If you haven’t done so already, I highly recommend that you go and read Part One Of This Post Here.
Today we are going to dive deeper into the reality that telling ourselves that our pain doesn’t matter/doesn’t count because it’s ‘not as bad’ as someone else's pain or experience doesn’t serve to help THEM most of the time, and doesn’t actually help us heal either.
We’re going to explore why learning to process our own pain is so vital, and why it’s actually the foundation we need in order to help us be truly empathetic and helpful to those around us.
We’re going to look at why the ‘both/and’ thinking when it comes to healing - why honoring our own need to be taken care of doesn’t then mean we can’t care about others, and why caring about others doesn’t have to come in a form that means we totally neglect ourselves.
There’s room for all of us, and honoring that is a big part of what we need to understand to create the health on this planet we want to see.
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First Things First - We Don’t Heal Others
We have to recognize that no matter how much we serve, no matter how prolific our writing/sessions/videos/courses/care taking/mothering/sharing/volunteering/mentoring or whatever it is we do in the world is, it’s not ever going to be the ‘thing’ that ‘heals’ someone else.
At MOST we are companions on the path.
We are never the make or break.
And there will ALWAYS be tragedy, pain and trauma ‘out there.’
YES we are here to make an impact. YES we are here to play our role in the service of uplifting consciousness and humanity.
YES we are here to exert the power we DO HAVE - but this power, in the grand scheme of things, is very, very, very limited.
A lot of the time when we are trying so hard to center the pain of others so that we don’t have to look at our own, we are actually putting ourselves in a place where we believe that our participation in the pain or the healing of the pain of others is SO VITAL that there’s literally no time for us to care about or for ourselves.
We may be believing that our influence is much greater than it actually is, and we may be putting ourselves in a position of ‘savior’ where we don’t actually belong. We are seeing our influence as bigger and more important than it is as a way of trying to make ourselves feel more powerful in the face of all the pain we are seeing both in ourselves and in others.
We have to remember that at the end of the day our greatest influence again, is within our own lives. Within the four walls of our own minds and the tender space of our own hearts. The MOST impact we will ever have is how we LIVE.
This isn’t to say that we should totally neglect the outer world or that we shouldn’t try to be supportive for others. Of COURSE we want to be good community members, we want to be supports for others where we have time, energy and resources, we want to be a voice for those who are struggling and we want to be able to show up for those in our community in a way that makes an impact. This is a part of what being human is - learning where we can be supports for those around us and where we can offer something to help make life easier for those we can.
That being said, again we are going to be MOST empowered to do that in a HEALTHY way, when we are ALSO addressing our own wounds, when we are taking care of ourselves to the degree that’s practical for us and when we are minding our own pain and trauma so that we aren’t unintentionally acting from wounding when we attempt to support others vs. acting from a truly healthy place.
When we are full of pain and trauma, again no matter how well intentioned we are, we are going to bleed on people who didn’t cut us. Not because we want to. Not because we are choosing to be destructive. Not because we are undisciplined or lazy or secretly evil in any way. When we don’t deal with our own stuff, we are GOING to fall into addiction, self sabotage, coping mechanisms, codependency (help that isn’t really help) not knowing what is truly of service for the GOOD of humanity and what is real just us looking for love and approval through our service, poor boundaries and even toxic power dynamics and abuse towards others or ourselves.
When we are denying our own pain in an attempt to be more helpful to others, we are oftentimes going to unintentionally and unconsciously act FROM our wounding when dealing with others vs. acting from a place of true health and true help - and this is a part of why doing our own work is SO important if we actually want to be people who can support others.
Now remember, no one is saying that we have to be PERFECT in order to be helpful and supportive. No one is saying that if we have any kind of internal wound that hasn’t been healed yet that we are going to be destructive and so we should therefore lock ourselves in our rooms until we are fully transcended.
Of course not.
We are all imperfect and always will be. We are all going to offer imperfect help. We are all going to act from wounding and misunderstanding sometimes. We are all going to believe we have the best intentions and ideas when this may not be the case in real reality.
No one will ever be fully healed/integrated/processed with nothing left to discover about themselves.
We just want to remember that the more we STUFF DOWN our own stuff, the more we suppress our own pain, the more we deny ourselves in the hopes that this will make us more available for others - the more we set ourselves up to unintentionally cause harm because we aren’t going to be working from a clear state of vision and perspective.
So many deeply powerful, profound and gifted people ended up becoming spiritual abusers because they focused way too much OUT THERE and not enough IN HERE. They wanted to have an impact. To fix the world. To solve it all. But they forgot themselves and this poisoned the whole well.
A lot of the time we are projecting our own desire to be seen, heard and helped onto others, we are frantically trying to fix the world because we feel that our own pain is out of control or something we don’t know how to address, so we are trying to fix how WE FEEL by trying to change what’s going on OUT THERE. We really believe that if we just try hard enough, save enough people, support enough people, do enough service and focus on others enough that eventually all the chaos out there will end, and then we can finally have peace - when the reality is, the chaos out there is never going to end.
There will always be suffering.
There will always be someone or something that has need.
The more we have internal pain that isn’t being addressed and is then being projected outward, the more we are going to be in a state of constant chaos ourselves as we try to fix a world that can’t ever be fully fixed.
We won’t be able to find peace, because we’re never going to create perfect peace out there.
The more chaos there is within, the more the chaos out there is going to affect us.
Pain Projection And Why It’s A Problem
The more we deal with our own inner world, the more we are going to have a clear mind about the chaos out there, where we can actually effect change, where we can actually serve, what we have power over and what we need to learn to accept and be ok with.
We don’t want to be projecting our own pain onto the world and trying to fix it.
We want to be dealing with our own stuff, so that when we are looking ‘out there’ we’re not trying to solve a problem that can’t be solved by looking ‘out there.’
We have to wrap our minds around the idea that the more we heal ourselves, the more effective supports we are going to be for others. It is that simple. The longer we go ignoring our own issues, the more we actually HINDER our capacity to be of service to others.
Trying to help others when we have two broken legs is not going to go as well as if we have two functional legs. If we were to take the time we need to heal our broken legs, we may notice that in the SHORT TERM we are less involved with helping others, but in the LONG RUN our capacity to serve others is going to be greatly enhanced. We are also going to be able to help from a place of calm vs. a place of internal emergency - which is also going to help us be BETTER supports to others.
The more we address our own wounds, the more we set ourselves up to be effective in helping others.
The more we deny our own wounds, the more we hinder our capacity to help others and the more we are going to be vulnerable to projecting our pain and suffering onto others vs. being able to actually see THEM and to actually serve THEM.
Your Wounds Count Even If Others Have It Worse Than You
Again, the more we don’t deal with what’s going on with us inside, the more we are vulnerable to getting into a state of constantly projecting our own pain onto others, and trying to fix THEM in an unconscious attempt to fix ourselves - and this is almost ALWAYS going to lead to burnout, codependency, overstepping boundaries and over-assuming power where power is not ours.
At the same time, the more we ‘pain compare’ and say that because others have it ‘worse’ than us, we don’t deserve to focus on ourselves and our situation, the more we just deny reality and keep ourselves stuck in pain - which again is going to make it LESS likely that we are able to be actually helpful to others. Because remember, the more integrated WE ARE, the more effective we are going to be in helping others, and the more resourceful we are going to be in helping others.
We have to remember that our wounds exist INDEPENDENTLY of the wounds of others.
Our wounds don’t change based on the wounds of others.
Think of it like this:
If you fell from a 10 story building and broke 10 bones, and then the person who is rolled into the hospital bed next to you fell from a 20 story building and broke 20 bones and punctured both his ribs - are you magically healed? His injuries are far worse than yours - but does that ERASE your injuries?
If you are diagnosed with diabetes, and your best friend gets diagnosed with stage four liver cancer - are you healed of your diabetes? Due to the fact that your situation is ‘less bad’ - does this somehow give you magical powers to heal THEIR cancer? If you ignore your diabetes to be the servant of your friend with cancer - does this not only lead to your own destruction, no matter how much you may be able to help them, are you not going to at some point lose your capacity to help them and maybe even one day accidentally end up HURTING them if you leave your disease unchecked?
If you were to allow your wounds to heal, are you then not going to be better able to serve others? Vs. if you try to jump out of bed with your 10 broken bones to try to help the guy with the 20 broken bones? With your 10 broken bones, are you going to be MORE capable of helping the guy with 20 broken bones than you would be if you let yourself heal and THEN look to where you could serve him? Do you not risk re-injuring yourself and again possibly injuring him if you don’t first let yourself recover?
We must think of our internal wounds just like this.
We don’t need to get caught in the idea that ‘until we are perfect we are of no use’ This is of course the flip side of this coin - and it’s equally incongruent with reality. It’s not either or. It’s knowing what reality is.
YOU deserve to be your first priority - for yourself AND for those you serve.
If you really want to avoid becoming a toxic healer, understand you don’t heal others. You facilitate them healing themselves. And the more YOU are centered in YOUR practices of taking care of yourself and dealing with YOUR stuff, the better you will be at doing that. The more you will see where your TRUE power is (hint, it’s not where you think it is - it’s not in ALL THE PLACES AND ALL THE PROBLEMS - it’s going to be specific and something that DOESN’T cost you or drain you.) and where it isn’t.
Tend to your wounds first. Make it a daily practice to be tending to yourself. Tend to yourself FIRST in your day/week/month - think of it not as ‘healing fully first then serving’ but more that you TEND TO YOURSELF ON A REGULAR BASIS FIRST and then move from THAT place in your day to day.
You and the world will be better for it. I promise. It’s not selfish. It’s the opposite - the more you integrate the more you will see where your actual power and influence is. And the more you will be able to consistently show up without the filters of your own traumas muddying the waters.
<3
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