A True & Effective Healer Respects the Cadence of Your Healing
The timing and cadence of your healing belongs to you, and not determined by another
Eyes Wide Open: Avoiding Re-Traumatization is a series about recognizing the things that can hurt or re-traumatize you, as you seek traditional or alternative help on your healing journey.
This section of Eyes Wide Open addresses the essential traits of a true and effective healer, who elicits healing by creating an environment and opportunities conducive to healing. Each installment can be read as a standalone piece, in any order, and will be published on a weekly basis, Wednesday or Thursday.
First, to all my paid and free subscribers, thank you! I appreciate you more than I can adequately express. “Silent No More” is a work of love. All my writings are available to both free and paid subscribers. If you’re not a paid subscriber yet, and are able to, please consider becoming my patron to help me continue my work and accept a 40% discount offer through the end of January on monthly and annual subscriptions. Whether a beloved patron, free subscriber, or welcomed guest, please know you are important to me, and cherished.
Dear Kindred Spirit, Happy New Beginnings!
I love the deep sigh and slow exhale after the rush of holiday season. For quite a few of us, though, rushing seems to be our default mode. If we’re not rushing to “here”, we’re rushing to “there”, barely pausing to savor the present moments.
Your healing, however, is one area you shouldn’t rush through, or allow yourself to be rushed through, or constrained in anyway, no matter how tempting that may be.
Healing isn’t like doing your laundry.
There are no timed cycles for your healing, no washing out the stains from your past, or rinsing out abuse, or spinning and wringing out all those the messy emotions. No estimated time for folding the stories of your past and putting them away.
I know you may just want to get it over with, but it doesn’t work that way.
You will tell yourself the truth of your life when you’re ready. And that process, and the healing that follows, will unfold in its own cadence, its own time.
Sometimes this calls for space to pause, room to breathe, to step aside a moment, to insert full rest measures among the jumbled notes of your life, to create a song.
Facing the reality of your life, especially when it’s been ignored, or rewritten, or denied, or never acknowledged is an intricate and deeply personal process.
For me, the realization about my relationship with my father was sudden and earth shattering. But the unveiling of details, where they fit on the timeline was a slow and arduous process that continues to this day.
It does get better. You do make progress, and you see it in your life, and in your relationships. But that comes from nurturing yourself, not through force-feeding or starvation.
Not many people know how to handle trauma in themselves, let alone in others.
“When are you going to get over this?”
My ex didn’t ask me this to be mean, though it was hurtful, and said with some resentment, as well as, frustration. It left me feeling alone and bereft of any support. He asked me only two months after my initial realization about my father.
His way of dealing with pain was to avoid it. Wearing mine on my sleeve, letting it spill out onto the floors like so much backed up sewage was alarming and disruptive. Trauma was incomprehensible to him.
And you know, if I could have just turned it off, shoved the entirety of that damn cat back in the bag, I would have.
But this wasn’t a superficial cut that could be handled with a Band-Aid, or the flip of a switch, or the snap of my fingers, and being happy is not something you do for other people. It’s not happiness if it’s a performative act.
A support network because no one person can be everything.
This is the advantage of creating a wide support network beyond your immediate circle of friends and family, of which, if possible, you have at least one support person with verifiable training and expertise in this area.
That wasn’t available for myself or my ex-husband then, not in the 1980’s. But it is, for a good many of us, today.
It can be frustrating when someone you care about can’t hold space for you, or honor the cadence of your healing, positive or negative. In a relationship you’re invested in maintaining, there may be some “wiggle room” to work through that. Or there may not.
But in a working/professional relationship, there isn’t. Period. No “wiggle room” for coercion or pressure, no setting up of arbitrary goal posts or times for them to be reached. Those are red flags.
Your facilitator or practitioner is just there for you, with insights and tools. Their goal is to create that safe environment for healing. To give you feedback for you to process and use, as is right for you. That’s their purpose. That’s their job, and you want someone who knows how to do it.
Work with someone who knows what they’re doing.
Those who offer to guide you through the logistics of healing without knowledge beyond personal experience, may mean well, but are irresponsible. They bite off more than they can chew.
Peer support, loving friends and family, who offer empathic listening and can hold space for you, are priceless. Hold on to them.
But, if available and you have the means, also work with someone who has the necessary expertise to do the deep work with you, preferably a trauma-informed licensed practitioner.
There are, unfortunately, those who offer to guide you for the purpose of taking advantage of your vulnerability for financial and/or egoistic gain. They are the scammers, predators and opportunists. You know you don’t want that!
But you’re not a mind reader, and they may initially make a very good first impression.
Knowing what the red flags are, including this one of not respecting the cadence of your healing, can alert you, and give you the opportunity to sever your ties before accruing the damages from wandering too far down that spider’s burrow.
If you can’t choose what you want, because of a shortage of therapists or means to secure one, you can, at least, recognize what you don’t want. You don’t want pressure in your healing, especially as it makes you feel inadequate or ashamed, even subtly.
Accusing you of denial is a form of pressure.
Be wary of anyone who accuses you of being in denial, when you choose to take a breather in your healing, or defer coming to a conclusion, or set aside addressing an issue.
They may have expectations they want you to meet. If they do, their involvement is more about their agendas than your healing.
It’s not denial when it’s life.
Circumstances like surviving, making ends meet, taking care of children, making the rent, caretaking sick loved ones, or any other host of reasons, may make addressing your abuse not practical or doable in that moment.
Even as issues or memories arise, you may have to push through.
Sometimes, you can’t, and things spill over into your reality, whether you like it or not. But when you can, you may decide, “Not today”. Or you may feel safe to handle only the more surface issues.
That’s not a failing. That’s not a blip on your progress, that you have to be moved out of. That is your progress. That’s what it looks like at this moment.
The healing you experience, and the challenges that come from it, happen in concert with your life… with your life. Not outside or apart from it.
You’re no lab rat.
Healing involves learning to discern for yourself, a skill that is often undermined in abuse.
We develop discernment by going through the process of making decisions. Not by letting someone else do it for us. So, make decisions for your healing, for what’s right for you in terms of when, and how much, and stand by them, or change your mind. But let these choices be your own.
Whatever you say yes to, let that be an active choice, because it’s right for you.
Be careful of the person who gives you a syllabus as if you’re in school getting graded on how well you keep up with or meet the requirements. No one has your path figured out for you.
Half the time the ground rises up to meet you where you place your feet, your path created, footstep by footstep.
A good practitioner can help you identify where you are when you arrive there, or give you a heads up, when you may be heading in a certain direction. They may make this suggestion or that suggestion. They don’t hand you an itinerary with a bus schedule.
You are the one walking your path. It’s your journey.
Telling yourself the truth and dealing with issues is important. So is doing it in your own time.
A true healer respects that.
Question: Have you ever felt the timing of your healing wasn’t respected by another, or that your pain was an inconvenience or cause for resentment to someone, or that you were made to feel inadequate because you were too slow, or full of yourself because you were too fast in your progress? Share your thoughts about this, or anything else that comes up for you, in the comments, and I’ll join you!
From my heart to yours,
Demian Elaine’ Yumei
All my writings are available to both free and paid subscribers. If you can, please consider becoming my patron as a paid subscriber. 40% discount offered through January, on monthly and annual subscription!
It will make my heart sing!
Question: Have you ever felt the timing of your healing wasn’t respected by another, or that your pain was an inconvenience or cause for resentment to someone, or that you were made to feel inadequate because you were too slow, or full of yourself because you were too fast in your progress? Share your thoughts about this, or anything else that comes up for you, in the comments, and I’ll join you!
~ ~ ~
Well, I shared my personal experience with my first ex-husband in this post. I did want to say that trauma can tear people and relationships apart, but the road to healing can also bring, not only you back to yourself, but relationships that were broken along the way. My ex, Kenny, and I became very good and close friends a number of years down the line. He was there for my youngest daughter from a subsequent relationship years after our divorce. He loved her, and she him, and when he died from cancer, we were all there for him. He was family. I'm very grateful for that.
I know this doesn't always happen, but I also know it wouldn't have been possible if I hadn't found a way to honor my healing journey, albeit in small increments over time. We never know where our healing steps will lead us.