On becoming a conscious healer

Many well meaning and compassionate people make the mistake of giving away their healing energy.

Some believe that being a healer means they have to give their healing energy to others. They unconsciously walk through their life healing everyone in sight. They feel responsible for healing or fixing all the pain they come across. They give away their own energy.

There is giving, and then there is giving away. Giving is a positive experience, it's part of how we know each other and help each other grow. Giving works hand in hand with receiving, and giving is a choice.

When you have chosen to give, it's a good feeling, a positive emotional experience. It feels validating to give, and we all need to give. Conscious giving doesn't deplete us or leave us feeling taken from.

Giving away is something else, and it's often unconscious. If you give your own energy away constantly so that there is none left for you, you're giving away. If you feel responsible for healing every ill on the planet, or at least in your neighborhood, you're giving away. If you feel like you must control what's happening all around you, you're giving away. Giving away might be your go to setting, a demand on you from the time you were a wee healer. It's programming you can change for yourself, if you choose.

If you’ve ever given until it hurts, you may be an out of control healer.

Being an out of control healer means you're unconsciously giving your healing energy to everyone you come across who seems to need it. If you often attract those in need or constant crisis, or who make huge demands on you and your energy, you are an out of control healer. While it may seem to you like it's your role to bring healing and joy to others, if you feel exhausted and depleted afterward, you are giving away.

If your validation depends on how many people you’ve rescued, you may be trying to save them for yourself, not them. You are in their space, trying to change what they are experiencing, and sometimes they may not want you to do so.

Planet earth in the 21st century is a great place to be if you want to learn how to become a conscious healer. The entire planet is in a state of deep transformation, which means old ideas, forms, and ways are falling apart, being transformed into the new. The healing in this case is in allowing the old thing to go, so the new can form.

Often an unconscious healer will try to hold together that which needs to fall apart.

When you find yourself holding it all together for others, and meanwhile you're not getting what you want in your own life, you're unconsciously holding something together that needs to go. Another way you could be an unconscious healer is by not having what it is you really want, if others can’t also have it.

Guilt, in other words, stops you from living your life to the fullest you are able. You are healing others, even if you don’t know it, by doing this. If you’ve held back, waiting for others to be ready to take a step, you are healing them, not yourself.

Nobody’s going anywhere with you holding yourself back from having your life for yourself. If you decide to be brave enough and step up to the plate in your own game, star in your own life, you may hear more screaming than cheering at first. If you persist and do your own work, you’ll get to where you want to go. This is where you become a real healer, you start with yourself.

A few guidelines to help you decide if you’ve been an out of control healer:

• You need to fix every problem you come across.

• You have to rescue every hurt soul.

• You see the pain, and immediately jump into action, here to save and rescue the day.

• You feel guilty because you are healthier than others, or have more than others do. You're not safe if others are sick or in pain.

• You seem to collect people in crisis. They flock to your side, spill their tales of woe, and you start mopping up / sponging up, all of that pain.

• You continue to do this, even when people get angry because you try and try to heal them, but they don’t get healed.

• Doing this is exhausting you, and your own health is suffering as a result. You are truly feeling the pain.

Overreaching your boundaries like this has several effects on your space: your body will suffer, you will have a hard time seeing yourself clearly, and you can create karma with others by not allowing them to do their own work.

None of this is to say that those who care about others and help out when people are in need, are doing anything wrong.

If anything, we need more volunteers, more people to help out, to give from the heart, on this planet. There is a more conscious way to do this, a way to give without giving away all of your energy.

Because once you give it all away, it’s gone, and that won’t do you or anyone else any good at all.

There is another way to be a conscious healer.

We teach others how to treat us, by how we treat ourselves. If you’ve taught others that it’s okay to drag their muddy shoes across your floor, or throw pain and punishment into your space, you are the one who gets to teach them a new way to treat you.

You can decide, right now, to begin to heal yourself. As a healer, it is up to you to do so. All healing is self healing, and if you begin with yourself, you teach others they can do it too. Someone has healing because they want to, not because you or I think they should.

This is a good thing to keep in mind if you think that it’s up to you whether others heal or not. You may be a great healer, but no matter how good you are, you cannot do another person’s work for them. It simply isn’t your job.

It isn’t up to you, it’s up to them. The way they are healing isn't up for a vote, either. Nobody gets to judge whether they are doing it right or not. Nobody gets to decide how you are healing either. You are the one in charge of choosing how you will find your healing.

©Kris Cahill
Image by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash