Video: Obstacles to Healing

“Anyone who begins a journey to address the issues of sexual abuse will end up having to address obstacles,” says Dr. Dan Allender in this video, part of our ongoing series engaging topics related to trauma, abuse, and the hope for healing. Dan engages the nature of obstacles as a form of resistance and offers three categories of the obstacles that emerge as we engage our stories of trauma.

Some obstacles reflect the concept of homeostasis; as our change begins to impact people or systems around us, we will encounter obstacles that aim to revert things back to as they have always been. Dan also addresses what happens when our own expectations, desires, or demands interrupt our journey, when essentially “your heart gets in the way of your own heart.” The third category of obstacles reflects the nature of evil—the core belief that there is a kingdom of darkness actively opposed to our healing and restoration.

“You need to begin this process slowly, with a kind of intentionality.”

Dan invites us to engage this journey with a slowness and thoughtfulness that anticipates resistance and opposition, rooted in the awareness that healing takes significant time and effort. If we hope for long-term sustainability in this work, we need to be able to slow down and return to a place of stability when we face opposition.

“Plan to stay on this. We never fully get over the harm of the past. But if we have a commitment to not try to get around it but actually go through it, I think you’ll find not only the benefit that you will grow, but you’ll grow with a pace and in a direction that bears that mark of kindness, that you actually have participated in a direction, a path that you can sustain for a long season.”

These videos are scratching the surface of the deep, weighty, and crucial exploration of trauma and restoration that we offer in our brand new Healing the Wounded Heart online course, which has grown out of the material in Dan’s 1989 book The Wounded Heart and the 25-year retrospective Healing the Wounded Heart. This new online course will invite you to deeper engagement of your stories of harm and your hope for healing. We have been humbled by the process of creating this course and would be honored to have you join us, whether individually, with your spouse, or with a small group. Learn more here.