Mending the Soul (MTS): Trauma, Neurodiverse Marriage, and the Healing Power of Community

By Rev. Dr. Stephanie C. Holmes

Sometimes you pick up a book to learn something, and sometimes you enter a process and discover that God still wants to heal something in you. Mending the Soul has been that kind of experience for me, and it was a pleasant surprise.

Mending the Soul: Understanding and Healing Abuse was developed by Dr. Steven Tracy and Celestia Tracy, the founders of Mending the Soul Ministries. Steve Tracy is a theologian, pastor, professor, and researcher whose work has focused extensively on biblical ethics, sexuality, and abuse. Celestia Tracy holds a master’s degree in counseling and psychology and spent eighteen years as a professional trauma counselor. Together, they bring theology, psychology, trauma research, and decades of ministry experience into a model designed not simply to educate people about abuse, but to help people heal from it. So this made the curriculum intriguing, and I was so excited that former pastors of the church we attended were excited about bringing these MTS groups to our church body. I usually start with skepticism and worry about Christian materials being hyperspiritual or dismissive of trauma. I joined and co-lead an MTS group.

I am not new to trauma work. I was formerly a Licensed Professional Counselor. I have spent decades studying psychology, relationships, autism, family systems, attachment, trauma, abuse, and the intersection of these issues with Christian faith. I am trauma-informed in my professional work, and I have also done a great deal of my own personal work over the years. And yet, I am discovering there were still layers. There were still layers to me and my personal work, and I then want to help those I coach get healing from their layers.

I think sometimes those of us who have spent our lives learning, teaching, helping, counseling, coaching, or caring for others can mistakenly believe that because we understand something, we have completely healed from it. But knowing something cognitively and experiencing healing relationally are not necessarily the same thing. I have a part of me (IFS) I call “Dr. Stephanie,” which can stay clinical and observant and help in coaching, but can also compartmentalize too much and become a safety mechanism for personal life struggles.

Trauma is not merely a story we remember. It can become woven into what we expect from relationships, what happens inside our bodies when we sense danger, what we believe about ourselves, and even what we believe about God. This became especially meaningful to me as I worked through material concerning spiritual and religious abuse. For some people, Scripture itself has become associated with fear, shame, control, or coercion. Verses intended to communicate the heart and character of God have sometimes been weaponized to silence people, demand submission, excuse harmful behavior, discourage appropriate boundaries, or pressure someone to forgive before safety and accountability have been established.

Then there is shame. Shame and honor cultures can teach us that protecting the family, marriage, church, ministry, pastor, or reputation is more important than telling the truth about what happened. We learn to ask, “What will people (the church) think?” before asking, “What happened to this person?” Pastors and counselors can become so focused on “saving the marriage” that they inadvertently sacrifice the people in it to the institution of marriage. That can create incredibly lonely places.

One of the things I appreciate most about Mending the Soul is its insistence that healing is not supposed to happen entirely alone. The Mending the Soul model intentionally places healing within safe, confidential small groups because healthy relationships can become part of repairing wounds created within unhealthy relationships. Their groups are typically small, same-gender communities led by trained facilitators and co-facilitators who have committed to doing their own healing work before helping others. There is something powerful about sitting with other women and discovering, “I am not the only one.”

And instead of being told to get over it, forgive faster, submit more, pray harder, or stop talking about the past, there is space to tell the truth. Healthy community bears witness to our stories. In the words of Dr. Jim Wilder, healing happens in healthy group identity where weaknesses can be handled gently, and people are “glad to be with us” and “for us.”

For some survivors of abuse or trauma, that can take time. When authority, Scripture, church, marriage, or Christian language has been involved in the trauma, even approaching Jesus may initially feel complicated. That is why I believe we have to be very careful about rushing people toward theological answers when their nervous systems are still telling them they are unsafe. Jesus is not threatened by that process. He meets us there. And that brings me to an area especially close to my heart: neurodiverse marriage.

For many years, I have worked with couples who spent decades married without understanding that autism or another form of neurodivergence was part of their relationship. Before identification or diagnosis, neither spouse may understand why their marriage feels so different from what they expected. I want to state something very clearly: autism does not cause abuse. Being autistic does not make someone abusive, and we should never use autism as shorthand for abusive behavior. At the same time, identifying neurodivergence does not mean that harmful behavior should be dismissed simply because there is now an explanation for some of the dynamics.

A wife can understand her husband’s neurotype and still need healing from what she has experienced in the relationship. She may have lived for years in a heightened state herself, anticipating the next conflict, shutdown, demand, explosion, criticism, sexual pressure, or relational rupture. She may no longer know what is normal. She may question whether she is being unreasonable. If Scripture has then been layered over those experiences through teachings about submission, forgiveness, sex, divorce, suffering, or being a “godly wife,” the confusion can become even deeper.

And sometimes what she is experiencing is not simply neurodivergence or dysregulation. Sometimes abuse is present. We must be able to hold both truths.

Neurodivergence deserves understanding, compassion, appropriate accommodations, and support. Abuse requires naming, safety, boundaries, accountability, and healing. One should never be used to erase the other.

This is one reason I believe a trauma-informed process such as Mending the Soul may be particularly meaningful for some women coming out of confusing or painful neurodiverse marriage experiences. It provides language for examining abuse, powerlessness, shame, isolation, trauma, brokenness, forgiveness, and healing without requiring a woman to figure everything out by herself. And perhaps just as importantly, it gives her an opportunity to hear the experiences of other women and begin trusting her own story again.

Healing in community reminds us that our identity is larger than what happened to us. For Christians, there is another identity being restored as well. We are image bearers. Abuse distorts that image. Shame tells us something is fundamentally wrong with us. Religious abuse can even convince us that God endorses our diminishment. Jesus tells a different story.

And sometimes we need to encounter Jesus again, not as the Jesus someone used to control or shame us, but as the Jesus who enters suffering, sees the wounded, restores dignity, and does not abandon us there. There is something sacred about discovering that mending the soul does not have to be solitary work. We heal in the presence of Jesus. And we heal in the presence of safe others.

Beginning in January 2027 and continuing through May, we will be offering Mending the Soul groups specifically within the neurodiverse community. This will include a group for neurodivergent men, as well as two groups for women who are wives, former wives, questioning wives, or mothers navigating neurodiverse marriages and family systems. I hope to create safe spaces where people can explore their own stories without having to minimize either neurodivergence or trauma. We can understand neurotype and nervous-system differences while also honestly examining wounds, unhealthy patterns, shame, spiritual or religious abuse, and the impact relationships have had on us. These groups are not about blaming neurodivergence or labeling every difficult relationship as abusive. They are about creating a healthy community where we can tell the truth about our experiences, understand what belongs to us and what does not, and continue the work of healing alongside safe others. Most importantly, we will invite Jesus into that process, trusting that mending the soul was never intended to be something we have to do alone.

Classes are Forming: Leaders and Contact

If interested in the men’s group: grigsby.russell@gmail.com 

If interested in the women’s morning group with Dr. Stephanie and Ellyn Kowal: rev.stephaniecholmes@gmail.com

If interested in the women’s evening group with Rev. Iris Knapp: coachingwithiris@gmail.com 

Our discussion with Dr. Steve Tracy of MTS/To Harm or Heal: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/weaponizing-scripture-a-focus-on-forgiveness-true/id1579715646?i=1000770556353