This is Part 2 in a two-part series on how we are doing better these days at dealing with abuse, trauma, and healing. If you missed part 1, you can start here.
As I wrote in that first part, while we still have a way to go, we have come a long way in addressing abuse, trauma, and healing in our society. These reflections, largely personal and nonacademic, are rooted in sound scholarly work. My only word of caution is to those who have experienced trauma: any discussion on abuse can be triggering.
- We are much better at prevention these days.
I was living overseas when my DIY coping mechanisms finally collapsed. When I returned to the U.S. for much needed professional help, I discovered how much society was beginning to come to terms with abuse, especially child abuse, four decades or so after my own.
Perhaps the most notable change was the extensive work being done to build preventative measures into our social institutions – schools, houses of worship, medical services, social services, and on and on. Trauma Informed Care and child abuse prevention guardrails have become standard. How delighted I was to see these carefully thought-through measures, backed by solid research, being put into place in the kids’ programs and counselling services in my church, for example.
Some of my readers will argue that there have been excesses in preventative measures, to which I would say “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.” If we think child abuse is serious business, then we need to be serious about stopping it before it starts. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” is another old and very wise saying.
Some social critics decry what they see as the way we are coddling our youth these days. I find troubling the memes asking if you survived riding in a car without seatbelts or playing on rusty old playground equipment. Such humor, if aimed at modern, overprotective parenting, misses the point. I want to reply: You do know those who didn’t survive are not around to respond, don’t you? Prevention of abuse is not coddling; it is ensuring that kids can grow up to take on the world as healthy adults.
Some say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Don’t bet on it. People who have experienced trauma may survive and may come out strong. Many don’t. The strength comes from the healing process, not the trauma itself. It comes as we realize we are not alone in our journey of healing.
Over the years, I’ve worked a lot with kids and young adults for whom an amazing percentage have come from abusive homes. While a few have grown up flourishing, far too many either didn’t survive or never succeeded in becoming healthy adults.
Prevention and healing are God’s preferred vision for our world. Thus, they are to be prioritized.
- We are finally sorting out the supposed connections between victims, predators, gays, and promiscuous girls.
“Abusers just aren’t getting enough of the right kind of action.”
“Pedophiles who prey on boys are gay.”
“Kids (especially girls) who are sexually abused are asking for it.”
“Kids (especially girls, again) who are abused become promiscuous.”
“Victims become abusers.”
Okay, that’s enough triggers to last a long time. And that is what such lies do. They further abuse those who have already been abused. They reimprison them.
I’ve heard all those lines. Over and over. I could list off all kinds of data-driven counterpoints to refute them. Just know that there is no truth in any of these lies. Some gays do abuse kids and youth, just as do some heterosexuals. Kids never ask for it. Victims don’t necessarily become promiscuous or abusers themselves, though it can happen.
And don’t even bring up the “sex deprivation” argument. Adults, men particularly, don’t abuse because they are deprived of sex. Abuse, including of the sexual kind, is all about power. One person attempting to be god – or should I say “demon” – in someone else’s life.
My abusers weren’t suffering from some unrequited biological urge. Whatever else gave them that proclivity, they gave into the lie that it was okay to control someone else for their own satisfaction.
- We know that healing can take a long time, but life doesn’t have to wait.
Healing does take a long time. My own experience testifies to that. I suspect that healing from many different kinds of trauma can take a lifetime. But if we are able to get the needed help, healing can come. Obviously, some traumas are much more severe than others. I’m not here to compare. One person’s pain is one person’s pain. And people who have been through pain don’t do comparisons. At least not those who have begun to find healing.
I’ve discovered how to survive – or “surthrive,” as I’ve called it – and not just die a victim. I’ve learned how to bring healing to others even as I’ve been healing. I’ve learned how to minister to others even as I have needed ministering to.
Life doesn’t wait until healing is over. As I was finding my way through my own midlife healing process, I had teenagers to look after. They, along with my wife, were my motivation to keep going.
I know there can be life after trauma. Perhaps in spite of it. Or perhaps more in tandem with it.
One of my favorite movies about the Holocaust is “Life is Beautiful.” A Jewish-Italian father expresses fun all the way through concentration camp just to protect his little boy. Laughter and pathos all wrapped up together. The pain is real – ever so real – but so is the joy.
It has often been said that many of the best comedians are trauma survivors. Not to validate the trauma, but it can allow us to see things in a whole new light. Humor itself becomes a coping mechanism, a way of surviving – laughing in the face of darkness.
I wish I had had resources to help me heal at a much younger age. Somehow, I found ways to keep living life to its fullest in the midst of the pain, pain I didn’t always recognize was there. But certainly, I have discovered that even as we get on with the task of healing – and it is a task – we can live life. Much of my life, especially the joy part, has come in tandem with the trauma and healing.
Fresh back in the U.S. for therapy, the Great Recession hits, meaning we go without income for a couple of years, depressing us financially almost to the point of despair. What employment finally comes along for me? Running an emergency food program for even more desperate people. Go figure! But, boy, was it good – good for me as much as for those I was serving. Meanwhile there were kids to raise, a wife to love, and a God to worship.
- We are learning that forgiveness has its own timetable.
They say you have to forgive to get over your trauma. It’s not that simple. I thought I had forgiven my primary abuser the day he made me pray with him to ask forgiveness of God for what we’d done. He a 60-something, me a kid. I know, rubbish!
For years after, I thought I had forgiven him. What I called forgiveness was really just excusing – or maybe even ignoring. My mind said, He didn’t mean it. It was mutual. It was love gone too far. It was not that significant.
I had all kinds of reasons for not taking the pain he had inflicted on me seriously, not realizing that my letting him off the hook was not true forgiveness. And all the time, that pain was eating me inside out, like a metastasizing cancer.
I didn’t understand that I’d missed a step in the forgiveness process. I had to face what he had done for what it was. For me, I had to get angry – really, really angry. At him. At those who knowingly or unknowingly enabled him. At God, even. I’d never done any of that. Excuse, yes. Avoid, that too. Confront it, no.
I never did confront any of my abusers. They died long before I came to that point. So, I had to confront them posthumously. I don’t know which is harder – to do it face-to-face or do it when they’re dead and gone. I never tried the face-to-face, at least not with them. So I can only tell you that doing it when they are dead and gone takes work, perhaps just as much work.
But even then, after confronting (whatever form that takes), forgiveness, as important as it is, cannot be mandated. I cannot force myself to forgive. Nor can anyone else force me. Whether, how, and when I forgive is between my Maker and me. It is certainly not for busybodies to decide.
- We now know that your abuse was not your fault.
It has taken us a long time. As a society we’re still not fully there. We still commit the sin of blaming the victim.
I lived with that lie, that it was somehow my fault, for decades. My therapist made it abundantly clear that it absolutely was not. My supporters – my wife, my friends, my group therapy peers – did too. It takes a lot of work to undo bad self-talk. But finally, I realized I did not cause that abuse.
The old story of Pinocchio has done a lot of damage to our way of thinking. Pinocchio got into a heap of trouble. People took advantage of his naivete. Sure, he lied, which is what we remember of the story – that and his nose growing longer with each lie.
Thus, we think that people get into trouble because of their own vices, their own choosing. If she hadn’t dressed that way. If he hadn’t run away from home. If he had said something. If she had pushed away. Lots of ifs paired with half-truths or pure nonsense.
As a man in midlife, I had to go back to that boy of 9 and tell him it wasn’t his fault. He didn’t do anything to deserve that or to bring it on to himself. He could learn to forgive himself for believing that lie, perhaps. For trapping himself in harmful coping mechanisms, perhaps. For hurting others in his own pain, perhaps. But never for bringing on the abuse itself. For that there was nothing to forgive.
There are other ways we’ve grown as a society in dealing with abuse and trauma. And there are other ways we need to continue to grow in. Sexual abuse alone affects a significant part of our world. Add in all the other abuses and traumas and it is a miracle when any of us die unscathed. For something so prevalent to the human experience as trauma is, it’s about time we learned to support one another – and ourselves.
As I said at the end of Part 1, I encourage you to reflect on these points, for yourself, perhaps, for those you know, for sure. Comments below or on social media are public; comments directly to me via this link are confidential.
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Photo credit: Taken by Rhonda Case when I testified about my abuse before a legislative hearing at the state capitol back in 2013. It was my first time to publicly name my abuser. I was just shy of 58.
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