Imagine that you and I are in a horrific car accident. Our car is “T-boned” on the driver’s side. We roll down an embankment and land topside down. Our vehicle is in the ditch, making it hard for other drivers to see that we are in trouble. Finally, a police officer sees the wreck, stops, and comes down the embankment.
The officer is able to open the passenger side door with no problem. He helps you out and you stand up. He asks if you are okay, and you say that you are fine. You both stoop to look into the front seat. I am crumpled up on the upside-down roof of the car. You both can tell I am badly hurt. There is blood matted in my hair, very noticeable fractures, and massive head trauma. The officer asks dispatch to send a medic unit immediately. You look at the officer in disbelief and exclaim, “Hey, my friend is fine! She just needs to get over it. Look at me. I came out unscathed. She is just a faker that wants attention.”
You crawl back into the car and repeat to me what you said to the officer, “Hey, get up! You’re fine. C’mon, look at me; I’m fine. Get over yourself. It’s a little car accident. You act like you’re hurt or something.”
The “accident” in this illustration is like the fall-out from Gothard’s teachings. The “car” that has been T-boned is carrying ATI families, eagerly steering them toward promised Spiritual holiness through righteous living. One family—one student, perhaps—is horrifically injured by unproved teachings. The injuries are numerous—some more obvious than others. Another survivor of the same accident has escaped nearly unscathed. The injured victim needs help desperately. But the uninjured survivor has been well-trained—we do not complain, we suffer in silence, we get over our pain, we don’t make accusations that could reflect badly on another. And so she dismisses the pain of her fellow-passenger, encourages her to “get over it,” and tells outsiders who might sympathize that the pain is irrelevant. Possibly even falsified.
The injured passenger does not wish ill on those who survived unscathed. In fact, such pain could never be wished on anyone. But oh, how grateful she would be to be rescued, to be understood, to be validated and cared for and nurtured. We would ask our readers to consider this analogy as a plea for consideration—do you want to be the passenger who asks her injured friend to “get over it,” or rather, the officer who seeks to save before the injured is lost forever? Will you seek to help or to hinder our healing process?
A former student relayed the following story:
In my line of work, it has been said that you will experience an accident scene that you will never forget, and that you will take it to your grave.
I was 23 years old. A call went out around 10:30 p.m. for a motorcycle versus van. When we arrived on scene, we immediately called for a helicopter. Moving down the embankment we saw the first victim lying on his side moaning. We found the second victim farther down. It was a female, and she was barely responsive. My Lieutenant asked what I needed, and then helped me package her up for the flight to the trauma center.
I did CPR on the victim for 20 minutes, covering the trooper and myself with blood during our flight to the hospital. The hospital’s chief of staff took my patient, and I stood in the bay watching them throw in chest tubes and fill cylinder after cylinder, CT’s, opened up in the bay—and then everything came to a halt. The doctor came over to me, grabbed my shoulders and said, “Damn fine splint job, damn fine job. But she had a ruptured aorta. No amount of splinting or CPR would have saved her. She had injuries no one could have seen with the naked eye.”
For those who came out of ATI unscathed: praise God! You have no idea how blessed you are that your family didn’t fall for Bill Gothard and his Advanced Training Institute (ATI) hook, line, and sinker.
On the flip side: you never know if you will one day be in need of some sort of compassion, or a life-line thrown out to you during a major crisis in your life. Be careful how you judge or dismiss others, because one day you might find yourself in need of help in your recovery process, even if nothing appears to be wrong with you on the outside.
Great article!!! The thing that has sparked such a passion in me for the RecoveringGrace.org ministry is the trauma I saw so many others experience. If my life had been perfect (and I was SERIOUSLY blessed, I know) my passion for this cause would be just as strong. ATI is a cancer that has infected countless families and individuals. And these hurting people need to know that there is help. And we need to spread the word that God has been critically misrespresented within ATI. Great article, Renee. Thank you.
Very well said: "For those who came out of ATI unscathed: praise God! You have no idea how blessed you are that your family didn’t fall for Bill Gothard and his Advanced Training Institute (ATI) hook, line, and sinker.
On the flip side: you never know if you will one day be in need of some sort of compassion, or a life-line thrown out to you during a major crisis in your life. Be careful how you judge or dismiss others, because one day you might find yourself in need of help in your recovery process, even if nothing appears to be wrong with you on the outside." So very true.
The level of hurt for each person is definately different and therefore will take a different amount of time to "get over it." The truth is....we can get over it with time and the help of the Lord, our Healer, but we are not to condemn others if it takes them a little longer to heal.
One other thought. Healing often involves forgiving, but that doesn't mean we forget. Some things will always be remembered no matter how hard we try to forget. Spiritual amnesia isn't possible. Forgiveness with God's help is possible.
You are so right, Tammy. It has taken me several years to be able to really forgive, but that doesn't mean that all the hurt and after-effects of hearing the teaching and living with the results for 25 years just went away. My husband and I still deal with reacting to an issue, then realizing that reaction is a result of something we went through at IBLP HQ. We hope and pray that our daughter (due in June 2012) will be largely untouched by the scars we carry.
What a great analogy for depression too. I'm fortunate to not have gone through ATI, but unfortunate enough to have suffered some severe depression. In 14 months I quit my job, started school, buried my husband, quit school, found another job, got into another relationship, gotten pregnant, lost my job, moved, couldn't find work, and gave birth. That's 4 of the top 10 most stressful life events in one year, on top of adding a few more stressors. I was depressed. Severely depressed. I was told to "just get over it" many times, even when years had passed and I was still depressed. I was told to focus on what good was in my life, like I had a (terribly stressful for no good reason) job, a healthy son, a wonderful man, and wasn't homeless. That didn't help at all. I was the woman upside down in the driver's seat. Nothing I could do would describe to people how I was feeling, and I was classified as "emo" with my so-called friends. I looked for help but couldn't find any since I didn't have any spare money. I called my city's 211 number, I called United Way, I called churches (I'm an atheist, so you know I was reaching). No one was willing to help. I was convinced the universe wanted me dead. I can completely relate. Thank you for sharing this analogy. It's one I'll definitely use in the future.
I read this piece the other day about the effects of forgiveness on the brain: http://www.brainleadersandlearners.com/amygdala/a-brain-on-forgiveness/
She says, "From a brain’s perspective, forgiveness takes far more than merely letting go. It takes deliberate decisions to move beyond another person’s judgment of you."
I agree that it is important to forgive and move on, but moving on also means leaving behind the false judgements that were placed on us. Most of us felt condemned as failures and that the problem was with us, not the system. Most of us received damaging and false messages about ourselves and about God. It is a necessary part of moving on that we acknowledge those harmful wrong messages that we initially accepted as children when we didn't know any better. Therefore, if someone truly cares and truly wants you to move on, they will help you understand what you need to move on from. If they simply want to shut you up and pretend there were no problems then they are siding with those who squelched your voice in the first place and they are once again sending that message that the problem is with you and that you aren't worth the effort. No need to be bitter about *this* false message, either - we just move on from it and leave it behind!
That was a beautiful illustration of the phenomenon! I hope it convicts the "just get over it" ppl to think before they open their mouths (or type anything).
Well said!
Like Dawn I wasn't involved in ATI/IBLP, but I have recently been through psychological trauma which was connected to the loss of a treasured friendship. So I can identify and sympathize with those who are told to just "get over it," to "let it go," "move on," etc. I don't want somebody telling me to just forget about what happened; I want somebody to tell me I'm not crazy, that what I went through was horrible, that I didn't deserve it, and that I can get through it. I was actually told to "let it go" just a few days or weeks after, and started getting the impression that people didn't want to hear about it anymore, as if they expected me to just forget it ever happened. Well, it doesn't work that way. Maybe for some people it does, but not for me. When I'm opening my heart to someone about the horrible things that happened, and then they say, "I think it's time for you to let it go," it frustrates and angers me. It feels like they're saying, "You're obsessing over something that isn't such a big deal. Who cares?" or, "I don't want to hear about your pain anymore, but I want to tell you all about mine."
The loss of a friend is very painful. I remember the trauma of that when I was 14 and my best friend "unlosded" me as excess baggage, keeping her back in the popularity race.
Now my two daughters have had a similar experience, being "de-friended" by a pair of sisters they thought would always be their friends. Even though it's been nearly a year later, they still mention those girls nearly every day.
why did God give us emotions if He did not want us to experience and use them?
I don't know why I hadn't seen this article earlier, but it is really good. Thanks for giving us a way to help people understand. I was not effected as much as others, but there are those times when little things come up and having someone who can relate is so comforting.