MISUSING HEALING

#11 (From the series "MISUSE")

Often times I can’t help but to think of the term “healed” being tossed around the internet like a fun-game we all tag along into, yet no-one exactly knows the rules of it, and no one knows how to win or lose it. I personally have found myself using the term, to try and “compensate” spiritually in a way for time I felt lost, under the circumstances of not feeling familiar within my own skin. Albeit I don’t feel healed a hundred percent, I know I am in a better place than before. I constantly think, though if it is valid to use the term, “healed”?

Healing (based off of the internet’s common interpretation of it) on the psychological aspect of well-being, essentially forms a journey one has begun in order to collect themself, to nurture themself, to alleviate an inner-hurting of the psyche. However, does that not sound more like, “living and learning”? Are there wounds within ourselves that are indeed able to mend over time, to a point where no mark is left to show?

And then, there are the “healers”. Holistic and traditional “doctors” who aim to cure the patient of mental trauma. Another word would be shaman. While I believe in the existence of such people, who have pure intent to assist others with their pain and suffering, are we to consider psychologists a form of healers? In a modern-western-world kind of way? At first thought, I concluded that they are not. Yet, something in my mind wanted to scratch further into understanding the possibility of them being.

With my own experience, a psychiatrist/neurologist who was suggested to me by a friend, was the first to disprove my typical notion of a shrink. The middle-aged doctor sat across from me, and discussed very simple matters with me, while I poured an insane amount of well-kept thoughts onto him. Things I have never dared to utter to anyone else, and never let myself say them out loud before. And with just speaking my thoughts, somehow, I was exorcised. A heavy veil lifted from over my mind, and I felt a closeness to my own worries and “paranoid” (in quotations because there is rationalisation in every thought, only society labels things that way to scare us and limit us) thoughts. On reflecting these thoughts, they were the simplest things, quite ordinary, and yet I was overly shy and embarrassed to admit them. After three sessions, I decided to not see the doctor again, I felt satisfied with my progress and up until this day can remember his words.

And here is a grand stigma of psychology and the fear of speaking aloud actual thoughts; Unlike my doctor, there are others (commonly found in public healthcare) who after one session will asses and prescribe drugs to the patient. My doctor, had managed to pull together and assess some of my issues just by conversing, and providing advice and plans, that only after extremity would he ever suggest drug use. I’ve seen friends of mine tumble on anti-depressants, withdraw from them, fall into black-holes of depression even harder, climb out, go to another doctor, get pills prescribed again… And the cycle goes on and on.

In today’s world we’re fortunate enough to have the mediums such as books and (of course) the internet, that allows us to dive into other cultures, and their remedies for pain any of kind. An alternative approach that changed me deeply, was through Chinese medicine. A good friend of mine studied the usage of herbs, acupuncture, and a whole lot of stuff I honestly can’t even remember by western terms, in order to access ancient knowledge of how we can acquire our well-being, through natural and less-invasive processes. Acupuncture has done wonders for me, manages to keep me relaxed, but also, apparently… Is good for wrinkles too. How much more could you ask for girl?

But of course, old medicinal practices, don’t work overnight.

An overwhelming and disturbingly overstimulating every day life leads us to a faster consumption within all fields of our existence. It does make sense that we would want to alleviate our pain quickly as well. If we do not “heal” soon enough, we won’t be able to live-out that very tight schedule we have planned out and curated throughout the entire week. And a simple-cold with over-the-counter medicine seems to “work wonders”. You feel good again. But what about that break-up, last week? That just doesn’t seem to go away that fast. And on top of that, something else alarming perhaps, managed to ruin this week as well. And reading news every day, really doesn’t help, tragedy everywhere. The world is on fire! Okay, let’s pop a pill to relax a bit.

Short-term remedies, can only provide short-term health and healing.

If we’re to constantly choose the “fast” route to “healing”, while escaping suffering, then perhaps we’re actually doing ourselves more harm. We’re pushing away feelings, unexpressed, that can only build up in the body. And one might think there is no harm in that. Yet, the term psychosomatic is actually just that. Your body reacting for you. When you deny the pain, your psyche’s vessel is the one to pay the price. If a wild animal is kept locked in a cage, it would beat at the cage, looking for a way out, even if the animal injured itself over and over again. It wouldn’t simply accept defeat so easily. But maybe after a few days… Weeks passing on… Months, and let’s not be unrealistic, years pile on and the animal of course has accepted now that they will never be let out. Sure, they feed the animal to preserve it, but that simply keeps it from not dying. The animal, is miserable. The animal, is your psyche. And you need to let it out and feel, freely.