I have an interesting relationship with the word “heal”. Many people refer to me as a healer and I object to that title. Being a psychotherapist doesn’t mean that I heal people, it means that I facilitate people healing themselves. When people come to me I don’t see them as broken or needing to be fixed. However it is true that we can be injured both physically and psychologically and that requires healing.
So how do we heal ourselves?
What does healing look like? One of the big features of healing is adaptability. We have to be able to adapt to the state we are in presently and offer it patience and time. If we expect to be healed instantly then we are going to get frustrated. I am reading a great book by Katherine May called “Wintering”. May compares injury to the times of winter and she speaks about the importance of accepting that we are in a dark or injured time. We must prepare for this time of hibernation and rite of passage. It is the time of contemplation and toning down our energy output to recharge our scant resources within.
The other part of adaptability is accepting that who we are right now is ok. We are inherently ok. And that means that our expectations of how we should be are dropped. To heal we must first not only accept, but really love and nurture exactly who we are. May refers to this as not wishing that winter be summer. Letting go of that wish opens us up to the beauty of winter. This is a very mindful approach to injury.
There are many ways to approach healing the psyche. It is a process of figuring out whether this is an injury of attachment or an injury in terms of a shock. Often we need to go back and renegotiate the trauma; an opportunity to experience something we would have liked. You can do this by simply offering yourself the parenting you didn’t get. Offer yourself the compassion and empathy the injured part of yourself needs. We can also renegotiate the trauma by finding the places in the story where we were, and still are, resilient. When I was in the Peace Corps I was attacked. It was scary and traumatic. But what I held onto is that I now know I am strong and courageous. This is my renegotiation of the trauma and it lead to healing. If you want to know more about renegotiating trauma then read my blog post on it.
Healing means telling our story to others. It means integrating the parts that got scared and ran away from the scene of the crime. I love Rumi’s poem called “The Guest House” in which he talks about our emotions being like guests in our house. We must sit with each one and offer it a cup of tea and really listen. Healing is simply caring for the parts of yourself that need to be heard, validated and loved.
We can come through injury with grace. We can learn about our own resilience and we can also learn to nurture and grow ourselves through the injury. I hope this gives others hope about our capacity to heal.
As always from my heart to yours,