Healing Is Trending, The Healing Industry is Booming — But Are We Trauma-Informed?
AN IMPORTANT CONVERSATION FOR THIS TIME IN HISTORY
Over my time as a therapist for both couples and individuals — and as a fellow facilitator in the realms of yoga, fitness, sound healing, and somatic experiencing — I’ve witnessed something rise to the surface again and again: we cannot talk about healing without talking about trauma.
As a participant on my own ongoing healing path, it’s become increasingly clear that trauma-informed care is not just a buzzword — it’s an ethical imperative. And right now, I am intuitively and professionally sensing that we are at a crucial tipping point. The healing market is growing rapidly. There is more access to modalities, mentorship, and wellness content than ever before. But as saturation increases, trauma education is not keeping pace.
This is an invitation for us, collectively and individually, to wake up, get honest, and hold ourselves to deeper standards of integrity, responsibility, and awareness in how we serve, how we consume, and how we relate. While it is truly beautiful and necessary that our healing industry is increasing, I believe we can serve in an even higher way.
In this blog, I explore:
The oversaturation of the healing market & the lack of trauma-informed literacy
What “leaky energy” is and how it impacts our nervous systems and relationships
How to approach embodiment and healing without urgency or performance
What real trauma-informed care looks like across various healing modalities
Whether you are a client, a practitioner, or simply someone navigating your own inner world — this is a conversation we all need to be having.
THE IMPORTANCE OF MINDFUL INVESTING & INGESTING IN THE HEALING SPACE
As the healing market grows, we have more access to modalities, content, environments, and “healers.” We are becoming more and more inundated with healing information. We are being sold products, services, and experiences that are telling us will change us forever — make our anxiety go away — fix the problem. There are more and more healers, spiritual mentors, and coaches than ever before. Healing is talked about on all platforms and people are ingesting this content like its candy. Why? Because we are CRAVING the validation for our internal world. Thus, our systems are taking it in and trying to digest it. Yet, we must ask ourselves…
What are we eating?
What are we investing in?
What are we asking to make money off of?
What is the role of integrity within the healing spaces as a client and a facilitator?
Are we eating content and ingesting energies from sources that are rooted in a trauma-informed approach?
If not, we may find ourselves as a society in a dangersome place. While the increase in the healing market is timely, beautiful, and incredibly necessary: we do need healing more than ever at this time; there is a raw truth that healing is increasing but trauma literacy has not kept up. If we don’t get real about the presence of trauma we will begin leaking all over each other. It is already happening. It requires awareness to stop it.
LEAKY ENERGY: DYSREGULATED NERVOUS SYSTEMS & LACK OF TRAUMA AWARENESS
The body is the portal to our trauma because our body keeps the score as Bessel Van Der Kolk shared and claimed. Our soma (bodies) are so wise. They know even what the brain may not comprehend, or what the brain disassociated from remembering in order to maintain survival for ones mental, emotional, spiritual, and relational wellbeing. The mind disconnects from trauma in attempt to promote safety. Later down the road, once safety is balanced, the body may begin showing the mind and bringing into cognition the trauma that was stored.
Leaky energy can occur when unresolved emotions and unmet needs unconsciously spill out into our relationships, environments and routines.
Therefore, slowly but surely the body is bringing emotions up to be purged. When we aren’t aware of whats happening, we leak this energy all over those around us, through: social media use, alcohol/drug use, vomiting our stressors over others without asking for a contained space, food addictions, touch without consent, overworking, projecting expectations onto those around us, and more. Relationally, we are taking on the unaddressed traumas from those around us and without dialogue around this, we simply don’t have the awareness to address the underlying root source of our societal disconnection —
We have to address trauma adequately.
Our nervous systems are shot. We don’t know how to regulate in a world with such normalized stimulation. The street lights. The phones. The billboards. The advertisements. The notifications. The inbox. The commercials. The radio stations. The news. The traffic. The food labels. The new item to buy. The rushing from here, to there, to everywhere. The check boxes never stop and neither do our minds.
CONTROVERSIAL OPINION ON THE INCREASE WITHIN MENTAL HEALTH
No wonder anxiety and depression and “ADHD” is on the rise.
CONTROVERSIAL OPINION: It’s not a mental health disorder — it is a disorganized societal structure.
For those who which this comment surfaces frustration within, I will name: I am validating each and every emotional experience. I, too, experience anxiety, sadness, worry, distraction, overstimulation, heightened heart rate, ruminating thoughts, and more.
What I am conveying is… these are experiences — merely a human experience. The moment we label this experience and diagnosis it, we attach to that label and it perpetuates the mind’s presentation of the physical symptoms. Learn more about the science behind physical and mental diagnoses within Joe Dispenza’s research or watch the new documentary: Source: It’s Within You.
With that all being said, trauma is under address and inadequately served. As the healing industry increases, it is critical that all professionals educate themselves on true trauma-informed care. Begin to learn about how the body stores trauma. Gain knowledge about the role of the mind, body, and spirit — science and spirituality — fact and mysticism. We are beyond these physical bodies. Yet, in this life, we get the privilege to learn how to become more and more embodied within these bodies.
Embodiment & the Key to Healing Through the Body
Em-body: into the body. Can we come into the body? Can we explore the body from the inside out? Can we get to know our own sensations? Can we get curious about what the signals are telling us? The body speaks. It is up to us to listen.
Our bodies are the place where we can unlock our healing. They key is a curious mind, and open heart and a trauma-informed lens. Pop that into the body, turn it and softly allow the rest to unfold.
Embodiment is not a rushed and forced process. It requires true and deep presence. Presence is another quality we are rarely taught to embody. Again, in a fast moving, achievement based western world, we want results and we want those results as quick as possible, don’t we?
Unfortunately, the reality is, the body cannot be hurried. Just as nature cannot be rushed and we allow it to move at its own pace. We must allow ourselves to move at our innate pace, as well. We, too, are nature. We are not separate from nature. Be still. Trust the process.
Breaking down Societal Values: Speed, Intensity, StRuggle & EFFICiENCY
Speed.
Healing is not scored upon the speed at which you move at. You are not better at healing if you do it faster. If you feel judged upon the rate at which you are accelerating, check the voices you’re listening to and most importantly, check your own. Some modalities, yes, will provide more rapid paced breakthroughs for you. However, it will be different than the person next to you. Just like we have different learning styles I like to say, we also have different healing styles. Stay curious as you explore what speaks to your body, mind, heart and soul.
Intensity.
Healing is not better if you make it more intense. You aren’t “doing it wrong” if you aren’t crying and you aren’t “doing it right” if you are experiencing these breakthrough, out of body visions. As a society, we must take away this expectation that healing must be intense if it is “working.” Healing is happening whether or not we are aware of it, at times. If we keep ourselves open to the healing process, the world will give us continual opportunities to heal within our day-to-day lives: with relationships, work experiences, bodily sensations, mental thought patterns, situational hurdles and more. If you are willing to look at your life through the lens of healing, you will realize that you are the only one making it harder than it needs to be.
Instead ask: “How is my current life inviting me into a newer, truer, more free version of myself?” “How is this challenge in front of me inviting me into new growth and evolution?” “What was I invited to perceive differently today?”
Struggle.
Healing. Does. Not. Need. To. Be. A. Struggle. Let me shout it from the rooftops. When we resist, we will feel and be met with more resistance. And no, I am not saying healing will then be comfortable, easy or light and airy. It will ask and require your courage. It will ask and require your resilience to sit with the discomfort. It will ask and require your contemplation. It will ask and require your honesty and responsibility. It will ask and require your willingness to choose the new. Yet, does it need to be something in which you mentally amplify its need to be harder in order for it to be effective? No. Please stop. If anything, please be the one who is kind and gentle to yourself. Be the source of warmth and embrace. Meeting yourself with hardness in your healing journey will immediately block you from the results you seek. For more insight into this, schedule your free 30-minute consultation with me today. I take an empowered approach to each client choosing self-compassion. If you don’t choose softness toward yourself, expect to elongate your symptoms of feeling “stuck” (Joe Dispenza on the Jay Shetty Podcast / Joe Dispenza on The Diary of a CEO).
Efficiency.
Healing is not a check-list item. It is not a 10-minute meditation where your to-do list for the rest of the day is running through your head… “But, hey! I meditated today!” That is simply doing yourself a disservice. We cannot check healing off our daily list because it deserves and quite frankly, it asks for and demands your full self to show up. Your full self, all parts of yourself: not just the ones that are “available” or that are more comfortable to welcome in. True healing will ask you to bring the parts of you that you stuffed down, rejected, abandoned, dissociated from, shamed, hated on, criticized, kicked to the curb, were abused for, bullied as a result of, exiled and more. All parts of you (IFS - Internal Family Systems) must be present for the layers of healing to be unfurled for your highest good. Layer by layer, your heaviness will purge from the inside out and levity and freedom will finally have the room to take its place.
What is True Trauma Informed Care
To me trauma informed care includes the presence of the following:
There is an incredible awareness of the body’s intelligence to store emotions.
There is a deep honor toward the wisdom of trauma’s timing & forms of expression.
There is conscientious creation of safety in the environment to welcome emotions.
There is clear dialogue around what may surface to give the client full autonomy.
There is always consent, trust building, & a variety of resources provided.
There is adequately trained support present before, during, & after any block of “healing.”
Where to look out for trauma-Informed Care
I encourage people to start doing further research and inquire about trauma informed care where-ever they are being served and cared for. The provided list in the graphics is only the beginning. Look out for trauma-based approaches in the following places:
Doctors Visits
Massage Practitioners
Yoga and Fitness Spaces (importance of consent for hands on touch)
Somatic and Holotropic Breathwork Experiences
Psychedelic Plant Medicine Paths
EFT Tapping Experiences (Emotional Freedom Technique)
Hypnotherapy or Meditation Journeys
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)
Sound Healing and Vocal Activations
Cold Plunging and Sweat Lodges
Light Therapies
PREVENTING RE-TRAUMATIZATION: ABOVE ALL, DO NO HARM AND DO GOOD
As clinicians, facilitators, space-holders, “healers,” we must watch out for our energy and our reasoning for all of our actions when holding space. We must get honest with ourselves,
Where am I choosing to say this from?
Is your approach actually countertransference disguised as a tendency to tell yourself that this is for their best good?
Where is my intention coming from?
Am I placing my own bias on my client unconsciously?
Is this in service to the client or in service to me?
Am I transferring my own unmet needs or motives?
In a society where we want to be “good” at what we “do” — good at how we serve — there can be a lot of self-applied pressure. This is where the values of speed, intensity, struggle and efficiency start bubbling up and pouring into our work. At this time, more than ever, we must be cautious, mindful and lovingly critical with ourselves. We are not being of more service if we aren’t giving our clients full autonomy and free-will in their healing process. We must watch out for the language we use, the spaces we are opening up for emotional dialogue, the consent conversations, the self-disclosure (leaky-energy) that can lead to a disruption of safety within the healing container, and plain and simple: our motives.
For those in the healing service realm, continue with further inquiry:
Am I giving from a full cup or a depleted one?
Am I serving from a place of scarcity? If so, how is that impacting my care?
Am I/Are we serving with the adequate trauma-informed support so that we can hold the trauma that may surface with true integrity and dignity for each and every individual?
Self-inquiry is critical at a time like this where the physical, systemic, cultural, and spiritual worlds are colliding and crumbling to rewire our bodies, minds, spirits, communities and structures. So, healers: we are being asked to step up.
“Instead of mindlessly re-ingraining the trauma wounds through unintentional “healing,” what if we moved slower & educated more?” -Rachel Jackson, MA MFT
Reflection Questions for those Inspired to “heaL”
Where do I notice urgency or pressure in my healing journey?
What’s one small shift I can make to move more slowly today?
How am I being invited into more softness and presence with myself in my healing journey?
Where can I approach myself with a more intentional trauma-informed lens?
Where do I find myself feeling curiosity pull me in my healing journey at this time?
IN CONCLUSION: A CALL TO DEEPER SERVICE
Responding to trauma should never be about how to “get it to go away” as fast as possible. It is about time we ditch the societal & self-imposed pressure to heal & quickly, with a desire to reach an illusive finality. Our healing is never “done” and completed. So, why rush it? Why force it? Why mindlessly serve without an intentional lens?
Trauma is present in all of us. Whether you realize it or not, whether its trauma you carry from your lifetime, repressed trauma that you don’t remember, trauma from your ancestral blood line or from past-lifetimes… The Body Keeps the Score.
May we all remember the power of our stories.
Yet, may we never let our stories define us.
May we always be of service through the lens of honoring our collective and innate wisdom.
COMMENT, SHARE, & CONNECT FURTHER
How did this blog sit with you? I would love to hear what is alive. Comment, share, email me or schedule a call to connect further!
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