When we are wounded, the immediacy of the pain and injury pushes us to want a quick fix. Often, treatment of some sort will allow that to happen. But healing, that’s a whole different dimension and takes time and a lot more care than any treatment can provide.
So, what is healing? At the risk of sounding too philosophical, healing is the integration of that which you have suffered into your whole being and in the process becoming something better than before the injury occurred. The result is you becoming your best self.
Injury is simply any harm done to a part or aspect of your being. A broken leg, a broken heart, a cut to your finger or to your soul, are examples of harms. Injury is momentary in its action; a single word, a five second mishap, an act out of anger cause injury. What happens immediately upon being injured is that our body and mind marshals resources to assess the damage. We try to find a safe refuge, figure out what has happened, how bad the damage is and begin to do what we can to stop the damage from further harming us or expanding the injury’s reach. We lick our wound.
After the initial injury is no longer acute, and as we go about living our life’s routines, we discover that the injury has incapacitated us in some way. We can’t move as well, can’t think straight, and can’t stop our tears from clouding our vision and so on. So we wipe the tears, take medicine to dull the pain, compensate by using the parts of us that still function and…sleep more. We reduce as many of the demands on our functioning as we can to cope. These interventions aimed at gaining our old functionality back is what I call treatment. Some require professional intervention, but often we treat it ourselves and maybe with the help of other people around us.
The second phase of post-injury management leads us eventually to resume our old ways of life. We go to work, live and love, eat and re-establish routines. All is well, right? Sure. But only in the eyes of others. Soon, since we are upright and seem OK we are assumed to be, even often by ourselves, back to our old selves. But we aren’t.
No injury leaves us without scars. And where there is scars, there is disfiguration. We are never the same after an injury and life has a way of reminding us of it. An old broken ankle reminds you it was broken every winter, a cut thumb can no longer feel the touch of the pen you hold exactly as it once did and your soul and psyche, well, they don’t quite trust as they once did or experience joy as carelessly as before. We notice these things often subtly but at times profoundly and we put it out of our minds. We do so because what is the point of dwelling on them, whining about them or letting them distract us. We compensate and find work-arounds.
There is nothing fundamentally wrong with this approach. For smaller injuries be they physical, spiritual or emotional, it works fine. But the bigger the injury the harder it is to function even adequately with this mode of operation. Intrusive thoughts, sluggish or limited functionalities and re-asserted pain takes up so much effort to manage and shove back down that it leaves us exhausted and with little resources for life’s positive forces. Don’t get me wrong, you can still look pretty good and fool everyone else and appear functional. And to a large extent you are functional but your psyche and soul are eroding rapidly. They are declining in capacity and resilience and deep inside you know it, you feel it.
So what to do? Pursue and seek healing! Healing begins, first and foremost, with an unapologetic acknowledgement of the pain you are in. The journey of healing, past the acknowledgement chapter, continues with telling the story. YOUR story of what has happened to you. YOUR story of your own pain, YOUR feelings of injustice, anger, frustration, despair, and yes, even gratitude. I emphasize YOUR because when you are injured no one but YOU knows what the injury has done. Others, even if they have gone through your exact circumstances, bring THEIR story to the picture and assume you to have experience the same. Your injury becomes their story not yours.
The healing journey can only happen with deep trust in one person who is willing to suspend their own burdens and listen to yours with patience, with a caring heart and an acute mind. A person with the patience to sort through the confusion that your injury and its subsequent treatment has created and help you untangle the complexities of feelings and intersecting scars.
The healing process integrates your injury into a your whole system. You no longer just accept it and deal with its consequences, you grow from it and become a better person. Healing is about taking each injury and uncovering what in your soul, psyche and character has helped you not succumb to the suffering and pain. It uncovers the forces of your resilience and deepens your capacities for thriving.
I have had a few years to reflect now. Upon reflection, I am comfortable with my identity as a healer. I am a healer at heart. That is what I do and love doing, that is what I know how to do, and that is who I am. And the pain of the last few years has certainly added to my conviction about what I can do with my life.
So, starting January of 2020 I have decided to open my counseling practice again so I can help people heal. That is how I can contribute to the world again and find my footing after such a tumultuous time in my life. Will you help me reestablish this practice? I will need your support. leaver your comments and support below. I would love to hear from you and your journey of healing.
Foad
