The Wounded Healer
Why I finally sat down to write it all — and why the layers of the earth explain a life better than any onion ever could.
I felt moved to write about my journey — the highs and the lows — because sharing it might connect to someone else. Or maybe it is just a way to lift the burden that is me from my own shoulders. Both can be true.
A whole sequence of thoughts came to me. Thoughts about all the small steps it takes to get someplace. I tried to remember, in my body, each incremental piece of the way, and I realized it's an impossible task. How do I explain, even to myself, that it feels like sand shifting constantly?
I have always hated the onion analogy. I like the layers of the earth better. Geology explains a journey — the irregular laying down of related and unrelated strata. Then one day you have a mountain, or a valley, an ocean, or a tree.
I am a living, breathing archetype of the wounded healer.
As Jung wrote, a person's ability to heal others is derived from their own deep wounds. Empathy — the ability to recognize and feel other people's pain — can be cognitive, emotional, or traumatic. I bristle a little when someone calls themselves an "empath," as if it were something rare. We are all hardwired for it. In my experience, the amount of trauma you've carried dictates how far the empathy opens — or how far it shuts down.
Empathy can be a superpower and a blessing. It can also be a curse — when you feel everything and cannot put it down. The workshop that changed me framed it this way: as empathy matures, it becomes compassion. And compassion has healthy boundaries. It has heart connection. It has a hand reaching out.
Turning wounds into the work
Looking back, I see that I turned my own wounds into a thriving practice. In the beginning, doing massage, I touched people in the deep, nurturing way that I had missed — even as an infant. I listened the way I had longed to be listened to. For that hour, I made a connection that made my cells sing.
I believe you cannot do this work — touching people physically, emotionally, energetically — without also working on yourself. It is important to understand your own story. That has never stopped being true for me, and it is the first thing I ask of every practitioner I teach.
— Leigh Ankrum