Memories and Abuse part 2

The book I mentioned yesterday, Memory and Abuse, claims that 1 out of 3 women suffered abuse as children and 1 out 4-10 men suffered abuse as children. I have been astounded by these numbers. As soon as I began to talk, both privately and publicly, about childhood abuse, people started telling me their stories. Some of these stories come from friends that I have known for a long time, but they were just too shamed to tell what had happened to them. Remember, if you can't talk about, it owns you. If the trauma done to you was chronic, repeated over a long period of time, it is very common for you to block it out. Children survive repeated abuse by dissociating from it. Sometimes the memories are vague or can even be completely blocked out for a time. Painful memories trapped in our subconscious cause physical, emotional, and behavioral problems. If we do not have the opportunity to grieve and process the traumas done to us, we may suffer negative consequences indefinitely. If we block out the trauma completely, our healing becomes even more difficult. One of the things we are doing at Wellspring is creating and training prayer teams of 3-5 people to facilitate the healing of people who live chronic physical, emotional or relational pain.