You can heal if you can trust your truth to those you can trust

In psychology’s economy, and also in spirituality’s, healing is simply a process of facing.  What we’re prepared to face can be healed.  Once we acknowledge this truth, then we come to the question of logistics: how will we do such a thing?

What we must continue to deny, however, cannot and does not get better.  And all the while we do this, we find we must constantly distract ourselves from what we fear — our guilt and shame.

See what this is about?  Our healing pivots on facing and conquering our fears, because at the core of our fear is what looks like intolerable pain.  I-can’t-go-there type of pain.

So the first step is to decide we must face what we have so long avoided.  No more dissociation to all manner of distraction — harmless and harmful kinds (although every distraction that has us avoiding the commencement and the continuing of facing for healing is inevitably harmful.)

Once we’ve decided that we’re no longer running away, but are prepared to learn how to face what feels like it will crush us (but won’t and doesn’t), we then need support.  Therapy is the obvious route, but there are good church ministries that are equally effective.  Mentoring, AA sponsors can provide this too.

Essentially, we all need a forum to give voice to what needs to be healed in us.  We need to speak the words.  We need a place where we can begin to express the emotion, where the wounds can be opened slowly, safely, respectfully, therapeutically.  A place where wounds are considered beautiful, where shame, fear and guilt melt away.

We all carry wounds of grief at the very least.  Many carry the deeper scars of trauma.  Many also bear the burden of biological conditions that were met with challenging family-of-origin situations.  Not a person on the face of the planet is immune from the need of healing.

We all need others in order to heal.  Others who will free us of the guilt and fear and shame we all carry.  This means those that help necessarily never guilt or shame those they help, and they always have a way of speaking agency and confidence into the person they’re helping who’s battling disempowering fear.

The trustworthy bear the traits of those who are unconditionally safe all the time.  Simply, they do no harm, because theirs is a role of joyful, willing, humble service.  This is why wounded healers are often preferred, because not only have they been there — to their brokenness — but theirs is a commitment to a lifetime of healing, because if there’s one thing facing shows us it’s we’re all broken.

Wounded healing is about cherishing that brokenness.

Anyone who enters the very serious process of healing with a trusted helper can expect that as they face their demons, the support they’ll get will only help and that it will never hinder.

This opens us up then to the responsibilities on the helper.

The responsibility the helper bears is the burden of integrity.  Wherever there are any signs that the others’ healing isn’t being supported as it should, there’s the need in the person helping of honesty, confession, repentance, the seeking of forgiveness.

Humility always puts the more vulnerable person first.

The person being served really is cherished that much, because it takes immense courage to learn how to face fear, guilt and shame that their healing must be supported at all costs.

A word to the wise: don’t rush into the process of selecting helpers.  Test them out.  This process is about you, not about them.  Any shred of feeling that you’re not safe is a hunch to act upon to protect yourself.  Not every helper is worthy of your trust, and the biggest betrayal anyone can experience is abuse from someone you trusted because of who they, in their position, promised to be.

Photo by Sebastien Gabriel on Unsplash