Steps to Healing
Adapted from Steven Tracy, Mending the Soul: Understanding and Healing Abuse (Zondervan, 2005), p. 143-156. Used by permission. Warren G. Lamb, Behind the Veil: Exposing the Evil of Domestic Oppression and Providing Hope (2019), p. 251-254
Step 1: Establish Safety (Psalm 4:8; Psalm 12:5; Psalm 23) Being unsafe can be real or imagined. When people believe themselves to be unsafe, self-preservation and self-protection are their first priority. The first step to healing is for the person to be safe and to experience a sense of being safe.
Step 2: Choose to Face the Truth and Feel (John 18:37; John 14:6; John 1:14) The counselee must decide that, now that they are safe, it is time to face reality truthfully and walk through the pain instead denying the truth and numbing the pain.
Step 3: Honestly Tell and Feel the Story (Ephesians 4:25; John 8:32; Galatians 6:2) This is the most difficult and demanding part of the healing process. The deeply troubled, especially abuse survivors, have often become quite adept at living a vision of life and not the reality of life. Survivors have become quite adept and living the vision and not the reality of life. This is a multi-faceted and multi-layered process.
Step 4: Identify the Lies and Reclaim God’s Design (Romans 12:2; Ephesians 2:10; Psalm 139:13-14) Survivors have had an enormous amount of false-guilt and its attendant toxic shame messages foisted upon them for a very long time. They have come to believe those lies; the lies, not God’s truth, run their life. The key is to help them discover, learn, and saturate their minds and hearts with God’s truth about Him, them, their worth, His love and purpose for them, and that their history is not their destiny.
Step 5: Repent of Deadness and Denial (Jeremiah 17:5-8; John 6:68; Colossians 1:13-14) Taking one’s own safety and peace into one’s own hands is the most natural thing for us to do — especially when we have suffered at the hands of another. The greatest difficulty with this is that it places us in the position of trying to exercise sovereign control of our lives instead of God — which is idolatry. Nowhere does God’s Word tell us that we will not suffer, nor does it tell us we are entitled to not experience pain. Survivors don’t involve God on the process of healing and protection — they have taken into their own hands.
Step 6: Mourn the Loss and Dare to Hope (Lamentations 3:21-23; Nehemiah 9; Psalm 72:13; Psalm 103:2-4, 13) Survivors have experienced a great deal of loss; not only of what was, but of what might have been. Instead of a healthy parent-child relationship, they were treated like a punching bag or worse. Instead of being allowed to blossom in the natural talents God had instilled in them, they were belittled or tormented for how they were made. Guiding them to understand and hold to the reality that what “was” is not what “is” puts the past in perspective and further equips them live in today’s reality. At this stage of healing, the counselee will be experiencing new-found hope for their life and their future.
Step 7: Be Comforted and Become a Comforter (Genesis 50:20; 2 Corinthians 1:3-4; Galatians 6:1-2) The healing and comfort we have received is not simply for our benefit alone: it is intended by God to be used of Him to bring comfort, hope, and healing to others who have been tormented and harmed as we have been tormented and harmed. Having experienced the healing grace of the Gospel ourselves, it is then for us to be available to God for Him to utilize that in the lives of others whom He loves as much as He does us.
Step 2: Choose to Face the Truth and Feel (John 18:37; John 14:6; John 1:14) The counselee must decide that, now that they are safe, it is time to face reality truthfully and walk through the pain instead denying the truth and numbing the pain.
Step 3: Honestly Tell and Feel the Story (Ephesians 4:25; John 8:32; Galatians 6:2) This is the most difficult and demanding part of the healing process. The deeply troubled, especially abuse survivors, have often become quite adept at living a vision of life and not the reality of life. Survivors have become quite adept and living the vision and not the reality of life. This is a multi-faceted and multi-layered process.
Step 4: Identify the Lies and Reclaim God’s Design (Romans 12:2; Ephesians 2:10; Psalm 139:13-14) Survivors have had an enormous amount of false-guilt and its attendant toxic shame messages foisted upon them for a very long time. They have come to believe those lies; the lies, not God’s truth, run their life. The key is to help them discover, learn, and saturate their minds and hearts with God’s truth about Him, them, their worth, His love and purpose for them, and that their history is not their destiny.
Step 5: Repent of Deadness and Denial (Jeremiah 17:5-8; John 6:68; Colossians 1:13-14) Taking one’s own safety and peace into one’s own hands is the most natural thing for us to do — especially when we have suffered at the hands of another. The greatest difficulty with this is that it places us in the position of trying to exercise sovereign control of our lives instead of God — which is idolatry. Nowhere does God’s Word tell us that we will not suffer, nor does it tell us we are entitled to not experience pain. Survivors don’t involve God on the process of healing and protection — they have taken into their own hands.
Step 6: Mourn the Loss and Dare to Hope (Lamentations 3:21-23; Nehemiah 9; Psalm 72:13; Psalm 103:2-4, 13) Survivors have experienced a great deal of loss; not only of what was, but of what might have been. Instead of a healthy parent-child relationship, they were treated like a punching bag or worse. Instead of being allowed to blossom in the natural talents God had instilled in them, they were belittled or tormented for how they were made. Guiding them to understand and hold to the reality that what “was” is not what “is” puts the past in perspective and further equips them live in today’s reality. At this stage of healing, the counselee will be experiencing new-found hope for their life and their future.
Step 7: Be Comforted and Become a Comforter (Genesis 50:20; 2 Corinthians 1:3-4; Galatians 6:1-2) The healing and comfort we have received is not simply for our benefit alone: it is intended by God to be used of Him to bring comfort, hope, and healing to others who have been tormented and harmed as we have been tormented and harmed. Having experienced the healing grace of the Gospel ourselves, it is then for us to be available to God for Him to utilize that in the lives of others whom He loves as much as He does us.
