The Stages of Healing Overview...

This is summary of the stages of healing Bass and Davis gives.  As I have written before, it is important to understanding that the stages of healing from sexual abuse are similar to the stages of grief in that they are not linear.  Second, this summary is but a brief glimpse at the information covered in the individual chapters about the stages of healing.

THE STAGES

Although most of these stages are necessary for everyone, some—the emergency stage, remembering, disclosing, abuse to your family, and forgiveness—are not applicable to everyone.

The decision to heal.  Once you recognize the effects of sexual abuse in your life, you need to make an active commitment to heal.  Deep healing happens only when you choose it and are willing to change.

The emergency stage.  Beginning to deal with memories and long-surpressed feelings can throw your life into turmoil.  This is a time when emotional pain is intense, the old coping mechanisms are no longer intact, and it may difficult to function at your usual level.  Remember, this stage won't last forever.

Remembering.  Many survivors suppress some or all memory of what was done to them as children.  Those who do not forget the actual incidents may forget how they felt at the time or may not fully realize how much the experience has affected them.  Remembering is the process of getting back both memory and feeling, and understanding the impact abuse has had on your life.

Believing it happened.  Survivors often doubt their own perceptions.  Accepting that the abuse really happened, and that it really hurt you, is a vital part of the healing process.

Breaking silence.  Most survivors kept the abuse a secret in childhood.  Telling a safe person about your history is a powerful healing force that can dispel the shame that often accompanies victimization.

Understanding that it wasn't your fault.  Children usually believe that the abuse is their fault.  Adult survivors must learn to place the blame where it belongs—squarely on the shoulders of the abusers.

The child within.  Many survivors have lost touch with their own innocence and vulnerability.  Yet within each of us is a child—or several children of different ages—who were deeply hurt and need healing.  Getting in touch with the child you once were can help you develop compassion for yourself.

Grieving.  Most survivors haven't acknowledged or grieved for all of their losses.  Grieving is a way to honor your pain, let go, and move more fully into your current life.

Anger.  Anger is a powerful and liberating force that provides the energy need to move through grief, pain, and despair.  Directing your anger squarely at your abuser and at those who didn't protect you is pivotal to healing.

Disclosures and truth-telling.  Talking about your abuse and its effects with the abuser or with family members can be empowering and transformative, but it is not right for everyone.  Before taking this step, it is essential that you prepare carefully and wait until you have a strong foundation of healing and support.

Forgiveness?  Forgiveness of the abuser is not an essential part of the healing process. The only essential forgiveness is for yourself.

Spirituality.  Having the support of a spiritual connection can be a real asset in the healing process.  Spirituality is a uniquely personal experience.  You might find it through traditional religion, mediation, nature, working a 12-step program, or your support group.

Resolution and moving on.  As you move through these stages again and again, you will achieve more and more integration.  Your feelings and perspectives will start to stabilize.  While you won't erase your history, it will truly become history, something that occurred in your past.  You will make deep and lasting changes in your life.  Having gained awareness, compassion, and power through healing, you will have the opportunity to work toward a better world.  (The Courage to Heal, Bass and Davis, pp. 56-57)


Part of me wants to leave this summary as is, to simply leave it for you to reflect upon. Part of me wants to include a few brief thoughts.  Again, which is the better course of action is unclear to me.  Often less is more.  Much, much more.  Yet so, too, are words to ponder, words born of personal experience.

• No matter how much you care for someone who has survived sexual abuse or wish for him/her to heal, until that person makes a decision to heal, healing will not and cannot take place.  I wish my decision had come earlier.  But my moment came when it did and until I had that thought, I could not really understand what healing would mean ... or believe that it was truly possible.
• Breaking silence is ever so important, but finding a safe person is not easy.  To me, it thought it would be so being amongst Christians.  But a safe person is someone who sees the survivor, not the victim, and someone who does not set out to fix you or try to make things better, but gives you the freedom to be who you need to be in the different stages of healing.
• Fault ... believing the truth of where this lies ... is really, really, really difficult.  For me, I think that believing has to come on many levels and has to come in body and mind and spirit ... if that makes sense.
• It has been helpful for me to understand and to accept that there is a little girl in me who is who she is and where she is for a reason.  I respond and think and feel as her because of her.  Knowing this, learning this, has been a large part of taking the first steps of learning not to punish myself for being her now.
• Grief is something I have found few understand about the effects of sexual abuse and the need for working through/living with your grief.  Grief is also its own journey and one that may never be completed this side of the vale.  However, the beauty of the Gospel is the joy that can be had, the joy and the healing and the peace even as grief remains.
• Forgiveness has been, in my experience, the false Law handed to me by other Christians that has deepened my wounds and enlarged my despair.  Christians tend to forget that forgiveness is given to us through the Living Word and is worked in us by the Holy Spirit.  Forgiveness will come or not come in God's perfect timing and by His strength.  Not ours.  Not mine.  And we are still forgiven, whole, pure even if we do not ever come to the place where we forgive our abusers.

Finally, I would add, for Christians, that hearing the Living Word is the single, greatest gift/tool/medicine in healing from the effects of sexual abuse.  Christians also tend to worry first about what they might say or how they might help, often remaining silent and separate from wounded brothers and sisters in Christ believing they have nothing to offer.  This is not true.  They have the Living Word.  God has already said and done enough.  His Word is sufficient in all circumstances and for all people.  Read it to and with the wounded.  Send it to the wounded.  Remind them of the sweet, sweet Gospel and the Promise and promises of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, crucified for us, even for this.


When such majesty is denied to Christ according to His humanity, we regard it as a deadly error.  For by this the very great consolation mentioned above is taken from Christians, which they have in the promise about the presence and dwelling with them of their Head, King, and High Priest.  He has promised them that not only His mere divinity would be with them (which to us poor sinners is like a consuming fire on dry stubble).  But Christ promised that He—He, the man who has spoken with them, who has experienced all tribulations in His received human nature, and who can therefore have sympathy with us, as with men and His brethren—He will be with us in all our troubles also according to the nature by which He is our brother and we are flesh of His flesh.
~BOC, FSD, VIII, 87


What to read?  Where to start?  The Psalter.  In that collection of prayers, prayers that Christ prays for us and gives us to pray by and with and through Him, are the words and the Words that tell us we are known by our Creator.  Known and loved and accepted ... even when we doubt and despair, even when we are frightened and confused.

And, of course, there is John 1:1-5, a favorite litany of mine.

In the beginning was the Word, 

and the Word was with God, 

and the Word was God. 

He was in the beginning with God. 

All things came into being through Him, 

and apart from Him 

nothing came into being 

that has come into being. 

In Him was life, 

and the life was the Light of men. 

The Light shines in the darkness, 

and the darkness did not overcome it.

And the promises of Isaiah 43: 1-3a:

But now, thus says the LORD, your Creator, O Jacob,
And He who formed you, O Israel,
“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name; you are Mine!

“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
And through the rivers, they will not overflow you.
When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched,
Nor will the flame burn you.

“For I am the LORD your God,
The Holy One of Israel, your Savior...

Lest you start thinking that the Living Word is not sufficient, is not enough for this person, for this wound, remember, again, what Luther wrote in the Large Catechism about Baptism and the Word of God:

Understand the difference, then. Baptism is quite a different thing from all other water. This is not because of its natural quality but because something more noble is added here. God Himself stakes His honor, His power, and His might on it. Therefore, Baptism is not only natural water, but a divine, heavenly, holy, and blessed water, and whatever other terms we can find to praise it. This all as because of the Word, which is a heavenly, holy Word, which no one can praise enough. For it has, and is able to do, all that God is and can do. (LC, IV, 17-18)

The Living Word has, and is able to do, all that God is and can do.

Do not trust me; trust God.

The Living Word is enough.

My wish is for people to learn and recognize these different stages of healing from sexual abuse.  My prayer is that having learned them, the family, friends, and neighbors of those who are so wounded, will not see to fix that person or make his/her life better, will not remain silent because they are afraid of not knowing what to say or do, thinking they have nothing to say that would be enough.  And my prayer is for those facing the effects of sexual abuse in their lives to know that healing is possible, even though it is also painful and challenging and oft confusing.

To me, learning the stages of healing reinforced the truth that I am not crazy or ill, but wounded.  I am not in need of repair, but of healing. And who I am, where I am, when I am is okay.  It's okay to struggle, to take both steps forward and back along the path to healing.

It's okay.

I'm okay.

And I am not alone.

Lord, have mercy.  Christ, have mercy.  Lord, have mercy.