be a little more authentic. We admit that we’re cracked, but we admit that there is light that gets into those cracks, and I think that’s a gift that was given to us.”

Leonard Cassuto, Ph.D., professor of English and American Studies and author of The Graduate School Mess: What Caused It and How We Can Fix It (Harvard, 2015)

“At the top of my summer book stack is Laura Kipnis’ new book,  Unwanted Advances: Sexual Paranoia Comes to Campus (Harper, 2017). Kipnis’ investigation of the Title IX excesses on many American campuses has a personal side: When she wrote an article about a Title IX investigation at her own university, she found herself the subject of an investigation, too–and that inquiry helped to inspire this book. This is a book about current events, indeed.”

Bill Baker, Ph.D., director of the Bernard L. Schwartz Center for Media, Public Policy, and Education

“My summer reading gets a double dip as I read sitting in the lantern room of a lighthouse we care for in Nova Scotia (Henry Island). This year I’ll be reading Enough Said (St. Martin’s Press, 2016) by Mark Thompson, the New York Times Company president and former BBC Director General. He has written a powerful book about what’s gone wrong with the language of politics. I’ll also be reading The Naked Now (The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2009) by Richard Rohr, a Franciscan friar who writes some of the most powerful meditative philosophy I’ve ever read. A lighthouse is a good place to read about God and the spiritual light.”

James McCartin, Ph.D., associate professor of theology

“As a father of three young kids, I’ve grown to appreciate books that offer a window into how children see the world–maybe in an effort to figure out my own kids. Therefore, my summer reading season begins with two childhood memoirs. The first is Maurice O’Sullivan’s Twenty Years a-Growing (J.S. Sanders Books, 1998), set on a remote island in the southwest of Ireland a century ago, and the second will be Carlos Eire’s Waiting for Snow in Havana (Free Press, 2004) which narrates his story as an immigrant growing up between Cuba and the United States in the 1960s. Then, I’ll pick up a book I started last summer but put down as the school year began, Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. As to Dostoyevsky, I’ve long been embarrassed to say that I’ve never read him, so now’s my chance to put the embarrassment behind me.”

Heather Dubrow, Ph.D., John D. Boyd, S.J. Chair in Poetic Imagination and the director of Poets Out Loud

“A growing pile of books in my field has been staring at me balefully from my night table for some time, and before they topple over I hope particularly to read more  sections of two of them that I have dipped into only briefly before: Brian Cummings’ The Literary Culture of the Reformation (Oxford, 2002) and Reuben Brower’s Fields of Light (Greenwood Press, 1980). I am in the middle of an extraordinary magical realist novel, George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo (Random House, 2017), as well as some volumes of poetry, such as Alicia Ostriker’s latest, Waiting for the Light (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017).

Christina M. Greer, Ph.D., associate professor and associate chair of the political science department

“Since I am preparing to write a lot this summer, I tend to read fiction to help me ‘hear’ language better. Right now I am finishing a series of short stories by Mia Alvar, In the Country (Oneworld Publications, 2016) about Filipino migrations and relationships. I plan on finishing Luther Campbell’s’ memoir The Book of Luke: My Fight for Truth, Justice, and Liberty City (HarperCollins, 2015) about Liberty City, Miami, Florida. He’s a controversial figure, but his analysis of residential racism and segregation in Miami is fascinating. I am also going to read Underground Airlines (Random House, 2016) by Ben Winters, an alternative history of life in the U.S. had the Civil War never happened. [And] since I am teaching Congress in the fall, I’ll likely begin rereading Robert Caro’s Master of the Senate (Vintage Books, 2003), about my favorite president and brilliant congressman, LBJ.”  

Barbara Mundy, Ph.D., professor of art history

“My summer reading list is heavy with books on cities, a topic I’ve written a lot about. At the top is Jennifer Egan’s Manhattan Beach (Simon & Schuster, 2017), a novel set in New York in the 1940s, and I’m getting ready to devour it as soon as I get through my end-of-year reports. David Lida is a Mexico-City-based writer; I can dip into his book of short essays, Las llaves de la ciudad (Sexto Piso, 2008) [Keys to the City], whenever I need to be transported to one of my favorite cities in the world. And then there’s Small Spaces, Beautiful Kitchens (Rockport Publishers, 2003) by Tara McLellan; I’m downsizing to an apartment and trying to figure out how to cram all my cooking gear (fermentation is much on my mind) into a smaller space.”

Robert Grimes, S.J., dean of Fordham College at Lincoln Center

“The number one book on my summer reading list is Dorothy Day: The World Will Be Saved By Beauty (Scriber, 2017), by Dorothy Day’s granddaughter Kate Hennessy.  When I was a high school student at Xavier, we sometimes went to the Catholic Worker House on the Lower East Side, and I had the honor to meet Dorothy Day a couple of times.  When Kate Hennessy spoke at the Fordham Rose Hill campus this year, I was unable to attend, so I’ll make up for missing that event with reading her book.”

Laura Wernick, Ph.D., professor of social work in the Graduate School of Social Service

“Given our political climate and the rise of the alt-right, coupled with ongoing investigations and hearings surrounding Russia and Donald Trump’s campaign, my reading list is focused upon understanding this context and history. Having just read Dark Money and Trump Revealed (Doubleday, 2016), my summer reading list has included All the President’s Men (Pocket Books, 2005) and The Final Days (Simon & Schuster, 2005), along with Masha Gessen’s The Man Without a Face (Riverhead Books, 2012), a critical read to understand the rise and power of Putin. I plan on following this with a series of edited volumes about hope and moving forward from the resistance movement.”  

Mary Beth Werdel, Ph.D., associate professor of pastoral counseling and director of the Pastoral Care and Counseling program at the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education

“I will be reading The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015) by Bessel van der Kolk. The book examines holistic approaches to trauma work. I’m interested in the way that spirituality relates to stress related growth, which is the examination of positive psychological consequences of moving through stress. I have a book contract related to the topic. This book touches on related themes of trauma and whole body healing.”

–Veronika Kero

The University’s pastoral counseling program was one of 16 programs across the country that were officially recognized under the Masters in Counseling Accreditation Committee (MCAC) standards for integrating science-based training in their professional psychology and counseling curriculum.

“We’re excited to receive this accreditation,” said Mary Beth Werdel, Ph.D., associate professor of pastoral counseling and director of the program.

“It not only recognizes the work of our program and our faculty, but also helps us to serve our students better. This allows us to work towards our mission of providing training that prepares students to be of service to others and provides them with a multicultural understanding.”

Werdel said MPCAC’s commitment to promoting counseling programs that are culturally responsive and dedicated to social justice is line with what the school’s pastoral counseling program stands for.

“Our program is one of the only programs in the country that trains people to become competent and ethical mental health counselors who have the ability to examine the ways that spirituality and people’s experiences of spirituality can help them to flourish psychologically,” said Werdel.

To be a certified pastoral counselor, candidates in the 60-credit master’s program must be a licensed mental health counselor.

“There’s a growing body of evidence that suggests that spirituality and psychology are related in important ways, and our program recognizes that,” said Werdel.

In addition to courses in spirituality, pastoral ministry, theology and religious education, students receive traditional counseling training focused on clinical intervention, counseling theory, psychological assessment, and diagnosis, which provides them with a holistic approach to treating clients from different spiritual and cultural backgrounds.

“We’re training our students to be men and women in service of others through the practice of pastoral counseling,” said Werdel. “Part of what the MCAC accreditation does is help us to become the best possible counseling program we can be.”

Days later, many people are still struggling to cope with news of the tragedy—even those who were not directly affected. That struggle is not uncommon, said two Fordham experts on stress and trauma; personal or geographic distance from the tragedy will not necessarily spare people from intense grief or even trauma.

“Acts like this pull the rug out from underneath us,” said David Koch, PhD, clinical associate professor at the Graduate School of Social Service. “When something like this happens—losing 50 people at once in a violent act—you don’t have the traditional tools available, so how do you manage it?”

Few of us know what to do or how to act following such atrocities, because, until recent years, recurrent mass gun violence has not been part of our realities. In the aftermath of Newtown, Aurora, Orlando, and others, Koch said, we’ve come to realize we have no idea how to make sense of the fear, anxiety, anger, and sadness that these shootings have triggered.

Moreover, the near-constant stream of news coverage on media outlets and social platforms keeps us immersed in the unfolding tragedy. The exposure may trigger in some people a secondary grief reaction, said Mary Beth Werdel, PhD, an assistant professor of pastoral counseling at the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education.

If that feeling of grief is accompanied by more intense physical and psychological symptoms—for instance, intrusive thoughts or memories about the event, hypervigilance, feelings of anger or sadness, or sleep or appetite disturbances—then one may also be experiencing a trauma reaction.

“When there is a mass shooting or terror attack, one may be a survivor, may have witnessed the attack live, or may be witnessing it through repeated media exposure,” Werdel said. “It is possible to have trauma reactions as a result of any of these experiences. The impact is dependent upon a number of factors, including previous trauma and loss experiences.”

In cases of traumatic grief, it is often necessary for people to seek a licensed social worker, counselor, or psychologist who specializes in trauma, Werdel said.

“Trauma… shatter[s]a person’s assumption of safety and may result in experiences of vulnerability and fear,” she said. “The work of the individual, then, is to rebuild.”

Koch, who specializes in the mental health of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals, said in the days following the Orlando shooting, that sense of “shattered safety” has been felt widely among members of the LGBT community.

The question, then, is how do we cope?

“You first have to acknowledge that your typical ways of coping have gone out the window and you have to figure out new ways in the face of this much trauma—cognitively, intellectually, and emotionally,” Koch said.

“I cope by trying to be in touch with what I’m feeling and to use ways of coping that have worked before to help manage feelings. I slow down, do some meditation, take my foot off the accelerator a bit and try not to get too agitated.”

Most important, he said, is to use social supports.

“In the face of this kind of hate, we need to reach out to and take care of one another—to provide those social networks… so that we’re not alone,” he said. “That collective action can serve as a kind of buffer against the hate… It also helps combat feelings of helplessness.”

In time, it is possible for people to move through and even grow as a result of tragedy, said Werdel, who researches post-traumatic and stress-related growth. There are several factors associated with experiencing this type of growth, she said, including personality traits of optimism and openness, social support, positive religious coping styles and faith maturity.

Growth, however, takes time.

“When we consider post-traumatic growth or stress-related growth, we must remember the importance of pace. By this I mean that we don’t look for growth experiences too quickly,” Werdel said.

“The image of ‘growing strong in our broken places’ that Hemingway wrote of is often considered when thinking of post-traumatic growth—it takes time. It is not immediate. We must also remember that growth is not in place of stress or trauma reactions but rather often coexists.”

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The course, Death, Dying, and Bereavement, was supposed to be taught by the Rev. Mary-Marguerite Kohn, Ph.D., an adjunct professor of pastoral counseling at GRE. But on May 5, Rev. Kohn, the co-rector of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Ellicott City, Md., and a fellow employee were shot and killed by a man who frequented St. Peter’s food pantry.

“She was such a wonderful human being—compassionate, loving, and quick to help,” said Werdel, assistant professor of pastoral counseling at GRE, who volunteered to teach the course in Rev. Kohn’s stead.

“Her spirit is definitely alive in the class. I try to bring her spirit in by using the structure of her syllabus, which she created before she died, as well as a few of the prayers and meditations said at her funeral,” she said. “Her tragic death shows the importance of preparing future pastoral counselors and care workers to work with those who are dying or bereaved in ways that do not further complicate a person’s grief, but rather assist in the healing process.”

As a professional counselor specializing in grief and loss issues, Werdel is uniquely qualified to teach a course on bereavement. She belongs to the school of thought known as positive psychology. This branch complements traditional models—which identify and remedy what is going wrong in an individual’s life—by identifying and nurturing what is going right.

She focuses particularly on post-traumatic growth, a phenomenon that evinces the “positive” side of trauma.

“Trauma is intrinsically negative, but in enduring the stress and trauma, we might ask, ‘Do I come to new understandings of myself, my relations with others, or my philosophies of life? And if I do, are these new experiences positive?’” she said. “We don’t push our clients to experience growth—that’s not the goal. The goal is to be aware… so that we can nurture that piece of a client, should it present itself, rather than mistakenly label it as Pollyanish thinking or denial.

Werdel’s particular interest centers on the relationship between post-traumatic growth and the influence of spirituality. Negative religious coping, such as feeling punished or abandoned by God, can hinder trauma victims in their healing process. However, those who experience spirituality as a positive force, especially as a way to find meaning in suffering, are likely to experience growth.

“The degree of someone’s maturity of faith, as defined by Benson and his colleagues as the degree to which someone embodies the priorities, commitments, and perspectives of a vibrant, life-transforming faith, is predictive of post-traumatic growth,” said Werdel, whose own research supports that this mature faith is a more powerful predictor of growth than personality or social support.

As for the correlation between mental health and spirituality, Werdel is again uniquely qualified; but on that matter, her expertise came uninvited.

During her senior year of college, Werdel’s 17-year-old brother Thomas disappeared while on a glacier expedition in Alaska. Rescue teams eventually concluded that he slipped while retrieving water from a stream at the edge of a crevasse and fell thousands of feet into the glacier.

“It was a profoundly stressful loss in my life,” Werdel said. “I began to notice how spirituality was very useful to me in my healing process. As a result, I started to examine my spirituality, break it open, and eventually come to own it in a new way. As a new, foundational piece of my identity.”

Conversely, she noticed that those in her life who had negative religious reactions seemed to struggle longer following Thomas’ death.

“I noticed how the people in my life who had secure relationships with God were moving through the grief and loss differently those who had troubling relationships with God, or were feeling abandoned by God,” she said. “I started to wonder if what I was experiencing in my own life, and what I noticed others experiencing in their lives was beyond anecdotal. I was curious as to if there was a conversation on the topic and, if so, what was evidenced by research.”

In addition to inspiring her own research, the experience later enriched her clinical work with undocumented Mexican and Salvadoran immigrants, whom she counseled before coming to Fordham in 2010.

“To lose one’s sense of home can be profoundly difficult, and some people need to find meaning after such a loss. Loss need not be death. Any change, even if the change is perceived as ‘good’ includes a potential loss experience. Spirituality is, for many people, a way to find meaning in their loss.”

It’s a message that she has learned through both her personal grief and clinical practice, and is now sharing with the students of Death, Dying, and Bereavement. Together they are working through the loss of their teacher, and preparing to, one day, guide others through grief.

“It reminds us of the importance of this work—that this is a need in our lives,” she said. “We are relational beings, and we are physically finite beings. We need to learn to hold the paradox—not run from it.”

The course, Death, Dying, and Bereavement, was supposed to be taught by the Rev. Mary-Marguerite Kohn, Ph.D., an adjunct professor of pastoral counseling at GRE. But on May 5, Rev. Kohn, the co-rector of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Ellicott City, Md., and a fellow employee were shot and killed by a man who frequented St. Peter’s food pantry.

“She was such a wonderful human being—compassionate, loving, and quick to help,” said Werdel, assistant professor of pastoral counseling at GRE, who volunteered to teach the course in Rev. Kohn’s stead.

“Her spirit is definitely alive in the class. I try to bring her spirit in by using the structure of her syllabus, which she created before she died, as well as a few of the prayers and meditations said at her funeral,” she said. “Her tragic death shows the importance of preparing future pastoral counselors and care workers to work with those who are dying or bereaved in ways that do not further complicate a person’s grief, but rather assist in the healing process.”

As a professional counselor specializing in grief and loss issues, Werdel is uniquely qualified to teach a course on bereavement. She belongs to the school of thought known as positive psychology. This branch complements traditional models—which identify and remedy what is going wrong in an individual’s life—by identifying and nurturing what is going right.

She focuses particularly on post-traumatic growth, a phenomenon that evinces the “positive” side of trauma.

“Trauma is intrinsically negative, but in enduring the stress and trauma, we might ask, ‘Do I come to new understandings of myself, my relations with others, or my philosophies of life? And if I do, are these new experiences positive?’” she said. “We don’t push our clients to experience growth—that’s not the goal. The goal is to be aware… so that we can nurture that piece of a client, should it present itself, rather than mistakenly label it as Pollyanish thinking or denial.

Werdel’s particular interest centers on the relationship between post-traumatic growth and the influence of spirituality. Negative religious coping, such as feeling punished or abandoned by God, can hinder trauma victims in their healing process. However, those who experience spirituality as a positive force, especially as a way to find meaning in suffering, are likely to experience growth.

“The degree of someone’s maturity of faith, as defined by Benson and his colleagues as the degree to which someone embodies the priorities, commitments, and perspectives of a vibrant, life-transforming faith, is predictive of post-traumatic growth,” said Werdel, whose own research supports that this mature faith is a more powerful predictor of growth than personality or social support.

As for the correlation between mental health and spirituality, Werdel is again uniquely qualified; but on that matter, her expertise came uninvited.

During her senior year of college, Werdel’s 17-year-old brother Thomas disappeared while on a glacier expedition in Alaska. Rescue teams eventually concluded that he slipped while retrieving water from a stream at the edge of a crevasse and fell thousands of feet into the glacier.

“It was a profoundly stressful loss in my life,” Werdel said. “I began to notice how spirituality was very useful to me in my healing process. As a result, I started to examine my spirituality, break it open, and eventually come to own it in a new way. As a new, foundational piece of my identity.”

Conversely, she noticed that those in her life who had negative religious reactions seemed to struggle longer following Thomas’ death.

“I noticed how the people in my life who had secure relationships with God were moving through the grief and loss differently those who had troubling relationships with God, or were feeling abandoned by God,” she said. “I started to wonder if what I was experiencing in my own life, and what I noticed others experiencing in their lives was beyond anecdotal. I was curious as to if there was a conversation on the topic and, if so, what was evidenced by research.”

In addition to inspiring her own research, the experience later enriched her clinical work with undocumented Mexican and Salvadoran immigrants, whom she counseled before coming to Fordham in 2010.

“To lose one’s sense of home can be profoundly difficult, and some people need to find meaning after such a loss. Loss need not be death. Any change, even if the change is perceived as ‘good’ includes a potential loss experience. Spirituality is, for many people, a way to find meaning in their loss.”

It’s a message that she has learned through both her personal grief and clinical practice, and is now sharing with the students of Death, Dying, and Bereavement. Together they are working through the loss of their teacher, and preparing to, one day, guide others through grief.

“It reminds us of the importance of this work—that this is a need in our lives,” she said. “We are relational beings, and we are physically finite beings. We need to learn to hold the paradox—not run from it.”

Werdel, a visiting professor of pastoral counseling in the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education (GRE), explored the topic in a lecture on March 1 at Fordham Westchester.

“Bessel van der Kolk, who is one of the leading trauma researchers, described a traumatic experience as leaving a person with the feeling that they’ve lost their way in the world. So trauma takes away our map. It takes away the cognitive framework through which we can navigate our world,” she said.

Werdel described the difference between a global meaning and a situational meaning as it applies to trauma victims. An example of a global meaning—one that enables people to make sense of the world—might be that the world is generally a safe place.

But a traumatic event changes that perception, because the victim’s situational meaning—one that helps them make sense of their specific place in the world—is markedly different.

It is in reconciling these two meanings that some people can experience growth and recovery. That kind of growth is associated with people who tend to be creative thinkers, as well as people who generally exhibit several variables, including higher levels of optimism, hopefulness and openness, she said.

One variable that does not factor heavily is positive social support, Werdel said.

“The research has found it’s not so important to have positive social support, even though that’s good,” she said. “What’s really important is that there’s not negative social support—there aren’t people surrounding us who are discounting our traumatic experience. That actually has a profound negative impact on our ability to heal.”

As to the roles that religion and spirituality play in healing, she noted that religious texts such as St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans have long shown the links between suffering and personal growth.

Religious orientation is a factor in healing when it’s intrinsic—someone who is attracted to religion for its beliefs—as opposed to extrinsic, such as someone who goes to church to make new friends.

“Intrinsic religiosity tends to be correlated with growth, and specifically, this sub-scale of readiness to face existential questions,” she said.

Religious coping is another variable that has been studied, and like orientation, Werdel noted it can be split into two parts: Positive religious coping reflects a secure relationship with God, while negative religious coping tends to embrace a tenuous, ominous view of the world. An example of negative religious coping, she said, is someone who blames God for the tragedy that has affected him or her.

Finally, the more religious practices that a person embraces, the more likely he or she will be able to grow. As such, spiritual and religious variables say something unique that other variables don’t capture, Werdel said.

“Theory and research provide evidence for the importance of doing spiritual assessments with our clients, for getting an understanding of what their faith beliefs are, she said.  “We don’t need to get into theological conversations, necessarily, but how their lived experience of God relates to what they bring to the mental health sessions.”

Her lecture, “Rising in Wreckage: Theory, Research and Clinical Implications of the Relationship Between Spirituality and Post-Traumatic Growth,” was sponsored by GRE.