When Sexual Wounding Shapes Your Story—or Someone You Love: Healing Shame, Trust, and the Body with Dr. Dan Allender
Episode Notes
Sexual wounding shows up in so many different ways, and it affects so many men and women.
Maybe something happened that felt off, invasive, confusing, or inappropriate, but you told yourself it wasn’t a big deal. Maybe you’ve never used the words sexual abuse or sexual violation because what happened didn’t fit the picture you had in mind.
In this week’s episode, Dr. Alison is joined by trauma expert and bestselling author Dr. Dan Allender for a compassionate conversation about sexual abuse, sexual wounding, shame, trust, and the road toward healing.
Dan explains why abuse is not only about a single event, but about how that event becomes woven into the larger fabric of a person’s story. They explore why so many people minimize what happened, how involuntary body responses can create profound shame, and why these wounds often surface years later in our ability to trust, receive love, hope, and connect intimately with others.
You’ll learn:
- What sexual abuse and sexual wounding can look like beyond the narrowest definitions
- Why shame can linger long after an experience is over
- How abuse affects trust, hope, intimacy, and your relationships
- What parents can do when a child shares that something uncomfortable or violating happened
- How to approach your story with honesty, compassion, and dignity
Sometimes the first step is simply being willing to say: Something happened that wasn’t okay. And I want to understand how it has shaped me.
To find out more about The Allender Center workshops visit theallendercenter.org/workshops
or email the Allender Center team directly at programs@theallendercenter.org
Read Dr. Dan Allender’s books:
More Resources:
Listeners get exclusive access to the first 3 chapters of Dr. Alison’s newest book, The Secure Soul.
Connect further with @dralisoncook on Instagram
📖 Find a full transcript and list of resources from this episode here
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TRANSCRIPT
Abuse is never accidental. There's always the intent and often a kind of setting the victim up.
There is grooming that occurs. It's a violation that breaks trust.
We can say almost 91% of abuse is perpetrated by someone whom the victim knew beforehand.
Sexual abuse and all forms of abuse don't happen in a vacuum. It isn't just a single event,
but it's how the single event rings in the... of the larger portion of his life.
None of the work of true healing occurs in any instantaneous drop.
The freedom to be able to go, this is the journey, it's not going to come quickly. Once you begin
that process, you need more information.
Hey, everyone, and welcome back to this week's deep dive episode of The Best of You. I'm so
thrilled to be here with you today. I want to begin today's episode with just a little more care
than I normally do because we're talking about sexual abuse and sexual wounding.
And this is a sensitive topic for many of us. And some of what we discuss in today's episode may
touch on memories or questions or feelings you weren't expecting. So I just want to remind you.
that as you listen, and this applies to any episode, but you always have the freedom, please do
take care of yourself. You can pause, you can come back later, you can choose to skip this one.
It's just not for you right now. You don't have to force yourself through anything that feels like
too much. With that being said, I really wanted to have this conversation on the podcast because
sexual abuse isn't rare. It's not a fringe experience. The numbers vary depending on how
researchers define abuse and how they ask the questions. But even conservative estimates tell us
that an enormous number of women and men carry some history of sexual violation.
And I could honestly think of no other person I would rather take this deep dive with than my guest
today, Dr. Dan. Allender. Dan is the author of the bestselling book, The Wounded Heart,
along with numerous other books on trauma, healing, relationships, and the importance of engaging
our stories. He's spent decades helping men and women understand the impact of all different kinds
of sexual abuse and betrayal. And through the Allender Center, he's trained therapists, ministry
leaders, and individuals in how to engage these stories with wisdom and compassion and care.
Dan just brings such a wealth of wisdom. He's spent so many years... in the trenches with people.
Such an honesty, such a clear naming with such a tenderness that he brings to this topic.
One of the things we talk about in today's conversation is that many of the people who carry these
wounds would never use the word sexual abuse to describe what happened to them.
They might say something like, something weird happened or, man, an adult made me feel
uncomfortable or someone exposed me to something sexual before I was ready. There was touching.
I didn't understand, right? They might use sort of these vague terms to describe the experience.
Maybe someone crossed a boundary or an atmosphere felt uncomfortable. But above all,
they'll often say, I told myself it wasn't a big deal. And this is part of what makes this
conversation so important because the very experiences we minimize or dismiss can become woven into
the larger fabric of our stories. They can shape trust and closeness and how we experience shame
and what we come to believe about ourselves. We talk in this episode about what sexual abuse and
sexual wounding can actually look like, why so many people minimize these experiences and the
profound role that shame can play, particularly when your own body responded involuntarily to
something you did not want. We talk about how these wounds can surface years later in intimate
relationships, our capacity to trust and receive love, and even in our relationship with God.
Dan also speaks directly to parents about what to do if a child tells you. something happened, how
to become a grounded, protective presence when something painful comes to light. And we talk about
healing and the importance of simply getting curious. Sometimes the beginning is simply being
willing to say something happened that wasn't okay, or something isn't well inside of me and I want
to understand. Why? I love how Dan says that you cannot change what you do not name and you cannot
heal what you're not willing to feel. But he also pairs that truth with tremendous gentleness.
There isn't a rush. You don't have to heal on someone else's timeline.
You can tell God or a safe person or a trusted advisor, I know I need to look at this and I can't
do it right now. And that honestly in itself can become part of the healing.
process. So whether this is part of your own story, part of the story of someone you love, or you
simply want to understand how to respond with greater wisdom and compassion. I think this is such
an important conversation. And I also want to add, and Dan will touch on this at the end of the
episode, but if you've been wondering where you could get help, where your story could be held with
deep care, or if someone you love comes to mind as you listen, we want to personally invite you to
consider joining the Allender Center for a men's or women's recovery week. These are in-person
experiences. designed specifically for people who are ready to begin engaging a history of sexual
abuse alongside trained leaders and others who are walking a similar road. And Dan describes in our
conversation how powerful it can be to hear other people's stories and little by little begin to
unpack your own. You can learn more about those resources at theallendercenter.org slash
workshops, or you can email the Allender Center team directly at programs at theallendercenter
.org. We will link. to both of those links in today's show notes. This is a tender conversation,
but also a rich and deeply hopeful one. Here's my conversation with Dr. Dan Allender.
We haven't actually had a whole episode devoted to this topic, and I was looking up numbers. I want
to kind of throw these out, but you correct me with how you see the numbers on this.
But as I was... Kind of researching it, it looks like current estimates suggest that about one in
four girls and one in 13 boys experience some sort of sexual abuse before age 18.
Do you agree with those numbers? Not even for a moment. The reality is most of the time,
those are what could be called paper and pencil tests. And so how do you get the information?
You ask people. But so many people don't even have a category of what is sexual abuse.
So when asked. have you ever been sexually abused i would imagine there are so many people who
answer no but if i were to say well what do you do about the uncle who used to walk in on you while
you were showering and clearly ogling your young body
That would generally be called weird. He was just weird. But to actually say one does not need to
be physically touched to be sexually abused. There are forms of visual sexual abuse being presented
as pornography or being invited to see pornography. It's a form of abuse.
So I think the reluctance we have as a culture to do really good.
interview research. There was a woman by the name of Diane. E.H. Russell,
Incest in the Lives of Girls' Women. This was published back in 1986, and there's been nothing
comparable on what she found by interviewing. Well, you're not asking a question directly like
that, but hearing more a person's story, she found one out of every three women had been abused in
a way that constitutes a legal criminal definition of sexual abuse.
When she actually opened the door to a conversation like what I just put words to, where there's
visual, verbal sexual abuse, she found that it was 54% of the women she interviewed had a history
of past abuse. So I think the figures, again, I don't mind a narrow definition,
but when you do that and you create a legal definition,
You're ignoring the fact that abuse comes in various forms, but with the deep sense of violation.
So one out of 13 men, I think that's nuts. So what I would say is the other research where it's
more interview based comes closer to one out of four men have a history of past abuse.
So half of women and one out of four men. Yes. Ish. Yeah. I mean, that anecdotally fits my
experience just being in practice. There's just it's just so common to your point.
Yeah. These, you know, call them sexual impropriety that may not in someone's mind register as
sexual abuse, but that hurt and created a wound. Indeed. And yeah.
And so talk to us. So what. You know, you're kind of getting at this, but what do you wish people
understand? You've kind of talked about a couple of the categories about what actually constitutes
sexual abuse or sexual wounding. How do you look for it and how do you understand what constitutes?
this broader category that we're talking about? Well, to begin with just a simple definition,
whenever someone uses you for their sexual pleasure without your consent, it is a violation.
It is a form of abuse. There are other words that could be applied to it, but... reality is it's a
violation that breaks trust. And almost, we can say almost 91% of abuse is perpetrated by someone
whom the victim knew beforehand. About 24% in family or incest.
That leaves a vast amount of abuse perpetrated by a teacher, by a neighbor,
by whomever. But the knowledge of. So there has been some relationship established.
Some relationship established in almost all these contexts, and we can say this bluntly,
abuse is never accidental. There's always the intent and often a kind of setting the victim up.
So there is grooming that occurs. And that grooming often is with an awareness of the family that
at some level... that perpetrator knows the victim will not be protected and probably won't be
believed so there's just a deep sense of violation through betrayal which leaves us oh my gosh so
hard to trust, especially authorities or people in power who violate.
And so when it's perpetrated within the church by a youth pastor, now we've got not only sexual
abuse, but a form of spiritual abuse that overlaps with so many different senses of how do I trust
God? How do I trust others? But even how do I trust myself? You also,
generally speaking, have a sense of powerlessness, meaning you could not stop the abuser,
which leaves you in a sense of almost impossible to hope. And so many of the men and women I've
worked with over decades, it's like I gave up desire. I gave up dreaming.
I gave up the ability to, in one sense, anticipate the future because I felt so powerless.
betrayal with powerlessness but the hardest of all is the fact that when the abuser touched you in
any form primary secondary sexual body parts or just your hair your face but clearly for their
arousal there's a sense in which touch even skin increases our sense of dopamine it increases
oxytocin bonding by a chemical, but it's in a sense of threat which raises all our stress by a
chemical. So that combination, that arousal connection but threat leaves us with this,
I don't know how to put it better, the arousal brings the judgment of what's wrong with me.
So, so many people have a phrase like this, I felt dirty, I felt fouled.
bad. And in that, I can tell them a million times over, it's not your fault.
And there is truth to that sentence, but it's not as helpful as we would wish.
One has to engage the issue of what is the shame that your body has experienced in the context of
your body feeling any level, even the teeniest level of arousal.
So the judgment, oh my gosh, that is the real war to address with regard to abuse.
This is so I love that we're just diving in here so that it sounds like, again, what I think I hear
you saying is to a couple of things are happening. There is an arousal, which is autonomic,
automatic. It's outside of your control. Exactly. And yet you're also aware this shouldn't be
happening, even though that's also outside of your control. Indeed. And are you saying then that
the most common way? That someone makes sense of that is there must be something wrong with me.
Yes. You know, if we connect shame, and I think the reality is the depths of the war that we have
to face is what culturally we don't have good language for. And certainly in the believing
community, we don't engage the power and the importance of addressing shame,
even though. The last verse before Genesis 3 is, and they were naked and they knew no shame.
So in so many ways, the rest of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament are addressing God's
engagement with shame and taking shame on to himself on our behalf.
But apart from that, the reality of we don't address shame, but we cover it through contempt.
And contempt is another form of judgment. We judge ourselves or others.
And in that power, you see it's a restoration of power, but it's counterfeit. It leads you to
feeling like you have some level of control. Like, I'm an idiot. I can't believe I allowed that to
happen. In your rage against yourself, you restore just this modicum of power yet.
Contempt is the lingua franca of evil. It's the language of evil. So when we begin to face the fact
that evil, the kingdom of evil, loves trauma. sexual abuse because of its power in a single event
to in some sense shatter but also sear our own sense of being with this uncommunicable reality that
we're left with and nobody can know we hope we can just get by it but it just again lingers in a
way in which especially over Decades and decades, there's this, from my standpoint,
the gift of the Spirit calling us to engage what we have attempted to avoid.
Again, we're kind of diving into the complexity of it. So there's the contempt. I think that's such
a great word there. There's that inner contempt, the shame. And then coupled with where we started,
which is we're not naming this. sexual abuse in many cases.
We're not even consciously naming. So all of this is happening inside for many people.
Is that, am I saying that correctly? Absolutely. I worked with a man who had a long history of
sexual promiscuity, a lot of struggle with pornography. But as we began to think through what was
the war for him, You know, he sort of casually just went, well, you know, when I was about 13,
I got invited up to this tree house and some weird stuff happened. Often the word weird becomes the
euphemism for violation. And I'm like, well, what happened? He goes,
ah, nothing big. Well, you brought it up and he eventually invited me into the clubhouse.
where not only were older boys showing him pornography, but in one sense,
teaching him how to masturbate. And of course, a kind of mutual touch.
Mutual? Come on. No, it was an abusive setting. And the shame,
even the comparison of his body as a younger boy to older boys was part of the shame,
part of the shame of being touched. It couldn't be addressed. If I looked at his life,
history of profound addiction, not only with pornography, but with alcohol and workaholism.
He was an extremely well-to-do man because the energy to prove he's a man was pouring through an
effort to resolve so much of the shame of what happened when he was 13. It was staggering to him to
think this was the wellspring. I'm not excusing the other behaviors, but it was the wellspring of
where so much of his war was that he had just not been willing to address.
There was a root. And in his mind, it was nothing.
Something weird happened. Totally dismissed. And is that your experience, that there is typically a
core, maybe a series, but a core root? like that in these stories?
One of the things that we say when we train people to engage this is sexual abuse and all forms of
abuse don't happen in a vacuum. So in that sense, it isn't just a single event,
but it's how the single event rings in the context of the larger portion of his life.
And this particular man had been, in so many ways, disparaged and humiliated by his father.
And in some ways, in a very strange relationship with his mother. All that to say,
our task is not just to look at the single event, but to look at the fabric.
But where the fabric bunches up, where there's a sense in which there's something here that just
feels like it has to be unknotted, that's the work of looking into the particular events of abuse.
You've touched on this a little bit, but how do these, I love how you call it a fabric,
the fabric of abuse, the whole context of it, the moments and everything that leads to that.
How does this show up in our adult relationships? What are some of the cues that you look for?
Well, let's go back through those categories. Trust, where you...
You know, you have a beloved spouse, but you really don't trust them. Well,
every marriage is somewhat broken, but at the deepest level, I mean, I trust no one more than my
wife. But where there are failures of trust, where there's something suspicious,
and maybe even to a point of hypervigilance, what I would say is, oh my gosh,
how exhausting that has to be, that you're looking at virtually every person and situation with a
certain lens of paranoia, that's a good indication that there is a war within you regarding trust.
It may not be sexual abuse, but at least it's something of significant trauma that's left you at a
point where you think you're the only person you can trust and you don't even trust yourself.
Well, when you begin to see people who struggle with hope, who just don't seem to have In one
sense, we all have the uncertainty of death and life, but where there is kind of that,
again, back to that not, like dreaming, desiring, you're a fundamentalist in the sense that it's
black and white and you just want good things and nothing else. The absence of desire is a lack of
hope. So the ability to begin to go, oh my gosh,
why are you? maybe a frank way of putting it, but why are you so constipated?
But also people who are flooded with hope, but in a kind of entrepreneurial way where they're
taking risks at levels that just feel like, are you out of your mind? So that extremity on one side
or the other often is an indication of you don't know what to do with daily kind perseverance.
But I think the deepest indication is we all struggle to be known and to be loved.
But where there is this, I'm able to give to you, but I will not let you give to me.
If you can see the fabric of my body was touched, I was aroused. I will never let someone touch me
like that again. And I don't mean just in violation. I will let no one give me.
I'll give to you. And many of the people I've worked with are profound givers of goodness.
But when you attempt to give to them, you face their distraction,
their dismissal, in many ways, their denigration. Those are just,
to me, signals of, oh, my friend, you have a war within you. Can we ponder it?
That's so good. There's a couple of ways I want to go with this, but one is I'm hearing some of
those when we see those extreme protectors, the defendedness, the need to control,
the need to shut out. I think that's so interesting what you're saying. Shut out receiving the
touch of your warmth because I don't trust the warmth of a touch. Maybe not even literally.
That makes so much sense. Yes. If I can just remind you, Alison, you've just done such profound
work. helping us engage those particular parts. Yeah. that I've just found for my clients for
myself being able to invite them into your writing has opened up in one sense that sense of why is
it that my body my heart is so reluctant to receive what it is I know I was meant for so yeah this
this is this is the realm we've both been working in for a long while.
I want to get into the healing place. But before we go there, I'm thinking of the parents who are
listening, who are wondering, what happens if I have a child who comes to me with something now?
So we've got the category of something happens years ago, and it gets covered over with all of
these defense mechanisms, all of these ways of surviving. And we have to kind of go back. But what
about When we're aware something has happened, how can we be of help to our children if they come
to us and say something weird happened? Yes. Well, and again, I'm assuming you're meeting adult
children or are you talking? No, I mean, I mean, like. Like I'm just as we're listening,
I'm thinking of those parents who are dealing with this as we speak. Yes.
And I want to before we get into the healing of the adults, I want to talk to the parents who are
worried. How do I speak into this now? Right. Because I have I think my kid something weird is
happening. They're not really opening up about it. Or maybe I do know what does a child need in
that moment when something happens? If something were to happen again, it's such a.
Beautiful and crucial question. Let me start with the adult, though. What if your 30-year-old
daughter finally admits to you that she had a history of abuse? The worst sentence that you can say
is, I didn't know. Even if you didn't know, it's really a way of saying,
don't hold me culpable for not dealing with the abuse. And it's,
again, a hard thing, and it's a whole other topic. So I'll just say, When you're dealing with this
topic, you have to tend to your own heart first. You have to tend to your own panic or your own
guilt or your own internal world and maybe even your own past story that you've not addressed.
So I think the first thing, if your child says something like, I don't want to be around this
uncle. I just feel weird with him whenever I'm with him. First of all, don't gaslight the child.
Oh, you're making nothing of something. No,
it's the opposite. Anyway, you get my point. So step back and be able to say,
I would love to hear more. And do you feel comfortable inviting me into hearing a little bit more?
In other words, don't ask questions. Ask permission. And that begins to give a context that the
child is not going to have this deluge, this onslaught of questions upon questions.
What did he do? Why do you feel that way? You know, again, it's back to, will you tend first to
your own panic? And again, I'm not saying this is easy by any stretch, but in tending to your own,
you can create a much more safe environment where you've invited and knowing this is not going to
be a single conversation. I would also say thank that child for the courage to tell you anything.
Can we enter in? Is it safe for you to feel and do so? But thank you for telling me because no
matter what, anytime you're uncomfortable with someone, it often feels like it's your fault.
And I'm so grateful that you're not doing that. So you've set the parameters to now be able to say.
There's nothing you can tell me that is going to change my heart and my commitment to you.
So it may not be easy, but we can work through whatever has happened or whatever you're feeling.
And if the child begins to say, well, I was taking a walk with him and he put his hand down the
back of my pants. Now, in and of itself, I count that as sexually abusive.
However, it could be worse. So don't minimize, but be able to now step into the story and allow the
child to know this will indeed never happen again.
And that's where you need to be clear. The relationship with that uncle who put his hand down the
back of your child's pants will never be the same without incredible ownership confession and
repentance and even then a protective shield that i would never let that child be with that person
literally through the remainder of their childhood so in other words you have to follow up with
regard to the heartache and the narrative into a stance of protection and that can obviously create
And I've seen it happen in many families where at one level, the sister of the man who did that,
it's like, I can't afford to lose my family. And I'll lose my family if I confront my brother.
Everyone will say I'm making a mountain out of a molehill. No, you are protecting your child from
likely a predator. That's so helpful, the tend to your own panic. Because I do see that.
That's part of why I ask the question. I see parents. Because it's awful. It's one of the most
awful things we can imagine happening to a child. I do think about Jesus' love of the children and
how precious and sacred that innocence of children is and that betrayal and that exploitation of
trust is among the most evil things. And as a result of that,
parents can panic, which is understandable. And also the child needs more than ever in that moment,
that grounded, safe presence. So I think that's helpful just as we continue for the listener,
if they're experienced any of that kind of, you know, right now, that's why we're having this
conversation is trying to equip with tools so that,
A, if we're the one this has happened to. we recognize there's a path to healing.
And if we're the one loving someone, whether it's a child or an adult, who this is in their
background, and maybe they're not able to talk about it yet. And maybe they're still minimizing
that we're equipped because our panic won't help. But there are things we can do that will help.
Yeah, yeah. Dan, you said something a few minutes ago, you said that Our Christian church doesn't
have great language for this.
Even though we see in the life of Jesus just this profound honoring of childlike innocence and
children, spiritual language, I think, can sometimes complicate. What do you see?
What should we be aware of? And how can we not be part of the problem?
Well, the idea that almost all beginning change comes with the courage to simply say what seems to
be true. Just naming. You know, the word confession in Greek is a lovely word,
homologo, which basically means say the same thing as. Say the same thing as what's true.
So if you've got a demeaning, sexually, maybe not overtly perverse person in your life,
you just need to say they are sexually violating everyone. whom they're with.
Well, oh, that seems so extreme. He's just a little loose. Well,
you go, we create these deceptive structures of not naming or coming close to naming something that
is, as you put it in a keyword, dismissive. We dismiss the reality of living in a fallen world.
So if we have the courage to name what's happening past,
present. then it opens the door for us to, in some sense, be invited into a struggle that we've
been spending a great portion of our life trying to avoid. And that's what I find with regard to
most of the people I've had the privilege to work with. They've had some sense something's not well
in their sexuality with their spouse or something with regard to their inability to receive honor
and delight. Yet, the idea that it could be related to.
connected to not only their family, their family of origin, but also to the larger events that
occurred. Just that alone. We often then in the Christian community have this notion of don't look
behind you. Just look forward to the high mark of maturity in Christ, which means why does God keep
inviting us to the Exodus? Why does he have as one of the most common commands?
Don't forget the Lord your God. Remember the Lord your God. And I can hear certain people saying,
yes, remember God, but not this stuff. And it's like, well, wait a minute. You remember God in
context. You remember God in story. That's what the Exodus is.
And so to say, yes, we remember death and resurrection, but we have the story of Golgotha and
Gethsemane. When we refuse to enter our story, we operate in abstraction at 20,000,
30,000 feet, which means we're not in the dirt. And it's in that humus,
in that humility, that the deepest change of our body and heart occurs,
not when we're far away.
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I love that, that invitation. And for the listener who's thinking this might be me,
you know, maybe I haven't talked about it. But I love the invitation into the story. And God is in
the story. But the truth is also in the story. And they both go hand in hand.
Dan, what kinds of, for the listener, you know,
is aware that some of this is resonating with their own experience and maybe they've downplayed it
or maybe they're feeling that shame. What do you see in all of your experience as some of the first
steps that can help someone move away from that survival, away from that,
you know, kind of defensiveness or some of that surviving to begin to enter into the work of
healing and find the freedom? If someone, and again, given the kind of folk who would be drawn to
and desirous to have your wisdom, it's a community of people who long for healing and long for
integrity. And so what I would say is, know that it's very likely as you hear this,
something is stirring. And then the question is, What do you normally do to distract yourself once
that kind of stirring occurs? Like, are you the kind of person that's just going to get busy and
all of a sudden you find yourself moving quickly to the bathroom and cleaning it?
Or you go back to your to-do list and you work hard to get everything done. I think the first step
is take a piece of paper, preferably in something that has longevity,
like a journal or a diary, and just write the words, something's not well within me.
And if you can actually go further, to be able to say, wait a minute, my uncle walking in on me
while I'm dressing where it isn't inadvertent, because he stood there looking.
At that point, to be able to say, wait a minute, I've used language to escape it.
Now I need language, just to name it. That was sexually violating. If you can go so far as to
write, my uncle sexually abused me in that moment. It allows you to have sort of,
again, that stake in the ground. Now you're going to want to move away from it. You're going to
want to, in one sense, get busy. But now you've got something that has at least a degree of
permanence. You can look at your journal and go, I wrote that on whatever date it happens to be.
Then the next step from that point is, from my standpoint, you begin to invite the Spirit of God
into that. And I don't mean to resolve it. Just the Spirit of God to say,
I'm going to need courage. I'm going to need, in one sense, perseverance, because none of the work
of true healing occurs in any instantaneous.
So the freedom to be able to go, this is the journey. It's not going to come quickly.
But I would say once you begin that process, you need more information.
You need a foundation. Again, knowledge is never enough, but it is a lovely beginning point.
In order to get to what we'll call right hemisphere images, sensations, to get to the reality of
where we store trauma, You got to begin to a large degree in the left hemisphere.
In other words, an understanding that begins to make some sense to understand why it's hard to
trust or why you have a hard time dreaming or why you have a hard time receiving.
So as you begin to get more data, as one of the reasons we put together like an online course to
actually not just teach it, but have people and sharing something of their story.
so that people, again, it won't be similar to yours, but it will echo with regard to what's in.
So once you get what I would call a foundation of understanding, then it's so imperative that you
step into a trusted, mutual. conversation about not just what occurred but the implications and
often that's a really good therapist a really good spiritual director or just a wise friend who has
gone well before you into realms who can walk with you whatever steps need to be taken initially so
you cannot change what you do not name you cannot change what you do not feel and for us that's
going to be entering into the feelings of judgment, criticism, shame. And you need a trusted ally
to walk with you to engage them.
I love that, Dan, and just the tenderness with which you named the reality that opening that door
will mean facing the contempt and the shame, which is why many people were fearful of doing that.
What do you say to... the folks you know who are fearful of opening the door to their story maybe
they're afraid it will overwhelm them or um or even it's just sort of a subconscious fear but but
there's some sense of you know, why make it worse? You know, this is just going to make it worse.
I'm fine. I'm good enough. Or a sense of this could feel too overwhelming. Yes.
What would you say to folks who are kind of wrestling in that way internally? Kind of maybe
ambivalent on the fence, you know, maybe I can just keep it in the past or it's too scary.
I love that question because let's put it this way. If you're not ambivalent and fearful, you're
not human. Yeah. And yet the reality of being able to say,
you know, when did the prodigal come home? I'm not saying that a person who's been abused is
equivalent. But what I'm saying is he came to his senses, which is that awareness of I'm eating the
food fed to pigs. We don't often talk about, well, what was the smell?
What was the taste? In other words, the sensuality of, in many ways,
his embedded mind with literally having lost everything.
It's what brought him home, brought him to his senses. So I think in so many ways,
when you begin to go, I actually believe God is good. I actually believe the resurrection is
powerful. And I'm living in ways that... It's just not the fullness of what I think it means to
know something of the goodness of God and the land of the living. I think that's that impulse of I
want more. So when that impulse is there, I think a lot of people discount it as being self
-absorbed. Or if I enter this, it'll be more than I can bear. And all I can tell you is anyone who
thinks that you can get into this, get out of it quickly. It's a form of violence.
God will not give you more than what you can bear in that process, which means when you're aware,
I can't do any more work right now. He's not saying, yes, you can. What he's saying is,
thank you for owning what you can bear. Now, take your rest.
And that rest might be a day, a week, or longer. So there is no rush.
There is no imperative of get healed. It is the invitation to what John 10.10 speaks of,
life and life abundant. So the invitation is always to how much of God do you want?
How much of truth do you want? And not so much said in a snarling, how much of God do you want?
Much more, I can only take so much of God. And so I am so grateful in his humility.
He doesn't ask me to take all of the Godhead. I take enough to be able to live well for today.
That's so good. And there's an honesty. There's a difference in being honestly like, I can't do it.
I need to do it. I can't do it right now for whatever reason. That's an honesty that I think God
honors. There's a partnership there versus the, it's fine. I don't need to look at this sort of the
where we're still in the contempt space, the dismissive space. And I think that's really helpful
for the listener. Dan, tell us, you've done so much in this space, but even more recently, you've
created some resources for folks. Tell us a little bit about what you have created most recently
and some of these tools and resources that. You have to come alongside people who are wanting to go
deeper and ready to go deeper and sensing that invitation to go into their story. Well, I wrote The
Wounded Heart back in the 80s and then follow it up with a 25-year anniversary of sort of what I'd
learned from that point on. So there's writing, of course, but so often we need faces and we need,
in one sense, the visual encounter with real human beings who are in the middle because none of us
are finished but who have engaged something of the ambivalence that you put so well and so we
created this online course to help people begin that process and especially for spouses of those
who have been abused because a lot of times the effect of the past abuse will show up in a
marriage. And so Steve Call and I wrote a book called The Deep Rooted Marriage. So almost all my
work is about trauma and the implications for some of our core relationships.
But you still need... to engage the story and so we have over 32 years uh created something called
a recovery week for men and then separately for women and i've just got i i'm very proud to say
i've got a team that's far better than me um who have a long history of addressing in their own and
other lives the reality of abuse so in those recovery weeks we're inviting people over a six-day
period to begin the process, slowly engaging both the teaching, but also something of their story.
And group work is an amazing, it may seem like the biggest threat in the world,
but when you hear other people's stories live, you begin to get.
clarity about your own, but you also get the involvement of letting your life come to bring
goodness to others. So I think when I think about my whole life and all my work, probably my most
favorite week of the year is when we get to do the work in a recovery week.
And these recovery weeks are online? No, they are not. They're live.
It's live. It's the kind of thing where a lot of work we do, of course, has to be done to engage a
global world. But this is, you know, when you're stepping into the particular areas of a person's
story, you need to be able to. stand in line with one another and get your hot dogs and baked beans
and basically rub shoulders in a way in which you're engaging the stories.
And then, so Dan, these recovery weeks, and we're going to link to this in the show notes, the
allendercenter.org backslash workshops. These are men's and women's recovery week that are there
at the Allender Center. Well, actually, the last year we were in a lovely place in Colorado.
Don't do it across the country. But this last time, you know, I kind of go where I'm told.
And we had done enough recovery weeks in the Washington area where we live.
But we went further east. And these are for people who...
You mentioned something about spouses, but these would be for people who themselves have some kind
of history with sexual abuse. Is that right? Yes. At least they're acknowledging something
happened. I may not know much. And again, this is a whole other issue about memory. For many
people, they don't remember much. They just have this shard of a memory.
But in that, usually there is indeed a larger narrative that can be discovered.
Yeah, it's so powerful. And it's so powerful, like you're saying, to be in a room with other
people. It's we will link to this in the show notes.
But I just hear from so many people and a few people who have come to your programs have now
written their own stories about this. We've had some of those folks on the podcast and these.
they're able to now share their stories so that other people again feel less alone i can just
testify to the power of the work that you're doing in thank you and the expertise with just
tenderly holding the story um and so these are again i'll say this again it's the allendercenter
.org backslash workshops and we'll link to that in the show notes for anyone who's just listened to
this and felt a tug, that it's time, you know, that it's time. I want to look at this,
that I love how you put it, Dan, that God wants to give me more. And am I,
you know, am I open to receiving that and maybe taking a step toward that? That's just beautiful,
beautiful work that you've created for so many people. Thank you. It's an honor to be blessed like
that. Yeah. I guess I just want to thank you. Is there anything else as we close that you'd like
people to know about?
any of the other resources. I would always recommend The Wounded Heart. It's just a powerful book.
You did mention there's a course. Did you mention that or did I just misunderstand you?
Let's put it this way. I don't often go to our website. We'll go to the website.
We have a number of online courses, but there's clearly one on the topic. So there's different
steps you can take. Indeed. All right. Well, thank you. Thanks for being here.
And we're grateful for your ministry and we'll continue to just get the word out about these
tremendous resources. Thank you, Allison. Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of The
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