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Healing Old Wounds
by Caroline Myss,
Ph.D.
 In the late spring of 1988, I arrived at the
Findhorn Community in northeastern Scotland to teach a healing workshop.
At that point in my career the people who came to my workshops had tended
to be searching for a personal healing. They expected me, as a medical
intuitive, to facilitate their healing directly by giving them an
individual reading and setting up a treatment regimen for them. (These
days my workshops are largely filled with self-reliant people who want to
learn how to
heal themselves and their lives, or professionals looking to learn how to
help others heal.)
Though I myself am
not a healer, I was happy to help them, of course, to the best of my
abilities. Often in my readings I was simply validating the suspicions,
insights, or intuitions that they already had about themselves and the
changes they needed to make in their lives. Sometimes these readings
ignited an inner physical and spiritual healing process. Even so, at that
time, my workshop participants and I all felt that we were on the right
track. After all, healing and health had become the main focus of the
holistic or consciousness culture as well as the center of my life. Almost
everyone I met, professionally and personally, spoke about either wanting
to become a healer or needing a healer, being on their way to visit a new
healer, or believing that they were meant to be a healer as soon as they
had completed their own healing.
I enjoyed
traveling around the world and meeting spiritually committed people who
needed me as much as I needed them, and I had especially come to love
Findhorn, a community of about three hundred people sharing an organic,
cooperative life and a respect for all spiritual paths. Some of the
community members reside in an enchanting, converted turn-of-the-century
hotel; others have made their home quarters in a beautiful park area
alongside the Findhorn Bay. The rugged beauty of the Scottish Highlands,
combined with the spiritual focus of the community, make Findhorn a most
attractive place to be. Whenever I go there, I seem to receive a special
energetic charge that results in some important insight, and this visit in
1988 was no exception. This time, however, the insight came in a rather
unlikely way.
Prior to beginning
the weeklong workshop, I had arranged to have lunch with my dear friend
Mary. Having arrived early in the dining room, I joined two gentlemen for
tea. Mary entered a while later, and when she walked over to our table, I
introduced her to my companions. She had just extended her hand to greet
them when another member of the Findhorn community, Wayne, came up to her
and asked, Mary, are you busy on June eighth? Were looking for someone to
escort a guest coming to Findhorn for the day.
The tone of Mary's
response was as revealing as its length. She snapped, June eighth? Did you
say June eighth? Suffused with anger and resentment, she continued,
Absolutely not! June eighth is my incest support group meeting, and I
would never, ever miss that meeting! We count on each other, after all. We
incest victims have to be there for one another. I mean, who else do we
have?
Mary went on
for a while longer, but this is as much as I can accurately remember. I
was captivated by the instantaneous dramatics triggered by a simple
question about her schedule. Wayne hardly took notice of her response,
thanked her, and left, but I was astonished. Later, as Mary and I were
having lunch, I asked her about her behavior:
Mary, why, when
you were answering Wayne's question about your schedule, did you have to
let all three men know that you had suffered incest as a young girl, that
you were still angry about it, that you were angry with men in general,
and that you intended to control the atmosphere of the conversation with
your anger? All Wayne asked you was, Are you busy June eighth? and in
response you gave these three men a miniature therapy class. A simple yes
or no would have done fine.
Mary looked at me
as if I had betrayed her. Her body stiffened, and she emphasized her words
in an ice-cold, defensive tone: I answered that way because I am a victim
of incest. She drew back from the table, stopped eating, and threw her
napkin over her plate, indicating that our lunch together had come to a
close. Although I didn't realize it at that moment, so had our friendship.
Mary, honey, I
replied, softening my own tone somewhat, I know you're a victim of incest,
but what I'm trying to figure out is why you found it necessary to tell
two strangers and Wayne your history when all he wanted to know was
whether you could help out on June eighth. Did you want these men to treat
you a certain way or talk to you in a certain way? What made you lay your
wounds out on the table within seven seconds of meeting two new people?
Mary told me that
I simply did not understand because I had not endured what she and
numerous other incest victims had gone through, but that she had expected
me as a friend to be more compassionate. I replied that lack of compassion
had nothing to do with what I was asking her. I could feel the separation
of energy between us as I realized that in order for our friendship to
continue, I needed to speak wounds to Mary, to follow some very specific
rules of how a supportive friend was to behave, and to bear always in mind
that she defined herself by a negative experience.
In addition to her
painful childhood history, Mary also had a history of chronic ailments.
She was always in pain -- some days emotional, some days physical. Though
she was kind and always ready to support her friends, she much preferred
the company of people who had also had abusive childhoods. That day at our
lunch, I realized that Mary needed to be with people who spoke the same
language and shared the same mindset and behaviors. I immediately began to
think of this attitude as woundology. I have since become convinced that
when we define ourselves by our wounds, we burden and lose our physical
and spiritual energy and open ourselves to the risk of
illness.
That day I
felt as if I had been catapulted out of the surrounding healing culture of
Findhorn and the general consciousness movement and was viewing it as an
outsider. Although I had not previously noticed this pattern of thought
and behavior in Mary or in anyone else, the very next day, curiously, a
miniature version of the Mary incident took place in my workshop.
I had arrived
twenty minutes early to get ready for my presentation and noticed a woman
sitting alone. I sat down next to her and asked, What's your name? That's
all I asked. Yet without even looking at me, she responded:
I'm a victim of
incest, but I'm fifty-six years old now and I'm over that trauma. I have a
wonderful support group, and several of us get together at least once a
week, which I believe is essential to healing.
She still had not
told me her name, so I asked again, And what's your name? But she still
didn't answer me directly. She seemed to be in a daze. It felt to me as if
she had been preparing for a long time to say something publicly, and now,
given the opportunity, she couldn't hear any questions that didn't relate
to her agenda. Instead of telling me her name, she said how much she
enjoyed coming to workshops like mine because a person was free to speak
openly about his or her past, and she hoped that I would allow time for
people to share their personal histories. I thanked her and left the room,
needing a few moments to gather my thoughts.
Meeting this woman
the day after the incident with Mary was not a coincidence. I believe I
was being directed to pay attention to the ways we expect to heal our
lives -- through therapy and support groups. So many people in the midst of
a process of healing, I saw, are at the same time feeling stuck. They are
striving to confront their wounds, valiantly working to bring meaning to
terrible past experiences and traumas, and exercising compassionate
understanding of others who share their wounds. But they are not healing.
They have redefined their lives around their wounds and the process of
accepting them. They are not working to get beyond their wounds. In fact,
they are stuck in their wounds. Now primed to hear people speak woundology, I believe I was meant to challenge the assumptions that I and
many others then held dear -- especially the assumption that everyone who is
wounded or ill wants the full recovery of their health.
 This article is excerpted from
Why People Don't Heal and How They
Can by Caroline Myss, Ph.D. ? 1997.
Excerpted by permission of Three Rivers Press, a division of Random
House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be
reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the
publisher.
Info/Order this book.
About The
Author
Caroline
Myss, Ph.D., is the author of the national best-seller
Anatomy of the Spirit , and with
Norman Shealy, M.D., the coauthor of
The Creation of Health and of
Sacred Healing. She gives lectures
and workshops internationally, and her audiotapes include
Why People Don't Heal and
Energy Anatomy. She has also released videotapes:
Why People Don't Heal and How They Can,
Exploring the Anatomy of the Spirit, and
The Energetics of Healing.
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