Who Can Help Us Heal From Abuse?
Dan opens today’s episode with this principle: “All harm came in relationship; all healing equally requires a relationship.”
If you’ve been with us for a while, you’ll understand that healing from abuse is not something we do alone. We need the presence and kindness of others to truly heal and flourish.
Yet, when we’ve been abused, it can feel so challenging to trust again, especially when trauma leaves us feeling isolated and hypervigilant.
In this episode, Dan and Rachael explore how finding supportive friends, reconnecting with family (if you are able to), and engaging in therapy can play an essential role as you move towards healing.
More importantly, they talk about how to discern who is truly safe, trustworthy, and supportive. They offer practical advice on what to look for in those who walk alongside you and how to know if they’re ready to support you.
We hope today’s conversation reveals the possibilities ahead and helps you take those first steps toward building meaningful relationships, inviting others into your healing journey.
Episode Transcript:
Dan: Yeah, I don’t think we begin many podcasts with a truism. Do we? I mean…
Rachael: I don’t know what a truism is. What’s a truism?
Dan: Oh, kind of a statement. Like something that would be on a Hallmark card.
Rachael: Oh, okay. No, it’s not necessarily our style.
Dan: No, but I’m going to start with one that’s my apology, but also,
Rachael: Oh, I’m much more like that in my real life, so I’m fine with it. Oh, you
Dan: Really like what? Give me an example.
Rachael: I mean, I just have always been someone that’s like, teamwork will make your dream work, or with my kids jokingly, or, oh,
Dan: But you do it jokingly, meaning
Rachael: Let go and let God I mean it. I’m actually acknowledging we just did something together because teamwork is better than trying to do it alone, but I make it fun.
Dan: Well, in other words, you bear underneath the truism something of the complexity that it’s actually a form of a proverb, but also proverbs are not promises. They are principles. So here’s a principle, all harm came in relationship, all healing equally requires a relationship. And so we know that to be true. But what we’re going to be addressing is the reality that, especially with regard to dealing with the harm of sexual abuse, it takes a village to raise a child. Do you not find that to be true?
Rachael: Absolutely.
Dan: With Evie and with your boys?
Rachael: Absolutely.
Dan: Well, why would we not think that’s true with regard to the maturing of our own lives, particularly as we deal with some of the dark and at times desperately overwhelming realities that come when we begin to go through the reality of abuse. And obviously a few statements along with that, and that is one doesn’t deal with the effects of the past with a kind of, oh, I’ll do that for the next week or two. These are processes that actually will see significant change even in a relatively short period of time. Healing is a lifetime adventure. Healing is so paradoxical in that the more we grow, the more we actually see how much there more is to grow. So when we’re trying to break the reality of what it means to grow, I don’t want to spend much time at the moment on what’s involved in growing, but more you need a village and you need relationships. And again, as you hear all that, where do you go with that thought?
Rachael: I’m not going to lie. There’s a part of me that feels a certain level of despair because I know what it is to be in seasons where I’m living in a new city, I don’t have as deep of a relational network in the proximity here. I don’t have as many relational connections now. I still am connected to people across the internet and through the telephone and getting to occasionally see, so it’s not like I feel completely in isolation, but I think about I moved to this new city that is over, the healthcare system is overwhelmed. It’s a huge city with huge healthcare networks, but they’re all their research hospitals and teaching hospitals. So it’s trying to book an appointment, trying to get all new care providers. So I think I’m feeling a little bit of, I’m feeling empathy for the person who’s listening, going, well, relationship and care is a privilege that very few of us have because sometimes it takes work to find your people or to find your care networks or to have the resource to find the resources you need that you can actually afford or have access to.
Dan: Indeed. Oh, it’s so important to begin with that. And that is, even though I don’t think we’re post-COVID we pretend to be some form of post-COVID, but the reality of the disruption, I don’t think we’re going to be able to fully access all the implications of those years apart from one another. And even now, the effect that plays itself out and the shift and change, just zoom. I’m thrilled we get to do this. I get to see you as we’re doing this. And yet there are so many contexts now in which we would’ve, I would’ve been with you at a different season, but because of the access of zoom, which is easier to not commute, easier to be able to just get an appointment, get online and have what feels like a very rich and good conversation, it’s just not the same as bodies sharing in the same space. So we don’t really know yet, research has not been done, at least that I’m aware of in terms of how co-regulation is occurring through a medium like zoom. But we know what it does. The co-regulation, when we’re actually physically together, we know that simply, again, your smile creates a rise of oxytocin in my body. The warmth of your words and how they’re spoken changes the valence of how my body feels in an interaction. And that there are, I mean almost somewhere in the range of 80% of the effect of being physically with one another is not communicable by language. We are taking in the physical presence of the other and cues that we couldn’t even tell you, gosh, when your eyebrow rose a little bit, that this is how my body experience. It’s all moving so quickly, but we’re right back to the point. And that is harm was done in relationship, healing requires relationship and as shall we say, cut off many of us are. And then add the reality that some of us are more introvert-ish… being cut off is not always the worst experience in the world for some of us who actually like being alone or with only one or two. But back to the phrase, we need relationship. And what I want to begin to put words to is how to friends, how to family, how to soul friends, what are often are referred to as Anam Cara and how a therapist, so four categories of relational realms that we want to put at least a little bit of thought to. But when you begin to think about friends, that would be where I would say most people begin there, their core acquaintance, friendship. Sometimes it’s hard to distinguish fully what’s an acquaintance, what’s a friend, what’s a best friend, et cetera. But when you think about what friends have been for you and the healing process with regard to your own experiences of abuse, how have they played into the redemptive arc?
Rachael: Yeah. Oh gosh. I mean these are the tricky spaces for me because when I actually started addressing experience, my experiences of abuse or even experiences of abuse that came in young adulthood or early adulthood, I was surrounded by a bunch of therapists. So I feel like I had a really rich, sometimes that was great. Sometimes that was like, can you just get out of that land? And I would say two things. I would be really grateful for: friends who made space for me to not be okay on one hand, who knew, have known how to offer really care in seasons where they know I was working through a healing journey and would show up in the simplest ways just to show up to do life with you, to let you know they’re there. And I think as an adult, that’s one of the things I’ve learned is like there’s just part of being an adult is that any one of your friends at any given time is going to need a shoulder to lean on maybe a little more strongly than they do in other seasons. And you do that for each other. I would say the other thing my friends did is also allow me to come up for air in seasons where I was in deeper healing processes are deeper water. So making space for laughter and fun and nourishing food and getting outside in nature and taking a break, but just that capacity to offer good care, but to also help me even learn some of my own limitations and boundaries of what I needed to compartmentalize or what I needed to take a break, so to speak, from some of the heavy lifting, if that was a possibility, whether I was in a therapeutic process or spiritual direction or pursuing deliverance prayer, which I pursued all those things or trying to get good body care, somatic care in a certain season, but there’s that capacity to be present with, but in a way that wasn’t overindulgent, but also wasn’t like, we just need you to be okay so that we can be okay because all we do when we hang out is we’re all just okay,
Dan: Oh, well said. I mean, what we’re actually inviting you to consider is what friends are part of your world that you’d be able to share that you’re actually stepping in to past abuse and to be able to say, Hey, I’m not doing well. Or I’ve had some really difficult memories come back and I’m starting to remember and put words to the experience of X, Y, Z. What are you hoping for in a friendship? And I think you’ve already named two really important things that I would put words to. I don’t want a friend who’s going to panic and that kind of like, well, if you’re not doing well, I’m not doing well. And in that I’m now having to manage there like, oh, I just dunno anything about this. Well, if you know that a friend can’t bear hearing it, then at least what I would begin to put words to, and that is, well, what kind of friendship do you have? Not trying to ruin your friendship, but if your friends ultimately can’t bear what you are going through, I think it’s more fair to call them an acquaintance than indeed a friend. But on the other hand, I don’t want a friend who’s presumptuous, who already knows what I need to do and how to do it and will guide me directly as to what you need, first of all to, or you need to read this book or et cetera. So on those two sides, if you’re going to swerve off one side or the other, I’m not sure which is worse, but both are calamitous in terms of the fall. So what a friend I think can provide is so well stated by you, and that is, I’m with you. I’ll engage with you what you want me to hold without the demand that you give me more. And yet, on the other hand, I also know not every conversation, not every interaction as a good friend should be about what you’re wrestling with. Let’s just go to a movie. Let’s just go out to eat. Those are frameworks where you go, it’s a form of honorable compartmentalization and I need my friends to be able to suffer, but also help me boundary certain times and periods where I’m not caught up. Again, we’re talking about abuse, but we could be talking about a hundred other issues that are traumatic from your health issues to relational issues with your spouse, to struggles with your children. You need friends to heal. And I think a friendship particularly is crucial to be able to have somebody who will go, well, I don’t know much about what you’re wrestling with, but are you reading anything that I could read? Are you learning things that again, may not be your direct entry into your story and to what you’re struggling with, but may help me understand what you are going through. So oftentimes a good friend will want to grow in their ability to know what you are actually experiencing. And so books, podcasts, et cetera, become a linkage of language that allows us to know that when we’re in that area and thirty five, forty minute phone call that I’m not just operating with, kind of like, I’m so sorry. I feel so bad. I am, again, empathy. And that sense of grief on behalf of is a great gift. In fact, it’s maybe the first and essential gift, but I need more. I need people who will walk with me in terrain that I am not personally familiar with, and that I think is what a friend provides. So where did you find and ask a difficult question? Where did you find friends not offering that, that you had to then address?
Rachael: I don’t know if I have an answer to that question.
Dan: Well, I’ll go back to my two. And that is the different things that I’ve brought to friends who quickly offered spiritual biblical frameworks that I’ve had to say, I believe it’s true, but I’m moving toward it rather than able to carry it right now. Yeah. So oftentimes I think in friendships when good friends who often don’t know how to engage these difficult matters, again, it will sound presumptuous, but often need to be honored by being educated as to what we know will not be of help to us. So I’ve had to say to dear friends, that’s not helpful. This would be helpful. And at least with a couple friendships that aren’t used to engaging these kinds of matters, they’ve taken those prompts really kindly and honorably and attempted to move into the hard conversations that I’ve needed. So I think those realities of a friend just don’t be in a position where you write friends off without at least some level of experimentation. Right?
Rachael: Yeah, that’s a good word.
Dan: So family, what do you need from family?
Rachael: And when you say family, are you talking about your immediate family? Are we talking about your spouse and your children? Are we talking about your parents and your siblings? Who are we talking about?
Dan: Et al.
Rachael: Et al.
Dan: Everybody that in some sense would call themselves family. The presence of your brothers, sisters, your mom and dad, uncles, aunts. Again, knowing that most people who have large families and me with an only child, with a mother who was an only child and a grandmother who was an only child, let’s just say family is rather narrow. But when you’re talking about cousins, my assumption, and let me start with this and you can debate it. There’s certain family, you know, would no more tell something about your past abuse, then you would try to fly off the Empire State Building. And there are other family that you go, oh, I don’t know, maybe not, but maybe there’s at least one or two people within your family maybe that you could at least open the door, maybe not go far, but at least open the door. Is that a fair way of beginning?
Rachael: Yeah, I think I will say at the most minimum, I think about, this is a hard one. It feels a little bit like the chicken and the egg. And I do think it’s a place where we have to have a little bit of grace because it can be so triggering for people when you bring up some of your own harm, especially if you’ve played a particular role in the family as the helper or the healer or the strong one, people may feel a little uncomfortable with you not saying I’m not okay, or I’m in a process or I’m in a journey. So I think that growing maturity to be able to hold that life is complex and we’re beautiful and we’re broken, there has been goodness that we get to be grateful for. And there has been heartache and suffering, and both can be true at the same time. So I think about certain conversations I’ve had with my siblings that actually have gone way better than I thought they would because they’ve been in their own process or journey of healing and growing in that capacity to say two things can be true at the same time. And so a capacity for curiosity, a capacity to stay regulated. I’m like, can you stay regulated so that I don’t have to regulate you? And we can be able to hold the complexity of life with a little more truth and honor, because a lot of times these stories, family members know something of the story and in many ways you need their help. I think this is a really risky realm because it is a realm that backfires a lot where people feel defensive, people feel scared, people feel accused, whether that’s what’s happening or not. I do think these waters take a lot more wisdom and are kind of foolish, but we still need the companionship of our family and seasons where we’re healing, especially from childhood harm.
Dan: Yeah, well this underscore it’s way more threatening. There’s far more at stake in addressing any of our past harm with our family than with our friends. And in that sense, we chose our friends, we didn’t choose our family. And yet on the other hand, our family is so wedded, carved into our very being that when you do have even one person in your family that will come alongside, will believe, will honor, will in many ways offer perspective. And I think that’s the key word. We can so be enabled and helped by somebody who’s able to go, well, I didn’t have the role in the family. You had, and this is what I saw when mom did this, when the abuser did this. To be believed alone is enough that it’s in many ways like getting a major reward. But to even be furthered into pondering what they saw, what they experienced about you, about the world that you were in, that is beyond valuable. Again, I’m going to use the word information, but it’s more confirmation that really is the power of a witness, one person witnessing what you endured with honor, with grief, perhaps with even anger on your behalf. I’ll tell you, that’s as close to, I think, to winning the lottery is almost anything in this process.
Rachael: And I’ve just been, especially in something about becoming a parent too, has given me different levels of grace and curiosity to move even towards my parents and the work of parenting and the trauma of parenting and the complexity of the goodness and the heartache, and to be able to hold space just for multiple journeys of discovery and uncovering heartache in their stories and in their lives that I’m seeing deeper fruit as they pursue healing, which then opens the door for different conversations, and that’s taken really beautiful trust and patience and hope and forgiveness, and especially on their part with me, I haven’t always been gracious in learning when I’m learning or I haven’t always been as generous in learning what I’m learning and being able to offer it with the same level, which makes a lot of sense, different power dynamics. But there can be, and I know for many people the thought of ever talking to any family member hasn’t gone well. It’s led to having to make decisions to take seasons being out of relationship with families. So this is a place that holds a tremendous possibility and also tremendous heartache.
Dan: Indeed. And again, we need relationships, absolutely, but one has to choose on the basis of safety first and honoring that we want you to take risks, but not jumping 20 feet between one side of a chasm and the other. I mean, if it was even a two foot jump and it’s a thousand foot fall, I’d want to go, let’s measure. Let’s get you running and take a leap and we’ll actually measure and at a five times what’s the average, and then be able to go, okay, alright, you can do this two foot, two yard jump, but nothing more. So being able to honor that, you got a pretty good sense in your family who can bear at least the initial statement of, I’m dealing with past abuse and I’m not going to name my abuser. I’m not going to name any of the context. I’m simply wanting you to know that I’m in the middle of this. So even that level of risk opens up a possibility for seeing what that sibling will do. And when that sibling or what starts with all the debris fields that we named in the other podcasts like, well, you just need to forgive or so much in the past and who even knows if your memory, et cetera, et cetera, those are the moments to be able to go, well, I don’t agree and I don’t feel particularly safe with you to be able to go any further. Name it, you got a boundary, don’t pursue until you see that person making at least some. Okay, what is it that you need for, I mean, just basic human curiosity and kindness will open the possibility of more of an interaction. Well, I have a third category as to, yeah, you need friends. Yes, you need family if they are available and that you have tested and honored to see if that’s safe. But the old word, Anam Cara. I think it’s a Celtic word?
Rachael: Yeah. It’s a Celtic word.
Dan: And what I understand it to mean is a soul friend, somebody who will engage. Oh, I know this is some degree of bifurcation, not just your life and story, but something of your spirit in the middle of this. So when you think of spiritual directors, when you think of people who have walked with you, not just friends, not just family, but very consciously as a spiritual guide, I know you have been deeply, shall we say, affected with great benefits of Anam Cara in your life.
Rachael: Yeah. This is where I just, gosh, I hold both the incredible privilege and just the agony of knowing where people experience disparity. But I have been very rich in very gifted and generous on Anam Caras, whether it’s been pastors that I did an MDiv, so I had to do an internship at a church. So pastors who have mentored me or to me the best Anam Caras I’ve known have been wounded healers themselves. So in some ways have been people well acquainted with suffering and well acquainted with the journey of healing. And so in some ways, they’re not afraid of the questions I’m bringing. They’re not afraid of the heartache I’m naming as if somehow it is an indictment on God that they need to then for me to spiritually bypass, in order to hold onto something of safety with God. They are people who have entered the deep waters of heartache and yet been able to know something of the goodness of God in the land of the living. And so I have been very, very blessed with those who have said, you can tell the truth here. You can even be really human-sized here. I think sometimes when we’re in seasons of deeper healing, we do get a little messier before we have more containment.
Dan: Just say it way, messier.
Rachael: Way messier, way messier. And so to have people who it’s, yeah, it’s back to that realm of containment who can say, I can hold onto myself when you’re maybe spinning out, but I’m also not going to just stand here and watch you bleed out and be like, it’s okay. I’m going to offer some guardrails. I’m going to offer some invitation, but I also am going to help you imagine a God big enough for all of you who is deeply in love with you. So whether that has been different forms of prayer or different seasons of discernment, different seasons of just pastoral care and soul care, when my soul has been weary and I have felt more in need of deliverance and just someone who’s like, I will show up as the hands and feet of God for a season so that you’re not alone and you can experience some of that comfort.
Dan: And again, this is where it gets kind of nasty complicated in that I have worked with therapists who have been for me a wise spiritual director, and I’ve worked with spiritual directors who have been brilliant therapists, so trying to divide this pop up. But yeah, I still want to say there are the necessity to engage the Psalms with whom do you praise in that sense of being able to say, oh, you are better than sliced bread. Oh, Father, Son, Spirit, and yet with whom are you also able to complain and lament. You sold us down the river and you did not make a penny off of our sale. And yet with whom are you able to share in thanksgiving? So when we look at the Psalms in terms of an orientation of praise, the orientation gets in many ways fouled in the complexity of life. Who are you able to bring your psalmic soul to?
Rachael: I love that. Yeah.
Dan: And be able to know you’re going to be held well. And in this sense, I am all for mutual, shall we say, spiritually maturing one another. But there are seasons where it’s so important to, in one sense, bring yourself to another as a guide, as one who in some ways holds the response-ability of, in one sense, caring for your soul. And again, I am so privileged for the pastor who has been my pastor for almost 28 years, and I look to Dave in moments going into church yesterday. I had two minutes with him, and I just said, I just kind of put words to, and I put a significant war within the denomination I’m part of. I just said, I am so angry about X, Y, Z, and I didn’t need him to confirm it, disconfirm it, but in one sense, to hold that I have not lost my faith, I have not lost my heart for God in the middle of my struggle. How much more so for the reality of past abuse, I need somebody who can hold my rage, actually can hold my deconstruction of forms of spirituality that actually have been part of that harm without, in some sense seeing that I’m discarding the God of the universe. That I’m actually wanting to have a clearer and deeper and more passionate heart in and with and for God. So that Anam Cara that soul friend. Now again, if it happens to be a good family member, that’s fabulous. And if it’s a good friend, we’re not trying to make these divisions like you need two from item one, you need one from. But oftentimes it will be separate people. And when we come to this last category, we could spend quite a bit of time on, you need in many ways a story guide. Yes, it can be a soul guide. Yes, it could be a family member. But I’m going to talk mostly about the need for a therapist. And again, part of the dilemma with this is therapy itself implies a certain socioeconomic status. It implies the prospect of amount of money and time and energy and effort that is not true across the entire globe. So I want to make sure that when we’re talking about therapy, we’re not so socially bound to only one notion of what good therapy is. But I’m a therapist and I have spent my whole life and career training therapists. It’s hard for me to, in one sense fully escape that. So just naming that where you see me sliding too quickly into actually therapy versus the therapeutic. And I’d rather use that phrase, you need a therapeutic friend who could be a therapist, could be a pastor, could be a plumber, could be your uncle, but you need a therapist. Where does that all take you?
Rachael: Yeah, I mean, when I think of the therapeutic, I think of it as being someone committed to the contours of healing where your mind, spirit, and body meet the fragmentation and the trauma. So it does have to be someone who holds an intuition and a wisdom and a skill of tending to the fragmentation and the harm bearing witness in places, and also bringing therapeutic interventions where they’re needed. And I think about a season in my life, I mean, I’ve been in and out therapy and pursuing different healing modalities for a long time, and I will for a long time because whether that’s at times been more somatic oriented or talk oriented, whatever. But I think about a specific season where my PTSD or complex PTSD was getting triggered in the wake of a sexual assault in adulthood and kind of got escalated when I broke a bone in my foot, which made, I think in some ways, not that God broke my bone, but God was allowing this broken bone to make connections to other broken parts of me that were needing tending. And I thought I was going to therapy to do work around this assault, but what it led to was deeper connections to earlier traumas that were familiar, that were connected to how this assault had played out later in life, feelings of powerlessness, feelings of disgust and shame, feelings of complicity and just all of the above. And so I needed a really gifted therapeutic healer to enter the story with me and see how it was more deeply connected to other stories that I was still leaning a deeper healing in. And I will forever be grateful for that therapeutic season. And that’s just one piece. I was also pursuing story work with good story guides again, and talking with therapeutic minded friends who understood the ethical boundaries. They weren’t in some sense trying to offer me therapy, but they were offering very therapeutic care that took serious the harm I’d experienced and were inviting me to a different kind of wisdom in moments where my pain was needing a more acute care, if you will.
Dan: So there’d be three categories I’d want to bring, and that is in a therapeutic relationship, you have continuity, you have progressive interactions, doesn’t have to be one hour every week, but it has to have enough contextual immediacy that you are moving into conversations about the present, about the past and about the future. And so the notion that there are things in the moment that are indeed opening the door to things from my past, but the past is helping me see something in the clarity of how I’m engaging my future. So one huge category is continuity, continuity of time, progression, slow movement. Those are all part of that first element to what is going to be a crucial part of therapy. I can’t expect my friends in the same way to make space once a week, twice a week for these kind of conversations. If that happens, that’s great, but nobody can usually sustain that level of intensity. And again, complexity. So a second category is, for lack of a better word, wisdom, but it’s a beautiful word. And there are incredibly wise plumbers and they’re incredibly foolish therapists. So the fact that a person’s got a degree I think is not unimportant, but it’s not the fundamental final decision because I’ve worked with a lot of people who have worked with therapists, and the stories I hear are so disconcerting that it almost boggles my mind when a client has said, well, my last therapist said, I’ve resolved it all. Well, how long did you two talk about the abuse? Oh, two sessions and I want to go, and that was resolved. Tell me the nature of the resolve. Well, they opened the door for me to, in a session, to vocalize forgiveness and to put it beyond me. And I’m like, okay, again, I’m not going to just totally discount it, but I also want to go, no two sessions are not enough to engage this. So the wisdom of knowing what have you engaged in your own life, how have you engaged the issues of abuse? And this is a question I have asked a therapist I’ve worked with. Look, I don’t think I’ve been a particularly easy client for the people I’ve worked with
Rachael: Yeah, it’s hard for brilliant therapist wise, gifted kind therapist to be in a therapeutic alliance with other therapists.
Dan: I actually have several that I would say it’s just been live changing. But our first conversations along the lines of what I would often ask would be, how can it be of help? And when I got asked something like that, it was like, well…
Rachael: Can just imagine.
Dan: I need to address a few things with you before I step into that. And again, how comfortable, how willingness, how willing to engage with one particular therapist who was not a believer. I said, I need to know how you’ve engaged people of faith. Now, I must admit my own faith orientation is a little different than some of people that you may have worked with, but maybe not. So being able to honestly engage questions with a good therapist who’s not offended by or, it’s like, thank you for asking. And again, this is your session. It’s your hour. If we spend the first 10 hours with you questioning me, I’m good. It’s your time to use in whatever way you wish. So having clarity as to, well, how many people have you worked with who have a history of past sexual abuse? And again, I don’t know how to ask it better than this, but what’s your understanding of what needs to be addressed in addressing this? So opening the door to, again, this is going to take time. There needs to be continuity, but there also needs to be this depth of wisdom and experience. And so I wouldn’t want to engage the therapeutic with a friend who’s never even read something like a Wounded Heart, sorry, not willing to kind of go in those directions. But a third factor that, again, I don’t know how to articulate beyond just to name. You got to have a gut sense. I can tell my story to this person. They might be wise, they might offer context of continuity, but I’ve met people who I think would be great therapists for other people, but within my body, I’ve been able to go, don’t think so. And that just has to be heard, especially for those who have histories of abuse, that trusting your gut is one of the hardest things in the world when you have so much of your life with the bias against your own heart. So that ability to at least register the question, how does my body feel in their presence? And again, what I ask people to do is make a commitment to seeing me about five times. It’s no magical number. It could be four, it could be six, but I don’t know. I like the number five because of fingers on my hand. We’re not going to even talk about our future together until after five sessions. I think it often takes four or five times a meeting with somebody to be at a place to be able to go, yeah, I think I can work with you. But I have worked with people who after five sessions have said, I’m just not wanting to proceed. And it’s like such a good decision because until your heart can say, I’m open to doing the work with this person, no matter who they are, no matter what their name is, no matter what their experience, no matter what books they’ve written, your gut has to be able to say, I can work with this person. And it is so crucial. Thoughts before we come to summative.
Rachael: I’m just thinking about this sense of these are really important companions, right? Friends, family, Anam Cara, soul friends, therapists and therapeutic alliances or presence. And I know that we would say that there can be other companions. These just need to be a pivotal part of that. So maybe you are encountering resources or materials or authors who are writing who feel like a companion, and that’s the access you have or the capacity you have in any given season. We know this is a process and it is our hope, or maybe the way you want to engage therapeutically is in a group setting to do group work with a really good therapeutic guide. But in the presence of other people, there is no one formula just that you are meant for. As we’ve, I think Linda, our colleague Linda has said, Dan, I’ve heard you say it, a canopy of care. You’re meant for a canopy of care. You started out saying it takes a village. And so for those of you who feel like, oh, this is just, I need too much. I’m just needing too much, you’re not needing too much. Some of you are needing too much. But for those of you who have a hard time asking for help or asking for care, it’s good. It’s good to need multiple people and relationships and context to be a part of your healing journey for a season of really intentionally seeking to heal from sexual abuse.
Dan: And we live in a culture that has been stated multiple times, a culture of loneliness. And this is not an easy podcast for those who have a history of past abuse, where because of their own hypervigilance, because of their own internal numbness and in part because of their own isolation, the prospect of going, you’re setting a standard here. That’s maybe the gold standard. And I don’t even have literally a copper penny to make movement. And this is not meant to be overwhelming or discouraging, but also imperative that where you can begin, your current friends and family may not be people at the moment that you can actually be able to turn to. And financially or otherwise there may be few opportunities, but again, to begin to experiment in the context of your church with discernment, with wisdom, how am I being addressed by my pastor or by this particular lay counselor? There are options. And as you begin to take those initial risks, you begin to have more and more categories of what does it mean to be a friend? Not just what does it mean to have a friend, but what does it mean to be a friend? Because in your friending of others, you will find, without question, there will be a growing capacity to have friends, to have family who can begin to enter into these waters with you. And we long, long for you to have something of that taste of the goodness of God and the land of the living.