The power of abuse lies in secrecy. The power of healing begins with telling.
In this episode, Tim Hein shares his story of surviving childhood sexual abuse and the journey of healing. From the courage it takes to break the silence, to the importance of being believed, to the steps of recovery that lead to restoration, Tim offers raw honesty and hard-earned wisdom. He reflects on how trauma shaped his life, marriage, and faith—and how choosing to tell your story is ultimately an act of self-love and grace.
This hopeful conversation offers encouragement for survivors and practical insight for those who walk alongside them.
Prefer to listen? Listen to the full episode here.
Tim (00:00.554)
I was in the backseat of my parents’ car and I remember the precise intersection where the car stopped and it was kind of a drizzly day and I remember where I was looking out the window and it suddenly occurred to me that’s that. Abuse is abuse and that’s what happened to me. And I remember thinking it through and connecting it and kind of going over it and over it and then feeling it deep in my heart really, I guess, like a punch.
Juli
Well, hey friend, welcome to Java with Juli. I am your host, Juli Slattery, and this podcast is a production of Authentic Intimacy, which is a ministry dedicated to helping you make sense of God and sexuality. This episode, I feel is one of the most powerful conversations we’ve had on Java with Juli. We’re reaching back into our archives a few years ago to bring this one back for those who didn’t get to hear it the first time around. My guest is Tim Hein.
Now, Tim is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. And what you’re gonna hear today is how he allowed God to redeem his sexuality and reclaim this area of his life so that now he’s able to minister to and help others who are walking through this. Tim is the author of the book, Understanding Sexual Abuse, a Guide for Ministry Leaders and Survivors. And it’s really a great resource that I can’t recommend enough. And that’s what we’re gonna be talking about today.
Tim is also a minister at Malvern Uniting Church and the director of discipleship at Uniting College of Leadership and Theology. Tim writes and speaks from his own experience and his wife has also experienced childhood sexual abuse. So he brings a lot of personal story to this very important conversation, but he’s also done quite a bit of research. You’re gonna hear about when Tim realized that he’d been abused and how memories sometimes get repressed.
Juli (01:56.024)
You’ll hear about the process of what disclosing that was like for him and why he didn’t tell someone right away and how choosing the road to recovery was really an act of love. Now, if you are an abuse survivor, you’re gonna walk away with some practical steps you can take to make sure that you are on that road to recovery. And if you haven’t experienced sexual abuse, it’s a safe bet to say that you know someone who has. Will you share this episode with them, because this is such an important topic for us to be informed about and equipped about in walking people through healing? Okay, let’s head to the coffee shop for my conversation with Tim Hein.
Tim, thanks for joining me all the way from the other side of the world in Australia where it’s early morning right now. So I feel like you got up to have coffee with me very early.
Tim
I’ve got my coffee. It’s a pleasure to be with you. And I have a magnificent view of the sunrise out my window at the moment. So it’s very pleasant.
Juli
That’s wonderful. Well, I got your book Understanding Sexual Abuse probably a few months ago and just had the chance recently to dive into it and just found it so full of wisdom from your own story, from God’s truth, and also from your research on what trauma does to our brain and relationships. I just couldn’t wait to have you as a guest because you have a lot to share.
Tim (03:23.65)
Well, thank you. I’m so pleased you found the book, you know, engaging and helpful.
Juli
Yeah, I imagine that it wasn’t an easy one to write.
Tim
No, no, was exhausting, partly because it’s grounded in my story to some degree, but also because I wanted to get it right. You don’t just flick out a book quickly on a topic like this. It’s complex. So I wanted to research properly. I wanted to know precisely the right thing and the helpful thing to say. So, that part of it was exhausting too, but it was emotionally exhausting as well. Yeah.
Juli
Both you and your wife have a history of childhood sexual trauma, which is somewhat unusual. Usually one person, either the man or the woman is coming into a marriage with sexual trauma, but it’s somewhat unusual to have both of you. Is that something that you discovered and shared during the dating process?
Tim
Yes, it was. It was a strange coincidence really. Now that I’m aware of statistics and the prevalence of abuse, it feels slightly less of a coincidence, sadly. But no, I guess it was. Yeah, we met when we were in Bible college training for the ministry. She was studying counseling. I was studying ministry. yeah, I think it was a few dates in and it came up somehow.
Tom (04:52.162)
I shared my story and then she subsequently shared her story. And I think that’s been, because it’s something so profoundly in common, we’re also quite a distance down the journey of recovery. We could talk about it and compare notes. You know, there was a sense of, this person gets it. But we didn’t really bond over it, so to speak, you know what I mean? It wasn’t a relationship built on it, but it’s always sort of been there as, this person gets this…
Juli
Mm-hmm.
Tim (05:21.62)
…significant part of my history, who I am.
Juli
You share in your book that your abuse happened when you were a young boy, but you didn’t actually remember it until several years later when you were a teenager. Was there something that triggered a memory or how did it come to your awareness?
Tim
Yeah, this is a really interesting area as to how people recall and some people know their whole life. That certainly was, was pretty much my wife’s experience, but it’s like you don’t forget, but you kind of forget or you reach an age where it’s suddenly, you know what sexual abuse is and you connect the dots. That’s what happened to me, you know. And for me, it just occurred that way. was driving down the road. I was in the back seat of my parents’ car. We’d been to church on Sunday morning. We were leaving afterwards, heading off somewhere to grab some lunch. And I remember the precise intersection where the car stopped and it was kind of a drizzly day. And I remember where I was looking out the window and kind of looking at the rain on the window as well as looking through the window. And it suddenly occurred to me that that’s that. Abuse is abuse. And that’s what happened to me. And I remember thinking it through and connecting it. yeah, that’s my experience. I know that.
That’s what that is. That’s what happened to me and kind of going over it and over it and then feeling it deep in my heart, really, I guess, you know, like a punch. Oh, goodness. Like a sadness. Like that’s a, this is big. That’s the thing I felt. This is big. That’s that. And this is big. It was a real connection. I talk about it in, the book.
Tim (07:06.826)
I mentioned that moment, in return of the Jedi when Luke Skywalker is talking to Princess Leia and sort of joins the dots for her that Darth Vader is their father. I hope I’m not spoiling the film here.
And, and, you know, he says, my sister, and she realizes, oh, wow, we’re brother and sister. And she says, you know, uh, somehow I’ve always known, of course I didn’t know when you somehow have always known and, people’s experience very, but the penny drops, you know, and suddenly you realize, and it seems to be like for myself and Priscilla around the age where you’re coming to understand about sexual matters, you know, more broadly.
Juli
Yeah. And for other people, it seems to happen when you get married or have kids that are around the same age where you experience trauma. So there’s different things like that that can bring the memories to the surface.
Tim
That’s absolutely true. It can happen much later in life, very late in life. That’s absolutely true. A sudden revelation or in therapy. That’s true. There’s no rhyme or reason or rules around this. I mean, I’m sure there are causal reasons, but that’s absolutely true.
Juli (08:20.554)
One thing you wrote in your book that I thought was really well stated, you said, though it is a horrible experience to remember, it’s also a defining moment and it contains a strange element of hope. Why would you feel hope at remembering such a traumatic experience in your life?
Tim
I guess because just because you don’t remember the trauma doesn’t mean that the trauma isn’t there. We know that it’s, there’s a sort of sense of it pulling the strings behind the scenes. We know that the way our memories work and the way profound traumatic experiences work, they, it’s shaping our life in quite profound ways. And particularly for a childhood experience, when you grow, you’re growing up and you’re becoming someone, right?
So, if you think about a traumatic accident or incident for an adult, you know, they’re living their life and then suddenly a major trauma happens. I don’t want to minimize that, but you can quite clearly see it’s an aberration from the way life is supposed to be. But when the traumatic experience happens as a kid, it’s part of who you are and the way you see the world growing up. You know, you don’t see the aberration. This is normal. So it’s having a profound effect on your life, but you don’t see it. You don’t know it.
And so there is a sense by which coming to realize that you have been abused is in one sense, the worst day of your life. It’s shocking. It’s scary. It’s fearful, but it is important to note that that’s the first step to recovery. You know what I mean? It’s been unmasked. There we go. This happened. It’s truth. And we know that truth leads to freedom, to liberation, even if it’s a horrible truth. So I think that’s really important to recognize right at the very beginning of the worst moment, you know, when, when you’re, the bomb goes off and you realize this has happened. That’s the first step. You’re already on the journey of recovery and survival at that moment. You’re a step closer to liberation, to healing than you were the day before when you were blissfully unaware of what was under the surface.
Juli (10:35.532)
Yeah, that’s well put. But yet I’m still guessing as a teenager, you didn’t feel this sense of, I’m on the road to healing. And from what you wrote in your book, you didn’t even tell anyone for many, many years until, what was it, in college or grad school that you began even speaking it out loud.
Tim
Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, this is it because there’s an enormous amount of shame attached to it. And this is why many people don’t disclose, like I said, too much later in life, they may not remember recall, or they may have, but have may have kept this little secret all their life and never have spoken the truth that, you know, dare not speak its name. And I can understand why that’s the case. And there can be lots, there’s several reasons that kind of conspire for that to be the case. And, for me, very, very young, is a sense of this is so big. I can’t bear to say it or who, but that’s sort of mixed with an idea as a child. You know what I mean? Is who would believe me? This feels too big a deal for me to, for it to have happened to me. You know what I mean? It’s a young adolescent mind, you know, doesn’t look at things with objectivity and clarity. You know what I mean? There’s a sense of being overwhelmed by it.
Juli
Mm-hmm.
Tim (11:54.392)
But of course there are lots of fears as well. Fear of the perpetrator, fear that no one will believe me, fear that this was my fault. The self blame that comes upon someone, a child that has experienced abuse is profound. Because as a child, you’re looking at the world and you’re trying to work out, someone said that the childhood is fundamentally about asking the question, “do I matter?”, from a position of total vulnerability. So if you very early on have an experience like this, the idea that adults can do this, these big people who run the world means that the world is out of control. And so we kind of try and manage that by thinking, well, it must have been my fault. It must be just me. And we internalize that. And that’s exhausting and horrible for a child to take on board. But everything kind of conspires against them being able to stand there and say, this happened to me, it wasn’t my fault, that’s the person that’s responsible. You know, that takes a lot of support in order to reach that stage.
Juli
Do you remember wrestling as a teenager with the idea of telling your parents and what that conflict was?
Tim
Yes, I do. Yes. And in the end, I disclosed to a sort of like a mentor at like a youth leader at church, because I really didn’t want to hurt my parents. In my mind, this was very bad news for them, because it’s, you know, it means that they had was a dereliction of duty. know what I mean? They had exposed me to this person who had come and boarded in our home, you know, was staying with us. And my father had been through a lot and in his life, he’d had me later in life. And in my mind, I wanted to protect him. I mean, it sounds, you know, absurd now to think about me trying to protect my father from, you know, things that had happened to me. But in my mind, yeah, this would be devastating for him.
He didn’t need to know that this late in life, he’d had several heart attacks and this could be really bad news for him. And so I needed to hold it. And it wasn’t until much later on actually when I was long married, well into my thirties that I finally got to a point of realizing this is not my responsibility. can’t, he was my parent. My parents are my parents. And I finally with the prompting and the support of Priscilla, my wife, I disclosed to my parents. And you know what? They could handle it. Particularly my mother. mean, my father was quite old and he heard it and he believed it and said it was awful and recounted other things. He believed me. And that’s all I really needed from him by that stage. But, geez, I was so proud of my mother. She was like, right, well, and she said, why didn’t you tell us? And I said, well, I wanted to protect you. And she said, why didn’t you go to the police? And I said, because it meant that you would have found out and I wanted to protect you. And she said, right, well, now you can let’s go. You know, she was full of support. She could handle it. And you know, that’s not always people’s experience, but I was so proud of my mom in that moment. But for me, the big shift was to go, this is not my fault. This is not my responsibility to fix. I need to bring others in on this story as well.
Juli (15:36.718)
Mm-hmm Tim when you carried that burden by yourself for so many years What were some of the ways that you coped? Maybe even in a dysfunctional manner to hold that pain to try to stay in control.
Tim
That’s a good question. think I did reading through in my research, you start to see a bit of a map of some coping mechanisms because I can see that there were aspects of my childhood that at the time I felt a bit different from everybody else. And now you look back and you go, I can see why suddenly I would explode with rage, even though I was trying to be a very good, you know, boy.
And being a good boy and being a good Christian boy was very important to me. So I did on the one hand what many children do in this circumstance. They can kind of create two selves. There’s this kind of the inner world of what I feel that I’m kind of a bad person. This has happened to me. I need to contain this trauma. I need to, of course you don’t call it trauma, but I need to contain this secret, and keep this secret. And if I can keep a lid on that, then it’s fine. But you don’t even really know what that is. There’s just a big gap between that feeling and my external world where I’m trying to be, I want to seek approval from people. I want to impress them. I want to be able to be a good Christian and very devout at church. And I want to do my best and be a, you know what I mean? Aspire and achieve. And there’s a sort of a, there is a sense of, in many survivors and over compliance. You know, I want to fit in and I want approval from the world and I want to do the right thing and be a good person and achieve a lot. So I can see that sort of thing going on in my childhood. But I have to say that my faith was actually really fundamental as well. I don’t talk about myself being a very devout, you young Christian boy. I’m not saying that in a pejorative sense. I love Jesus and I felt Jesus very close to me.
Tim (17:42.934)
And I read the Bible stories and I love them and I would pray. And particularly in my later childhood, I would pray to God all the time about this. I’d go for walks and I would pray about this and what’s happened. I didn’t know what to pray. I didn’t know how to pray. I didn’t know the right thing to do. I didn’t have this wonderful, you know, theological framework that I wish I had, you know. As a kid, I just knew that Jesus loved me and that was profound.
And that was a great gift, even though I was holding on to this other, you know, darkness, this memory as well.
Juli
I love hearing stories like that of God tenderly meeting a boy or a girl who has been traumatized, who needs to know God is a father in a simple way. so thanks for sharing that. I’ve heard that same theme in the stories of so many survivors. And it really is evidence of God’s care in the midst of that. Tim, your wife Priscilla had a little bit of a different story. She actually experienced abuse from her father, and so disclosing that abuse came with a lot of really difficult ramifications. Can you talk a little bit about how she’s journeyed through that and what happened to her family?
Tim
Her experience was quite different in, that’s right. It was her father, which compounds the complexity of the situation. But in many ways, God has been at work in her life, even through that hellish experience as well. But look, she disclosed to her boyfriend, first of all, and then went to her mother. And the mother went to the minister of the church and the minister did the right thing and went to the police. And it all unfolded from there. You know, that’s a more complex situation in that kind of situation, you know, because it’s so close and because it’s your father. But many of the patterns of things that I put in the book and that was part of my experience has been her journey too, with an added sense of responsibility, I think, as an older child in the family. And so that sense of being a protector is there as well.
But she has, yeah, so I guess disclosed earlier than I did and that had immediate ramifications. You know, she didn’t sort of sit on it for several years like I did waiting and wondering who’s the right person to safely share this with. You know, it was like a bomb that went off, but it was thankfully the, you know, marvelously right thing to do.
Juli
Tim, I noticed in both your story and your wife’s story, one of the things that was profound was that the people you told believed you. And you mentioned that for each of you. That the man that you shared with believed you. That with Priscilla, her mother believed. The church believed and took the right actions. We hear so many stories where a man or a woman, a boy or a girl, wasn’t believed.
Why is that so key and why is that so important that the Christian community believes a report like this, an allegation like this?
Tim
It’s profoundly important, profoundly important, partly because of the reason that I said before, the internal narrative of a child. This is my fault. The ramifications of this are too big for me to be able to disclose. Being able to break the power of that secret and take the courage to actually tell somebody takes an enormous amount of energy for a child or even for an adult to do.
Tim (21:28.236)
I mean, to some degree they’re sharing something deeply precious and profound, even if they’re doing an adulthood associated with their childhood. And all of the fears, and just one of them being that I won’t be believed, are there. But also that the other person will fight back or that I made this happen or the fact that the person is in a position of power and anyone I tell will believe them over me. know, all of this is the decks are stacked against you, particularly if the person, I mean, any adult in a child’s life is a powerful person. If they’re a youth leader, right? Or if they’re an elder in a church or they’re a senior person in the life of a church or even the minister themselves or the priest, of course, as we’ve seen, you know, play out in certain denominations. I tell you.
It just feels like an overwhelming wall of authority. So the idea that for someone to believe, to look at you and say, yes, yes, I believe you is a gigantic leap forward in terms of the recovery of the child. For them, for it to be minimized, held with suspicion, know, disregarded, closed down, bribed early on, as we’ve seen happen, as we’ve seen happen throughout history and in institutions and in families and everywhere is profoundly hurtful and disruptive to their recovery. I mean, why would you tell anyone else? I wasn’t believed. It becomes part of the overarching narrative of this happened to me. No one will believe me. Look, this person didn’t believe me. No one will believe me. It reaffirms that shell, that wall, that belief. I call it the bubble of secrets. You know what I mean? That spell.
Juli
It seems like it would even reinforce your own self-doubt of, you know, I even trust myself. Can I trust my memories?
Tim (23:24.652)
That’s right, yeah. And I’ve heard that as well and read that. That’s a very common thought, this idea of, this really happen? What if I accused this person? What if I put this out there and it didn’t happen? I’m remembering wrongly or I was wrong. We start to doubt our own memories and what happened. We know something happened and maybe we don’t know what it is yet and it’s going to take some therapy to dig into, you know, unpacking, this happened here. So it may just be very vague at first.
And I tell you, the temptation is on the side of the leader or the hero to minimize it or to start evaluating, you know, but that’s not their job. Their job is to believe.
Juli
It is true. We see that in communities. I see that in my own life where we don’t want to believe because it sounds too horrific or because we don’t want the system upset. Whether it’s a church system or a family system, it’s too messy. So this is really how a lot of abuse ends up being undealt with and undisclosed.
Related to that, Tim, when we try to get at numbers, of what percentage of people have been abused. It’s so difficult because so much abuse happens that goes undisclosed. But it seems like for women, we can probably say like around a third of women have experienced childhood sexual trauma. When we talk about men, the numbers are fewer, maybe one in six or one in seven, some of the research shows. But I think there’s more evidence to say.
That number probably is even more suppressed. There seems like there’s a greater shame around a man disclosing sexual abuse. Has that been your experience?
Tim (25:10.294)
Yeah, this is a really interesting area of research that’s being revised all the time. Exactly how prevalent is sexual abuse? What we do know is that it’s far more prevalent than anyone really has previously thought in even, you know, recent decades. Yeah, they talk about one in four, you know, girls may experience at some stage, some level of sexual abuse, when I say some level, don’t mean to relativize them or minimize them, but you know what I mean? Just to simply say, there’s a whole span of acts and activities and incidents and so forth. One in six for boys, but yes, they all agree that probably around half are never disclosed.
People don’t disclose, they just hold onto them. And you think about the generations that have gone before. think about the, I mean, quite frankly, previous centuries where even at the end of the 19th century, research into this area was highly contested just when Freud was starting to write a little bit about the common sexual exposure of a lot of his patients who were experiencing what was called at the time hysteria later in life. But he was widely slammed and isolated for suggesting this at the time, because the implication was, hang on a second, if this is true, then it’s right across European society.
It’s hugely prevalent and that idea was unthinkable. And that continues to be unthinkable. If this Christian leader has done this, that has implications for all sorts of people. if this, you know, even local church leader has done this, or if this father has done this, we want to minimize it. We don’t want it to be true. And that’s what’s going on inside the mind of a child. Surely this can’t be true. I, this is an unspeakable thing. This can’t be a reality. So it’s so profoundly important to create a conducive environment increasingly in our society, in our churches, in our families, in our schools, in all our institutions where a person could, hang on a second, that happened to me. I can tell someone and they will be believed and things can flow from there. I think perhaps there is a level of shame associated with this that is, I would say different than it is with girls.
Tim (27:26.418)
The level of shame and difficulty for girls is profound as well, but perhaps it’s of a different order with guys because of the culture amongst, you know, men and boys and all of that stuff that goes on. And particularly as it’s, you know, developing and evolving through adolescence. Yeah.
Juli
Mm.
Juli (27:50.638)
Hey friend, it’s Juli. I’m jumping in here just for a quick minute to remind you to register now for an online book study this fall. Now these groups are an opportunity for you to dive into God’s design for sexuality along with other men and women just like you. In fact, we know OBS members who have really become lifelong friends through these groups. So grab your spot today in one of our groups for men, for women, or for couples. We’ve got groups that are going through my new book, called, Surrender Sexuality plus God, Sex, and Your Marriage, Finding the Hero in Your Husband, Rethinking Sexuality, Linda Dillow’s new book, Hope for My Hurting Heart and Beyond the Battle by Noah Filipiak. Now in these studies, you’ll take part in weekly Zoom meetings, you’ll have online discussions and at the end, you’ll have a live Q &A with me. The deadline to register is September 12th and these groups will be starting on September 15th. So what are you waiting for? Head to authenticintimacy.com/onlinebookstudies and grab your spot today. All right, back to my conversation with Tim Hein.
Juli (29:00.15)
You mentioned two really key mile markers on the road to recovery. One of them is remembering, and then the second one is disclosure. Where do you go from there after you have disclosed this to somebody that you trust? What are the next steps, key steps, in terms of recovering from childhood sexual trauma?
Tim
Yeah, that’s a great question because those are wonderful and profound in some ways the hardest steps because they start something. I mean, after realizing, I talk about there being a grain of hope inside the, you know, the devastating news that this happened, taking that next step and breaking the spell of secrets to someone is the next great, profound and wonderful step. I will say wonderful step. You know what I mean? This happened. This happened to me. The next steps from there about, okay, well, you’re going to need some help. You can’t journey on your own. telling this one person may just be the first step. Sometimes it might be a close and trusted friend. They’re not a therapist. They’re not a counselor, but they can be a sojourner. You know what I mean? They’ve told you this. Maybe now you want to tell someone else. You don’t have to go around telling the whole neighborhood. That’s not going to be helpful.
But think about who’s the right next person that I can have this conversation with. And maybe that person can be with you when you have that conversation. But at some stage, you know, getting some help that has some expertise, some counseling, a psychologist, even beginning firstly with a doctor, if your doctor is a trusted person, and that will, you know, put you into some recommended links with people to journey with. That’s going to be helpful. That journey is wonderful and it is long, but there are steps of healing and recovery every step of the way. And having someone to support you to be a wing man, we call it amongst men who can say, how are you going with that? Can I come with you? Can I drive you to the appointment? I’ll be waiting outside, come out. Okay, let’s go have a coffee. Do you need to go to the beach just to sit there for a while? I’m gonna be near you. I’m not gonna try and fix you.
Tim (31:15.214)
Having that kind of supportive friend is great. If you haven’t got that person in your life, you can still journey too, but you can go see someone whose expertise will help to guide you on the path of recovery. Because you’re not alone. Your experience is unique. Of course it’s unique because it’s you. But let me tell you, it is also common. The prevalence is there, which means the expertise is there, which means we have a bit of a map of what this means.
And reading a book like, like mine, or there’s some other great books too, may help to give you a bit of a mental map. Okay, here we go. This can happen. And this will be a bit further down the track. And this is where I am. And it’s about what’s the next careful, tender step. That help, reaching for that help is the next step, I think.
Juli
And as you’re saying, we have learned so much about trauma, how it impacts the brain, how we heal from trauma, that God has provided a lot of helpers who can guide you on that journey as well, supportive friends, like you mentioned. You need both. You need those friends as well as the expertise. I know friends, I have people in my life who have taken those first two steps. They’ve become aware of childhood trauma.
They’ve spoken it out loud to their spouse, to a friend. It’s in their awareness. But they really don’t want to take that next step of seeking help. And sometimes they’ll say things like, the past is in the past. What’s done is done. Why do I want to dig up old memories? And they may even spiritualize it and say, you know, the Bible even says, we’re new creatures in Christ and old things have passed away. All things are becoming new. What do you say to somebody who has that resistance to taking that next step?
Tim (33:06.85)
Yeah, sometimes well-meaning Christian friends can exacerbate this by talking about forgiving and forgetting, you know, quickly or a profound, you know, Holy Spirit experience of prayer and that being, there we go. And I would want to say a couple of things about that. One is it’s very, very tempting. In fact, it’s quite common for survivors to look to some climactic purging experience as being the thing that finally cleanses them. In other words, they often look if I can just cry or have it, we would Christianize it, I think, as Christians, a major prayer session, you know, where we break down and we cry and the Holy Spirit does a work and we feel a sense of cathartic peace. That’s a wonderful thing. That’s a great thing there, but that’s not the totality of healing. And we wouldn’t expect that to be the totality of healing with any other part of our our body, you know, with a broken leg or with an infection somewhere, or you know what mean? Some other, would expect that we would need to, see some experts and, and carefully move through a process. But there is that subtle pressure to sort of, well, if I can reach a point of forgiveness quickly, because the Christian, you know, Christianity is all about forgiveness. If I can reach that point of forgiveness, if I can just forgive them, then that will solve it. Then I’ll be able to let it go and it will fade away.
But that’s just not how trauma works. It just doesn’t work that way. So we need to understand this is going to require an unpacking and integration. And that sounds a little scary. Like, hang on, we’re going to unpack this, but we need to realize that healing is not going to come by putting a lid on top of an experience. That’s denial. And, this idea of if I can just do one big forgiveness experience or have one big moment of the Holy Spirit that’s going to cleanse, it won’t cleanse, it will bottle. We actually need to go on a careful journey of exploring. Now it might be a few steps and then we pause and then a few more steps and then we pause, but we need it to be, we need to see an expert just as like we need to see an expert with any other facet of our life or our bodies. We need to be able to have someone with expertise walk us and guide us through a journey of recovery.
Tim (35:32.428)
And there are different, there are different ways and different therapeutic ways of doing that, but it’s not going to be all over very quickly. It can get better. It’s not like a, you know what I mean? A big long dark nightmare that, finally it’s so no, no, no, things get better step by step, but it’s a careful journey that takes some time.
Juli
I like the way you said it’s unpacking first, which can feel very messy, but then it’s integrating, almost repacking in a way that fits with the rest of your life story. So doesn’t feel like it’s this compartment. That’s a good way of thinking of it for people who are like, I don’t know what therapy is.
Tim
Yeah, and you shouldn’t let the word therapy be intimidating. We’re just talking about having a skillful conversation. Judith Herman, the head of psychology at Harvard University, she wrote a really definitive book about trauma called Trauma and Recovery. And she talks about a process, number one, firstly of safety. That is, you’re not going to heal until you feel safe. So finding a relationship, a person to talk to where it is safe and where you feel safe and they can help you to do that. And maybe you need to, this is not working with this person. Perhaps I would like to see this person, but it’s in that context when you feel safe, then you can start to move to remembrance and mourning what has gone on. And that’s an integrative kind of process that you need a skillful person to help you through. And that will take some time. And that is very empowering actually, very empowering.
Because the journey of recovery from trauma is not about one big cathartic explosion. It’s actually about journeying to a point where the trauma becomes a smaller rather than a larger part of your life. Where the perpetrator, for instance, doesn’t loom as a larger and larger character in your life, but actually a smaller. To the point where, see, trauma recovery is about empowering the survivor.
Tim (37:38.092)
And so this journey will empower you. You will feel more powerful throughout it. And that’s what you want. Putting a lid on it means that you will actually, you remain kind of feeling vulnerable for life because at any time, what if something takes the lid off this or what if someone provokes this or what if this comes up or what if I bump into that person? But the journey of healing, the journey of recovery like that grows you, heals you. You become a more powerful person.
Juli
You make a statement in your book that for you, choosing that road of recovery was an act of love. Why did you see it as an act of love?
Tim
It’s a wonderful act of love because it’s an act of growth. I like the definition of love from Scott Peck, you who wrote that very famous book, The Road Less Traveled. He says that love is the will to extend yourself for the purpose of growth. You might say for another person’s growth, if it’s a marriage or a friendship relationship, you’re extending yourself to enable someone else to nurture their growth.
When it comes to a step like this, it is work. It’s the will to extend yourself and you extend yourself through work, pushing out against the inertia of, know, of laziness, if you like, by actually, you know, doing something. But in this area, really it’s pushing out against the inertia of fear, courage, you know? And when you take that step of courage, you’re growing and it’s a will, it’s an action. It’s not just some, you know, floating feeling. It’s like, I will do this. So walking in, calling up and booking a session with someone or initiating that going in and seeing a person and telling your story or carefully, you know, meeting with a counselor, you’re extending yourself there. That’s a will to extend yourself. It’s an act of love. You’re loving yourself. To put it theologically, you’re allowing God to love you because you’re allowing, you know what I mean? His grace and courage to help you to move towards being a whole person.
Tim (39:45.086)
So I think it is, this is how you love yourself. This is how you let yourself be loved by allowing people to support you and encourage you and help you to grow, to grow and to heal.
Juli (40:00.91)
Hmm. It also has a profound effect on your capacity to love somebody else, most clearly in marriage, but in other relationships as well. How has your journey of recovery as well as your wife’s looked in terms of growing in the ability to love each other well?
Tim
Well, that’s, I mean, marriage is about learning to love anyway, isn’t it? It’s.
Juli
Yeah, it is.
Tim
It’s in little ways rather than big ways, you know, it’s about doing the little things all the time, lots of little things and being a parent is the same learning to love more self sacrificially, you know. So I found that helpful. They fit together, you see. So marriage is, it’s the will to extend yourself to nurture my wife’s growth, which means I don’t want her to stay the way she is in a sense, like, you’re perfect. Well, that’s not love. That’s like this romantic, crazy ideal. I wanted to grow and heal. wanted to flourish and reach her full potential. I want that for my children. I want that for people in my church, but in marriage, you know, that’s what I want. So when I’m doing that though, of course I’m growing by doing that. I’m extending myself to nurture her growth. So I’m attending to her. I’m listening to her, but that’s growing me by doing that as well, you know? And of course she’s doing it, doing it to me.
Tim (41:29.164)
I think because we both, you know, understand the nature of trauma and we have a similar experience. We realize that we have some blind spots or we have some tendencies, some coping mechanisms, which are about self-protection. you know, look, Christ commands us to love and marriage is a vow to love someone. But you know what? Christ doesn’t command us to trust. You have to earn trust. And in our churches and in our societies, we may love our enemies, but you don’t trust everybody. Some people, loving thing is not to trust them actually. the trust grows, you know, it grows as that love is proven over time. And I think my wife and I have become, you know, more intimate and deeper in our relationship, not because we had this experience in common early on, but because with the love has been proven over now, you know, nearly 20 years or so that we trust the other person, you become increasingly more vulnerable and open. But of course, we’ve encouraged each other in our healing and wholeness as well. And we’ve had conversations, perhaps it’s time you went and saw a psychologist again and journey through this. There’s something around that. Because at different stages of life, new horizons emerge. Having children, wow, that’s a whole new ball game. How do I not be an over hypervigilant parent? You know what I mean?
Juli
You can just imagine. You have two daughters, correct? That’s right.
Tim
Right. So learning how to be a good parent who’s not full of fear for my children, but has good boundaries, you know, wow, geez, I, had to think through that. We have to coach each other through that, you know, share about that and research about that. So different facets of life, different chapters have new horizons and, you know, there’ll be time in the future where I will go see a psychologist again.
Tim (43:21.314)
I know that I want to check in. I want to talk about this. This is, you know, this is triggering me. Why is that triggering me? And, you know, I’ve written a book about this and I’m here talking on a podcast about this. And I’m saying to every survivor out there, whether this is early in your journey of, of understanding or, or later, wherever, man, I’m still on the journey. And I know I actually love that I would have someone skillful that I can go talk to who has a map, you know, of the human heart and of trauma and all that stuff where I can journey that stuff through with and I want the best for that in that I want to go see the best person I just want to go see you know what I mean the quickest person or whoever I know that will happen again I look forward I even look forward to that even though I know that will be a vulnerable process again and dealing with some things there’s a there’s a history there of knowing this can heal this can heal.
Juli (44:19.158)
Boy, I so appreciate both the vulnerability and the wisdom from Tim Hein and I highly recommend that you pick up a copy of his book Understanding Sexual Abuse.
What I love the most about his approach is how integrative it is. Now that word integration is key to healing from sexual abuse because what you want to do is integrate the experience of your past with your own sense of self and the story that God has given you. Boy, that’s such a key aspect of healing. And we’re going to link to that book in our show notes and you can find more resources to help you find help from sexual trauma at Authenticintimacy.com.
For now, hey, thanks for listening and I look forward to having coffee with you next time on Java with Juli.