Embodying the Wounded Healer: Confronting Trauma and Human Violence as an Act of Becoming

The extraordinary violence in Israel and Gaza that began on October 7th, 2023, has brought to the fore questions about encounters with the “unspeakable.” Such unspeakability will be negotiated and explored in this paper through the lens of trauma theory and pastoral care or ministry. The paper will lay out a means of practice to address the unspeakable. The first step demands awareness of the dimension and depth of human violence. The second step requires attention to human affect (in terms of regulation) and constitutes the beginning of distinguishing macrostructures (social groups and politics) from microstructures (dynamics in the human psyche) to facilitate new learning. After revealing these mechanisms, I address empathy as entering into the experience of the other and allowing the self to be undone by that other, a process I will consider through the theological and psychoanalytic concept of the wounded healer.