Sessions to explore path to healing after sexual abuse

By Ed Langlois
Catholic Sentinel
February 16, 2015

http://www.catholicsentinel.org/main.asp?SectionID=2&SubSectionID=35&ArticleID=28229

Psychologist Theresa Burke will lead trainings to improve therapy and expand retreats for victims of sexual abuse. Prayer and meditation affect the brain in ways that can heal victims, Burke says.

Patsy Seeley, a 64-year-old artist from Beaverton, didn’t darken the doors of a church for decades. The reason: As a child in Tillamook more than 50 years ago, her priest sexually abused her.  

It wasn’t until she heard about the welcoming pastoral team at Holy Trinity Parish near her home that Seeley hazarded a return. It was Lent, and she ended up going through her own process of suffering and redemption. She began sitting in the back of Holy Trinity and moved forward pew by pew until now she is in front.

Mass, which she had been avoiding, was the very thing that ridded her of shame and blame.  

“It was a powerful experience of reconciliation,” Seeley says. “I had been through years of psychotherapy. I had psychological healing, but not spiritual healing.”

She met with then-Archbishop John Vlazny and he suggested a retreat called Grief to Grace. Seeley attended one of the weekends and her healing was so solidified that now she is an organizer.

Seeley hopes that others like her — abused at church, home or anywhere else — can attend a Grief to Grace retreat and also be helped by trained staff at parishes and health care sites.

That’s why she has helped set up trainings for March 11 and 12 at University of Portland.

The March 11 clinical training day is set for 9 a.m.-5 p.m. and will help healthcare professionals, social workers, therapists, clergy, parish staff, teachers, and families and friends of the abused better understand survivors of abuse. Topics covered include symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, guilt and shame, therapeutic challenges, transference and countertransference.  

The March 12 ministry training seminar, set for 9 a.m.-5 p.m., covers some of the same issues but more tailored to clergy, religious and lay volunteers as well as mental health professionals.

Among the topics are brain science, and introduction to Grief to Grace and a look a Christ-centered social work for survivors of sexual abuse.

Leader of both days is Theresa Burke, a psychologist who founded Grief to Grace and Rachel’s Vineyard, a retreat for people who have experienced trauma associated with abortion.

“The retreats work in ways psychological therapy does not,” says Burke. As opposed to talk therapy, which brain scans show is ineffective or even damaging to abuse victims, the  Grief to Grace retreats seek to stimulate parts of the brain that help in healing.

Prayer and meditation are acts that get the right parts of the brain active, Burke says.  

Father Peter O’Brien, pastor of St. Edward Church in Lebanon, is a supporter of the Grief to Grace retreat team in Oregon. He says the sessions will help outline the pathway to healing.

“It will be a unique opportunity to learn more about the nature of abuse,” Father O’Brien says, “and how those forces continue to be active in a person’s life after having suffered some form of it.”