The wounded healer – how we can find meaning in suffering

We are all wounded. Our primary wound is caused by being born into a physical body through which we experience our first form of separation. The separation from the spiritual realms where we once came from and so long to return to – some of us for a lifetime.

Friedrich Nietzsche stated in one of his quotes: “To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.” and the wounded healer knows what this means.

The older we get the bigger the wounds and deeper the scars. However, there is no one can escape life experiences that will cause pain. Often we suffer due to our own expectations. When we try to come to terms that sometimes things tend to work out differently than we thought.

Furthermore, we realize come that people are not always who they pretend to be. And growing older is not only a physical process but maturity happens on all levels. This is how we start counting our losses.

Within all this, we will come across a variety of heavy feelings such as:

  • abandonment
  • betrayal
  • shame
  • guilt
  • helplessness
  • isolation
  • abuse
  • depression
  • hopelessness

Many of these feelings can make us, speechless, heartbroken, and doubting ourselves.

Have you ever reached a point when you asked yourself how much more you can endure before you finally break? 

Or what you have done to experience all this?

Sometimes we don’t find any answers to our questions. All we have is the pain that penetrates deep down into our hearts and our souls. Such moments can lead to promises we make to ourselves, in which we say that we would do anything to avoid this pain.

So we start to look for things that numb us. Just to reach the point at which we finally don’t need to feel anything anymore.  Slowly we start losing ourselves in drugs, food, work, opinions, convictions, or even in others. As long as it numbs the pain we welcome any distraction that is offered to us.

Day by day we start building this wall of avoidance. Step by step it gets a bit taller, a bit tighter just to make sure that the next time we won’t get hurt again.

Empty room

This reaction is very natural, no one wants to suffer. However, we forget that the bricks we use to build these walls are made of disappointment. Combined with hurt, distrust, fear, doubts, and anger. Certainly not a nice place to live in. 

Additionally, all these things we so desperately would like to get rid of, are now all that we see. This way we are convincing ourselves that life is hard and full of pain and suffering.

There will come a point in which walls starting to crumble because life wants to come in. But we are too scared of what that might be. So we try to lock the door. Slowly but steadily our suppressed emotions will find ways to express themselves in physical, mental, or emotional issues and illness. The symptoms are clear, we are angry, fed up, tired, exhausted, we are burnt out, we are ready to give up.

Life keeps pushing – it wants to come in.

The wounded healer awakens

“In the midst of crisis, lies great opportunities” – Albert Einstein

 

Chakras

Do you resonate with Albert Einstein? Do you believe that there lies an opportunity in the crisis you experience?

I don’t blame you if you can’t resonate with him at the moment. Especially if you experience a really hard time it’s tough to gain hope again. 

Just one more thing, don’t give up just now. Please consider that life is forever changing. Which means there is some meaning in what you experience.

Even if you can’t see it now – it doesn’t mean it’s not here. If you start digging and make the first step you will find something. 

First of all, you need to acknowledge the pain. Give it space. Allow it to be. There are many ways how you can do that:

  • speak to a friend
  • write down what happened
  • dance your pain 
  • softly very gently have a look inside of yourself and feel which parts are still hurting
  • allow others to comfort you
  • read a book from someone who overcame what you are going through
  • sign up for therapy
  • allow yourself to cry
  • book yourself a healing session
  • get a massage ( emotional pain is stored in the body too)
  • be gentle with yourself don’t push for change

Whatever you decide to do, take one step at a time. Working with pain is a big thing. If we do it too quickly we easily get overwhelmed. Most important is to allow ourselves to be vulnerable. 

The wounded healer doesn’t pretend that everything is okay. Furthermore, he knows that pain is a great teacher. Something we can work with. Pain can be released and transformed if we know how to do it.

 This is the path of the wounded healer – this might be the path of all of us. Rather than avoiding the pain, the uncomfortable feeling of suffering and turning it into a force of transformation. For ourselves and others.

Once we decide to look within and honestly allow anything that resides there to stay. Just for the moment, we will accept that people disappointed us, that life did hurt us. Only, for now, we try not to run away but take a deep breath and accept whatever is. Healing takes place. The moment we stop to change things or make them undone we align ourselves with their existence and they will transform.

Let the pain become your friend, let it sit with you at the table, let it be painful. And then you let it go.

Im possible

But most important of all – don’t run away from it.

Once you sit in and with your pain, once you accept its existence, once you give it space it will start talking to you.

It will tell you a lot of things. Who has caused it, where, when, how and suddenly it all comes to the surface again. Like a movie, the scenes are flickering in the blink of an eye and you can feel it deep down in your heart. It hurts.

Maybe even after years and years, once you befriend yourself with your pain it seems like yesterday. It burns and turns, it screams and shouts, it rages and fights. Like fire, it will burn everything into your conscious mind.

All you have to do is to hold the torch while you walk through the dark, knowing you will survive.

There are great people out there who turned their suffering in create opportunities. Some of them felt inspired to help others, others discovered parts within themselves they didn’t even know existed. They created art and music, wrote books, and created a new dream for themselves.

You can be one of them! If you decide so…

Wounded Healer sits alone on a lake

 

The healing journey

The wounded healer longs for this journey all his life because he/she has not forgotten about his origin. Suddenly he remembers that he is more than just this body. More than these man-made concepts or ideas. He suddenly remembers that he came here for a reason. To discover deeper meaning, to expand its own consciousness, to unlock its own potential.

Deep within his soul, he knows that life maybe is suffering but at the same time – life is the healer.

Once he has awakened to this understanding. The tide will turn. He will follow the call which is pulling him out there.  He starts searching for answers, signs which will finally guide him towards the truth. 

 

 

Shamanic Healing

From suffering to a spiritual meaning

Once we made it all the way and explored our own suffering and pain we are ready for the next step. We survived, we have gone through it, we transformed. Here we stand, naked in our very own truth, knowing what it means to heal oneself – we are finally ready to heal others.

The wounded healer’s path is the path of transformation, self-realization, and exploration. Once we have integrated what we left out for far too long we will find peace. Once we faced what we suppressed and we appreciated what we first denied, we were there. Able to sit with our own pain, we can sit with the pain of others. Able to name our own wounds, we are finally able to name the wounds of others.

This is how we return to where we once started, finally, we remember who we really are. We transformed our suffering into understanding. By assisting others to heal we will experience the meaning of our own suffering. The wounded healer turned his/her wound of separation into the healing power of compassion and the emptiness has transformed into the abundance of opportunities for integration.

 Be one of them…!

 

 

I offer Shamanic Healing Sessions to those who seek assistance along their healing journey.

Find more about my offers here…

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