What Can We Expect Out of Healing?
It can be challenging to talk about healing in a general way, given how diverse our experiences and circumstances are, how differently we interpret them between cultures and between individuals, and given how rapidly scientific perspectives on health and wellness are evolving in the modern age. Often, ideas no sooner gain traction in popular culture than they are declared obsolete by the healing community, and there is rampant dispute among practitioners and laypeople alike around what is true and helpful, and what is pseudo-scientific and likely harmful.
Since the advent of the internet - and social media in particular - the proliferation of both information and misinformation around healing has become overwhelming, and one can hardly step online without being confronted by hordes of trained professionals and self-styled coaches and gurus claiming to have the answers to what ails us, for better or for worse. Social media algorithms promote and reward the practitioners who make the boldest and most outlandish promises, while accurate and nuanced information more often than not gets buried amidst the chaos and sensationalism.
Unfortunately, our culture doesn’t encourage media literacy or critical thinking, and it is all too easy for us to fall prey to our emotional and confirmation biases, to unconsciously build our beliefs around what feels good, rather than what is supported by the best available evidence. The fact is, the field of health and wellness is constantly evolving, and whatever we believe should be taken with a grain of salt. This is particularly true when it comes to mental health.
With this caveat out of the way, in this article I will be discussing what we mean when we talk about healing, what we can expect when we seek help in our personal healing journeys, and some common misconceptions that we hold around what it means to be healthy. It should go without saying that this is all the perspective of this author (a licensed therapist) and that any ideas presented here which spark interest or doubt are best expanded upon with further research from a variety of evidence-based sources. Furthermore, this article will be focused on mental health (I am not a medical doctor) although our modern understanding is increasingly blurring the line between mental and physical health, if not utterly eliminating it.
One doesn’t have to spend very long in online wellness spaces to encounter many voices insisting that “therapy doesn’t work” and that therapists are all frauds and charlatans. It is true that, as in every job and profession, there is a huge range of skill and competency, and there are some practitioners who should not be in the field at all. It is also important to note that therapeutic relationships are much like any other in the sense that we simply can’t expect to resonate well with everybody we meet. This typically means that we need to try out a few therapists before we find someone who we feel really gets us and works in a way that is genuinely helpful for our unique situation.
That said, there are a few things we should always expect from a therapist: they should respect our experiences and perspectives. They should demonstrate genuine curiosity and a desire to understand our situations. They should not impose their own biases and beliefs onto us. They should treat us as equals, and not talk down to us. And perhaps most importantly, they should be open about their scope of practice and level of competency, and if our presenting issues are outside of their scope, they should refer us to an appropriate professional, and not waste our time or money. A major red flag in a therapist (or any other professional) is if they get defensive when asked about their practice or their qualifications. This information is essential for anyone seeking help. At the end of the day, each of us is on our own path, and no one knows what’s best for you better than yourself. No therapist, coach or guru has all the answers, nor should theirs be the final word in your story.
The other major reason many people leave therapy feeling disillusioned is that of misplaced expectations. This can mean that we have unrealistic beliefs around what it means to be “healed”, around how quickly we should experience change, around what the processes of treatment look like, and the distinct roles of the therapist and client in the therapeutic relationship. There are a few reasons for these problematic expectations, not least of which is the abundance of misinformation online, and the allure of the idea of quick fixes - wellness influencers all but guaranteeing to permanently fix all of our problems with an online course, a yoga retreat or ayahuasca journey (yeah, sorry, psychedelics aren’t a magic bullet, though they certainly have their uses). Another reason is that if we are early on in our healing journey or new to therapy, of course we don’t know what to expect! Any responsible healthcare professional should be able to openly communicate what you can reasonably expect from treatment, and I’ll say this again: you should always feel safe to ask questions about the processes and modalities being used by your practitioner. If you feel unsafe or misunderstood, it is your right to leave, period.
And I want to take a moment to acknowledge that, especially when we’re experiencing severe psychological distress, it can feel like an overwhelming challenge or even impossible to try out multiple therapists before finding a good fit, and it can be extremely demoralizing to open up to someone, only to find they’re a poor fit, and then find ourselves back at square one. Remember, healing and growth are lifelong processes. Take your time, be gentle on yourself, and cultivate multiple support networks as best you can, so you’re not dependent on one single resource. Do you have any friends or family members who could be safe to talk to? Any community members, elders or clergy-members who might understand? Certainly, not everybody will be able to hold space for vulnerability, but more people will than you might imagine.
Additionally, if you are in urgent need, your region has crisis and suicide-prevention phone-lines where compassionate people are always available to talk for free. A quick search online will give you these resources, or if you are in BC, these are a few of the main ones:
General emergencies: 9-1-1
BC Suicide Prevention Line: 1-800-784-2433 (1-800-SUICIDE)
National Suicide Crisis Helpline (Canada): 988
24/7 Mental Health Support Helpline: 310-6789 (no area code)
Battered Women’s Support Service: 1-855-687-1868
Now, with all of these pieces out of the way, let’s get into the nitty-gritty: what do we actually mean by “healing”, and what do we actually mean by “being healthy”? Entire books have been written on this topic, so we’ll only be skimming the surface, but we can start with a definition proposed by the World Health Organization back in 1948: “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” This is fine, and gives us a general idea of what we’re getting at, but even “well-being” is so vague as to be of limited use. How do we measure well-being? At least for physical health, we can look to broadly-accepted measures of (for instance) healthy blood-pressure, hormone levels, bone density, body fat percentage and so on, but things become extremely hard to pin down when we start to look at mental health. Most psychiatric diseases are diagnosed through the subjective answering of questionnaires and assessment of indistinct symptoms, and often the best we can do to measure the intensity of an emotion or psychological state is to ask the client to rank the feeling on a scale of 0-10, and then to see if that self-assessment changes following treatment. (However, it should be noted that there are ongoing efforts to more objectively measure psychological phenomena through MRI scans, EEG monitoring and other means, though more research will be needed before these kinds of findings become more widely applicable.)
Then, when we look across cultures, things become even blurrier. A key example of this is that in Western medicine, the human being is viewed as a collection of distinct parts. Individual bodily organs are monitored for signs of dysfunction and treated accordingly, and the physical body and mind are considered separate entities, seen until recently as operating independently of each other. In contrast, the conventional view in Eastern medicine has been that the human being is a deeply integral whole, in which constituent parts are inseparable in their functioning and treatment. This includes the body and mind, the distinction between the two being essentially arbitrary.
Another perspective is that, under capitalism, especially in the hyper-individualistic culture of the West, economic productivity and material wealth are often seen as being the primary indicators of success and well-being. We celebrate people for suppressing stress and disruptive emotions, viewing this as mastery of the psyche. In contrast, we view sensitivity and lack of concern for social status as signs of weakness and maladjustment, evidence that the individual is somehow fundamentally flawed. These are characteristics of an ultra-masculinized culture which has developed since the industrial revolution, although I believe that we are beginning to see this shift towards a state of greater balance in certain segments of Western society.
This last example points us to an even deeper point, which I’ll only address in passing: our definition of health depends heavily upon what we consider the purpose of life to be. In a culture that most values economic productivity and individual social status, it makes sense that emotional repression and social dominance are considered the height of well-being. In contrast to this, if we imagine a culture in which the vitality of our communities and the quality of our relationships with one another and with the natural world are widely considered the highest values, we would naturally see emotional vulnerability, material interdependence and mutual aid to be key signs of well-being.
The point is, definitions of health and wellness vary widely, depending who one asks. Ultimately, each of us must come to our own understanding of these concepts, but I will take the liberty of identifying a few of the more common and useful characteristics of health and wellness here, as I see them (there are certainly other things which could be added to the list, but this is a loose idea):
The absence of significant pain and distress (both mental and physical).
The ability to consistently meet our physical and emotional needs.
Fairly consistent energy levels that ebb and flow with daily cycles, allowing us to engage in all of the things we want and need to do.
A palpable sense of wonder, curiosity and loving-kindness towards the world.
Emotional flexibility and physical mobility.
Resilience in the face of life’s challenges, and the ability to return to a state of general equilibrium and functionality after disruption. Strong coping skills.
The ability to see the positive in things and acknowledge the negative without allowing it to dominate our lives.
The ability to enjoy our lives in the present while holding our attachments to things, people and ideas lightly.
Loving personal relationships in which we can openly express our needs, our feelings and perspectives, and trust that we will be warmly received.
Feeling that we are needed and play a meaningful role in our community/society. A sense of purpose.
A high degree of self-awareness, self-compassion and self-respect.
Belief in one’s self-efficacy and sense of agency.
Strong boundaries and the ability to communicate them in relationships.
Many of these are skills that we are not born with, and unfortunately, many of us don’t learn them from our parents or peers as children. This is why, in counselling and wellness coaching, a big part of what we do is identifying and learning these skills. Learning to identify and communicate our emotions and our needs. Learning to recognize and respect the emotions and needs of others and the boundaries between us that allow us to experience social intimacy safely. Learning to let go of the damaging stories we have subconsciously come to believe and which have shaped our lives. Learning to recognize our inherent negativity bias and the ways it limits us. Learning to consciously change what we can control and graciously accept what we cannot.
Most often, people enter into therapy lacking some or all of these skills. They know that they feel bad, and they want to feel better. In the earliest stages of treatment, then, the role of the therapist is to come to understand the client’s situation and the wellness skills that they possess. In most situations, within the first few sessions, the therapist should develop a rough treatment plan and communicate this with the client, so that both participants have a clear sense of the goals they are working towards, and the methods being used to get there. Naturally, over the course of treatment, goals may well change, and some treatment methods may be set aside in favour of others, but again, there should be continual communication throughout the process. Counselling is a deeply collaborative process, and it is the client’s life and circumstances that are being addressed, so the client must be continuously active in their own process.
Along these same lines, clients sometimes come into therapy expecting the counsellor to simply “fix” them, and will go home, find that they still feel unwell, and blame it on the counsellor. The truth is that the hard work of healing is up to the individual - the client - and while a therapist can help the client to build the skills needed for healing and wellness, and can help the client learn what it feels like to be in a secure interpersonal dynamic, it is ultimately up to the client to put these skills and new understandings consistently into action, to improve their own life.
With all of this in mind, it becomes clear that the more of an active role the client assumes in their own healing and growth, the more they will get out of therapy. Especially when we consider that counselling is quite expensive, it benefits the client immensely to put a fair amount of thought into their intentions and goals before even meeting a therapist. While a counsellor will be able to help with these things, the client will find themselves at a significant advantage if they can arrive at their first session with a reasonably clear understanding of their problem(s), along with one or two goals for their time in treatment, whether building emotional literacy, cultivating secure relationships, overcoming addictions, identifying blind-spots, or any number of other things.
It’s also worth considering the question of having an end-goal more generally in one’s healing. We often mistakenly believe that we start out broken and move in a roughly linear way towards a final state of consistent happiness, flow and well-being. So much content in the online wellness space reinforces this perspective, and it would be great if it were true, but it’s not. We can certainly make gradual, general improvements in our well-being, and create lives for ourselves that are vastly more meaningful and enjoyable than before, but the reality is that healing and growth are far from linear, and we may make incredible progress for a while, only to find ourselves blindsided by calamity or overwhelmed by stress or by the state of the world, and suddenly plunged back into the deepest depression. When this happens, if we believe in the myth of linear healing, we may well conclude that we (or our therapists) have failed, and that all of our hard work was for nothing. A teacher of mine once described the grieving process as a spiral rather than a straight line, where we go through the same things over and over again, but slowly grow and heal as we move through this process. Healing in general could be viewed in a similar way.
Another point along this line is that, at least in North American culture, we tend to fetishize happiness as being the ultimate goal in life, and the highest aim to which we can aspire. Many of us believe that to be successful as human beings, we must achieve a state of unerring bliss, pure positive feeling and satisfaction. To be clear, happiness is a wonderful thing, and we should by no means reject it when it’s available and appropriate, but our cultural attachment to happiness as our highest end is, in my opinion, ultimately damaging. As noted in my list above, a key characteristic of health is emotional flexibility.
The thing is, life will always present us with diverse and novel circumstances, some pleasant and some mortifying. The essential nature of emotions is that they are signals arising in our bodies to bring our needs and wants to conscious attention, so that we can take action to meet those needs and wants. All emotions are natural and good, and when we can accept and embrace this truth, it takes a lot of pressure off of us to be perfect all the time. As our circumstances constantly shift throughout our lives, our needs and wants ebb and flow accordingly, and so too do our emotions. Even if we were able to achieve a state of unwavering joyful happiness, this would require the strict repression of and dissociation from all of our other emotional states, which would rob us of our capacity for self-awareness and for meeting our needs and wants.
What we can realistically aspire to instead is an attitude of loving acceptance and curiosity towards our emotional states, embracing the pleasant and unpleasant alike with gratitude and recognition that all of these experiences comprise the rich and dynamic mosaic of experience that is human life. If we can cultivate this attitude on a fairly regular basis, it becomes the foundation for a more grounded form of happiness - that being contentment. To be contented with our lives, come what may, is a beautiful thing.
A final note concerning our perception of our own well-being relates to the widespread tendency for us to compare ourselves to our peers. This is an inherent part of being human, but social media has blown this aspect of our lives to unimaginable proportions, as we now have constant reminders coming from every direction of how well the most fortunate and powerful in society are doing - a standard against which we can never compete. It has been observed by sociologists that our happiness is less dependent on our objective standard of living than it is upon how our standard of living compares to those around us. Even if our life circumstances are reasonably comfortable, if we are inundated with reminders that others are experiencing lives vastly better than our own (whatever that means) we’re hard-pressed not to feel like failures and slide into shame and self-loathing.
Life, as they say, is not fair. Nor does everything happen for a reason (though we are extremely adept at ascribing reasons and meaning to everything, no matter how random or chaotic. This human trait is called apophenia). And when we consider what life means to us, our expectations of ourselves, and our goals for healing and personal growth, it can help us to practice compassion towards ourselves by remembering that, while we do have a great deal of agency in our lives, the influences of luck and systemic inequality play a role in all of our lives. It’s natural to feel some bitterness or resignation around this reality, but when we can accept it and come to terms with our unique circumstances, this is when we become able to live our best possible lives.
There is much more that can be said on the topics of health and healing, but this is a cursory overview that will hopefully give those on the healing path some clarity and comfort, and perhaps a walking stick to provide some steadiness along that path. To all those walking it, I know it’s not easy. I see you, I honour you, and life will get better.
