"There's so much heat on healing when we don’t understand its intention or its meaning. You’re a human being being human. You were not meant to live out a lifetime endlessly roaming — searching for contusions to be corrected, looking for flaws to be perfected, or becoming more than what’s expected. You can go on a personal journey to understand yourself and what you’ve been through, what comes up for you, and why certain situations trigger an individual trauma response. You can arrive at a place of feeling draped in safety, and gradually learn to trust you’re not being hurt all over again. And it’s this form of refuge that becomes a nurturing den. A stage to bridge the gap between injury and equanimity. A warm blanket of acceptance. Even the simplest moment of respite is what healing has in mind when it offers itself up to you...”
We cannot always see or easily notice healing transpiring in other people or recognize its existence, exclaiming There it is, it looks like this...
I write a lot about the nature of healing based on involvement in my loved ones lives and from observing an earth filled with brokenness and heartache, and mostly by what’s taking place within my own being. Recovery, reconnection, re-telling and restoring are all forms of spiritual and emotional healing that I like to personally journal about and confirm inside each stage and passageway of my life.
Despite possessing an awareness of the pain and challenges of being a human being, people still put pressure on others to heal emotionally or bodily, according to their individual or taught vision of what that looks like.
After my vitelliform macular dystrophy diagnosis, a lot of people wanted my vision to be restored. Granted, many of those people didn’t know me well or anything about my condition. Some suggested my eyes were emotionally manifesting visual blocks to avoid confronting an unwelcome truth and proceeded to recommend therapeutic ways to overcome or alleviate it. But what I heard was, “You’re creating your disability and your primary need right now is to be treated by an energy therapist to be rid of this affliction.”
In the beginning stages of my diagnosis, having people apply this type of pressure felt insensitive and created such an unnecessary burden for me. What I really needed was realistic support during the essential phase of understanding my medical condition. Taking in so many unrequested opinions and advice would require more effort and labor for me to process and translate their comments as concern and care. I was being thrown off my focus and out of an important stage of comprehension and had to ward off negative feelings that by not “fixing” myself, I was letting people down.
This approach might be experienced by others as recognition and feels healing. However, what I experienced was a forceful push to bring back my former eyes and be whole, as anticipated by an image being projected at me. And being told by someone they’re praying for a miracle made me feel like I lost dignity and my place in the human family, so I would hide the imperfect part of me I felt was being rejected.
What I did see clearly was how common it is to want or expect others to meet us in our perceived wholeness and ideas about perfection, while our comprehension around wholeness might be limited by our beliefs or discomfort with illness, disabilities and impairments. The compulsion to fix what feels broken or improve what’s not enough in our mind’s eye is perhaps just as much a part of how we’re conditioned and is in itself a form of suffering.
Maybe we under-value the nature of healing. We restrict its movement by holding it in place with a narrow definition and by our desire to see what we want to see.
What I mean is, we judge what healing must look like, if it’s enough, if it ever actually happened for someone, and what it should feel like. We think our parents never experienced it. We believe our friends are evading it. We’re sure some people will never know a measure of comfort or mending and we classify healing as a start-to-finish process.
Just because you and I don’t recognize something relevant and active happening in someone else doesn’t mean they haven’t had moments of warm liquid enfolding around them unexpectedly in the shape of healing.
Because when you’ve been emotionally depleted, being quenched by laughter or being held in loving eyes or embraced by acceptance for what is real and unmovable becomes cool water rinsing and invigorating a parched thirst such as this. Knowing hours of reprieve and trickles of joy are worthwhile compresses for unease. Cry-releasing, somatic discharging, sitting with raw, primal feelings, talking about those feelings and being heard is cathartic. Making connections inside or outside of ourselves after past severances can feel like resuscitating the lost, erratic pieces back to an even breath. Sometimes restoration isn’t physical, but is felt when something irrecoverable finds a way to feel redeemed inside your heart.
When you think of healing, imagine what it looks like to you. Healing can be different for everyone. Knowing I’m not doomed to be isolated in my existence, instead having contact and understanding is healing for me, and accepting my day-to day Allness is my concept of being whole.
I’m not interested in shaming us for having a set reflex to witnessing struggle, because we become habituated to our customary responses or we enter groups and communities where miraculous interventions can be unrealistic, yet sought and believed as the best outcomes. We also live in a culture that despite a growing consciousness for acceptance and sensibility, there are continuous messages being cast out into the air you breathe that you’re not enough.
It’s true, we’ve been accustomed to dispensing our prayers or medical opinions or holistic beliefs onto others without inquiring what’s desirable or accurate to their situation, and it seems to be how we roll when we care. I know it can feel more hopeful when someone isn’t applying unnecessary pressure to heal because they think I should. I know it feels less arduous not enduring the extra emotional load that isn’t mine to carry.
And more importantly, because thinking someone isn’t healthy and able or enough to meet you where you see yourself tends to restrict the dynamic. That’s not to say you ought to ignore what they’re sharing about a condition, an experience, a challenge or suffering. But unrealistically imagining them being fully repaired or completely recovered when they’re wanting to raise more awareness around their condition is as though something vital had been missed and dismissed, limiting the relationships potential and growth.
Death, grief and illness is as human as it gets and yet we can feel an aversion around these passages because of the pain. Immobility, impairments, mental, physical and emotional illnesses and challenges are met with little patience and acceptance because of the fear attached to it.
Rather than repressing, maybe we can be a positive part of someone’s trek through life by offering encouraging words and reminding them we are with them and backing them in their quest by asking how best to help if it’s wanted or simply being a presence in one’s life.
I don’t mind when someone asks if I would like prayer for something in particular, like physical energy or emotional strength in addition to what I’m facing. I don’t have all the right answers to how we progress as a collective interested in unconditional care for our human struggle, but I think it’s okay to ask how to be of support when we don’t actually know and until we learn ways to be helpful. It’s okay to tell someone you’re proud of them. It’s alright to say, I don’t know what to say but I am with you and I care.
REFLECTIONS
Have you ever felt pressure to heal? What was the situation you were met with that brought unsolicited advice in your direction, or shame for being other than what is expected?
Are you managing or coping with a health condition, emotional or psychological challenge, disability, or disease? How do you experience reprieve or healing and what does it look, feel, or sound like in your personal relationship with Life?
We hear a great deal about how unresolved trauma is the culprit for auto immune disorders and medical conditions. We also hear a lot about the nature of Wholeness and Embodiment based on other’s subjective findings in a field they’re called to speak to. What are your reactions to the Self-help industry’s claims and messages when it hits close to your reality with facing health issues or limitations on a human level?
Is suffering the path to finding grace? Is knowing pain a portal to understanding and, ultimately, compassion? When you see suffering in a loved one, it’s natural to want to take away their pain. What are some ways in which your own suffering brought you into a fresh awareness of what others are coping with on a daily basis?
How would you like others to see your condition and how would you like them to respond?
Thank you Susan for your wise comments. I just caught myself trying to 'fix' a friend who was irritating me with disembodied mental mumbo jumbo and spiritual bypassing. To me it was obvious that she was stuck in a trauma reaction probably due to her husband's cancer death a couple years ago.
My suggestions fell on deaf ears and I felt my counter transference issues rising as I attempted to force her out of her comfort zone. Yes, we do create illusions and criteria around what healing 'should' be rather than being with the person where they currently are. My caring had become conditional.
The counter transference issue, I believe, is critical. Often we want to have others change so we don't have to feel our true feelings around our own despair and disappoinment. It is the old 'wounded healer' reflex of attempting to fix others so we don't have to work on ourselves.
Human interactions are inherently messy and will inevitably generate conflict and disillusionment. Matt Licata writes so deeply of the paradox of the need to connect and the fear and frustration preventing our fulfillment. I am glad you are discussing this and sharing your experiences. This is a basic human skill yet few acknowledge the need for a primer on the basics particularly with the spread of social media. Keep up the good work dear lady...
I worked in humanitarian aid all my adult life and experienced horrific things. When I finally couldn’t continue anymore because of unrelenting anxiety, depression, and nightmares, I was told my problem was a lack of faith. At the same time, I was told to just get over it. My former employer referred to my “alleged condition, and noted that some individuals are simply not emotionally fit for international employment, as a way of trying to avoid financial obligations for my rehabilitation. After 25 years of international employment, I was either emotionally fit or they were damn poor human resource managers. Thus, in addition to the PTSD problems, I developed a deep and abiding anger and hatred for my tormentors.
It took long sessions of EMDR to get past the anger, hatred, and bitterness, and the treatment worked. Now I see them as ignorant and tactless people trying to protect their careers.
I imagine how it would have played out if I were shot in Sierra Leone or kidnapped in South Sudan. Physical wounds are easier for people to understand, but psychic wounds are weakness, lack of faith, and an unsuitable emotional constitution.
Maybe I should have stepped on that cluster bomb. It would have saved me from years of psychic wounds that I “couldn’t get past.”