Myth #1: That needing healing implies there’s something wrong with you.
This equates being in an “unhealed” state with something shame-worthy. Only…we’re all “unhealed”. To some degree or other, in some area or another. One could even say that life itself is a constant process of “healing” (or evolving!).
This attitude towards healing and the accompanying pressured rushing towards it are primarily a disguise of self-rejection. This unfortunately does not serve much other than the temporary relief from shame; it does not tend to provide any substantial mending of the wounds we have suffered from – which is our supposed desire in healing, is it not?
Consider it, what is so pride-worthy about overcoming something that we are not at fault for to begin with? Nothing! Right? There can be no correlation between the two. We’re either culpable, therefore we are responsible and able to achieve correction or we’re irrelevant, therefore we have no relation to the resulting state. So this concept is an illusory expectation of power where we are in fact powerless (victimised).
By seeing ourselves as capable of extinguishing our wounds – almost in a way which implies choice in having “allowed” abuse to happen in the first place – we grant ourselves the artificial peace of believing that we were somehow creating what we did not wish to occur to us. Thus we adopt the easier-to-deal-with shame regarding being unhealed. In other words, it feels better – though it seems counter-intuitive – to feel shame about what is out of our control, rather than accepting that we hold no power over what has been done to us (or what might be done in the future).
So being in a situation that wounds us isn’t in fact shameful, therefore requiring time and process for it is normal.
This is the primary painful misconception about healing: that we are somehow faulty and guilty about needing it. As if our “character” could have avoided it. As if our “strength” could have already made it disappear. But emotional wounds don’t happen relative to these elements anyway and healing does not conform to those ideals. Nor should it, because it is simply the progressive loving of ourselves and of being loved.
Tip #1:
Treat healing like a process of love, which it really is. Every part of you that surfaces and requires healing needs to be received by a compassionate heart. Maybe yours. Maybe also others’. Every place in us that is asking for healing is just asking for love. Why is it such a problem to require that much love? Why shouldn’t we be seizing every opportunity to provide even more love?
Myth #2: That healing is driven by willpower and it should be done as fast as possible.
While willpower is indeed an aspect of healing, we have a tendency to grossly overestimate its importance. And that is in fact a damaging tactic because it creates forcefulness, which is in essence violence and thus opposite to what true healing requires, which is honest understanding, timeless acceptance and loving compassion, none of which occur speedily or recklessly.
By considering healing the sole result of our willpower we regard our unhealed state as something deeply unwanted, when it is instead just our own victimised self, innocent and sweet as the day we were born. Being wounded does not diminish the beauty of our human selves nor our worth.
When we make healing a shame-based goal of achievement, we lose both the point of it and any potential functional avenues towards it. The choice to engage in the healing journey must be only an act of love towards the self and cannot succeed (long-term) from any other base.
So exterting our willpower over less seen-into aspects of ourselves only serves to alienate and hurt them further. Even worse, the identification with a “healed”/”evolved”/”transcendent” persona within our consciousness only suppresses those wounded parts of ourselves deeper. Again, being wounded is not some kind of proof of weakness nor something we should be running away from.
Willpower’s role extends only to our genuine intention to traverse the path of healing and the graceful stamina of continuing it. Indeed, there is a fine line between utilising appropriate, attuned willpower and bypassing the unique natural boundaries of each of our healing journeys.
Healing has its own timing. Its cycles are generated by the subconscious and by the soul and no matter how much we may wish to just heal, there is a pace through which maturation happens, both unpredictable and magical, and we cannot simply decide to skip forward – nor do we need to nor should we wish to…because this precisely is the process of living!
So, expecting ourselves to heal purely on the basis of our desire to and regarding that stance as the “empowered” or “capable” course of action, actually strongly produces further shame.
There is, however, still a beautiful spiritual element in the power of wishing to heal and believing ourselves healed, which utilises the unseen creative energies of our spirit and can facilitate and guide healing very expertly. However our human parts’ adaptation must also be taken into account – because it can be profoundly painful. Therefore, the timing of healing isn’t drawn out as an annoying, unfair or useless universal condition; it’s gradual and incremental, only because the human experiencing of healing is difficult and can be shocking and exhausting.
Tip #2:
Re-educate yourself to perceive where you are the victim as a natural aspect of the reality of being human. There’s nothing self-pitying about understanding victimhood. Accepting where you are wounded is absolutely necessary to find out how to heal (where you need love and what kind of love you need).
Myth #3: That having emotions means you haven’t healed and that you require healing.
The human experience is based on emotionality. Emotions are indeed our individual guidance, our compass through life.
This damaging concept that feeling something translates to being unnecessarily affected comes from an illusion of invulnerability that we expect of people, akin to a badge of ability, strength, maybe even intelligence.
However, that is an inhumane ideal and it is destructive, because being affected is a receptive state that yields unique and precious data. Without being available towards feelings, we cannot access the reality of the effects of our choices or the knowledge of who we are and wish to be. Feeling isn’t an illness.
Even when we experience recognisable emotional triggers (the re-surfacing of stored emotions), our old emotions still should never be considered dysfunctional. The attitudes we may have adopted to hide those emotions or attempt to deal with them can certainly be inappropriate, however they should be assessed separately than the emotions themselves. This is essential because we really must start accepting emotions as a healthy and normal part of life if we wish to be ourselves and exist in a world of love.
Tip #3:
Your emotional journey is simply your unique life and if others can’t deal with that, then they aren’t ready or willing to deal with their own life either. Just know that it is your right to have all of your emotions and to share them all with other people. Let’s just be our full selves and remind each other how normal it is.
Myth #4: That unless you’re healed, you cannot be happy.
It’s understandable to feel overwhelmed with the “amount” of emotions/issues you believe you have to “solve” before things get “good”. But it’s not necessary to finish everything in order to have access to positivity.
Attaining complete healing is not something we need to be concerned about, because happiness is not an end state. Healing works itself anyway; this is how human life is designed – we’re always drawn towards healing and it’s a subconscious, complex, constant and beautiful process.
So including healing as an artistic part of the process of discovering ourselves and life is the way towards peace of mind and a feeling of acceptance of ourselves in these varied, colorful shifts of our experiencing.
We agree with this premise of needing to heal fully before we can feel good, not because we truly believe we cannot be happy unless we have no wounds, but only because we’ve experienced our emotions as unacceptable to those around us. Children – which is the true nature of adults as well- famously can shift from negative to positive emotion or vice versa seemingly instantaneously! So can we.
But, we naturally want to belong and to be loved by other people, so we adopt this attitude towards emotions as a self-rejection for the sake of that belonging.
We’ve simply been conditioned to tie happiness to deservingness, thus we learn to focus on earning it instead of letting it flow in. We believe ourselves unworthy because we are “unhealed”. And what does “unhealed” mean? It means emotional in all the ways that our original environments did not want to have to deal with.
So what stresses us and what blocks us from allowing happiness is not the actual “unhealed” states, but the desperation to reach belonging (which cannot really come at the expense of our truths).
Another reason why we may be feeling overwhelmed about healing and racing towards its end could be if we’re carrying others’ emotions – usually as a way to “save” them from their emotions in lieu of a relationship or as a way to neutralise their emotions so they don’t explode on us.
However, the truth is that each person is going through life/emotion in their own unique way, they are not incapable of doing life (through their own feelings) and if the relationships they create with us feel unsafe or non-nourishing, we are not required to stay in them.
Tip #4:
Positivity is created by both positivity and negativity. At all moments we have access to pure positive creation and when we feel negatively, we have an opening to heal deeper, which in turn brings in even more positivity.
Myth #5: That healing is solely your responsibility.
Contrary to the fashionable, yet superhuman, societal expectation of independence, there is no real benefit in it, nor is it really possible. The only reason we look up to this ideal is because it mirrors childhood messages passed on by emotionally irresponsible parents. Not relying on others can only be presented as a good thing if those others or don’t want to be relied upon.
Besides, we cannot heal relational wounds independently. And all of our wounds come from relational experiences. Why? Because we are all born perfect. Therefore, everything painful that we end up feeling, including in the very relationship to ourselves – which is also a reflection of how primal figures related to us – is learned, never inherent. This is why we can all potentially eventually reach an enlightened state if left in a safe place by ourselves, while in our relating with others (unless we keep the shield of our enlightened ego between us), we again experience our old triggers.
So every wound is ultimately inter-relational. This means that while being alone may very well be a great choice for certain stages of our experiencing, in the end, relational wounds can only be recalled and thus heal through our relating to other people. Plus it feels good!
In the end, healing is not only an experience that happens within connection, but it’s also ultimately a collective one. There are cycles of healing that we as the whole of humanity undergo which create and affect everyone within it. We are much more interconnected and influenced than we think.
Tip #5:
Who says we should do life the hard way? Who says it matters more when you do it alone? Life’s beauty is in connection to others, to the world. There is nothing sweeter than healing with others.
Myth #6: That you can know when you’ve healed (and that you can heal completely).
First-off, as we’ve well established, you needn’t be concerned with achieving full healing. Because it happens anyway, gradually, throughout life. When, how or who first don’t really matter. That would be that enlightened ego again, which may just be hiding what it doesn’t like.
This concept that it’s possible to know that you’ve fully healed is not only ego protection, but also naivety. Yes, you can know that you’ve healed something, it feels good to experience a shift; and to acknowledge it. But you can’t know that you’ve healed anything completely or that you’ve healed “everything”. There are always more layers. Or not. But we cannot know. Because there’s always more life to live. Always more evolution.
So the question becomes, why would we need to know? And of course the answer would be because it feels bad or we think it’s bad to not be fully healed. And if that’s the case, we’re caught in self-rejection for the sake of love again, so completed healing isn’t really the issue!
You can indeed be loved in an unhealed state – why don’t we call it what it is: human! – and you can certainly allow yourself – because it is a matter of allowance after all – to love yourself there too.
Tip #6:
Look at healing as an evolution, like the evolution of a species, rather than something flawed towards a never-achievable perfection. Wounds, after all, are just where we need love. And where love feels the most significant is the kind of love that we haven’t received before, the kind of “food” that we are the most starving for. You don’t need to wait for the end of healing. Life is ever-growing and you deserve all of its love in every moment of (y)our evolution.