The Healer's Shame Around Needing Help (And How We Undo It)

All right, this one is hitting a little bit too close to home. And you're going to witness me undoing this block in a real time. You ever taken on the role of being uh the graceful, kind, non-judgmental, always there if somebody needs somebody to listen. You've prided yourself on getting your own stuff in order so you can be there for others. And healing work comes really naturally and really easily to you. I think you and I need each other. Let's dive in. This is the healer's journey. My name is Inge Broer and today we're talking all about walking the healer's path by ourselves without the support we actually need.

So support for me is a tricky tricky tricky word. It is. It has been a tricky word since I was a young kid. It is a word that I'm actually trying to reclaim in my body as I'm working to heal my pelvic floor, 4 years postpartum, and probably 34 years post any issues starting there. So, this is one for me that's really living in my body. It is pulsing. It is alive. And it is a big deconstruction of all sorts of things I received culturally. And if they're true for me, I'm going to guess they're true for you as well, or at least at some level.

Walking the healer's journey alone, at first, it can feel really empowering and like freedom. When I started getting into these woo woo things, um the part of my personality that is kind of quirky and goofy, how to feel a day? Um even before I got into chakras or energy work, my friends in CJ, which is like late high school, early college, um identified me as Luna Loveg good. And I was like, "Huh?" But they saw me much better than I could see myself. And when I finally went into this path and I kind of declared, okay, yeah, I want to do healing work, I want to be a healer.

I don't remember ever saying that consciously because the word is still um yeah was so fraught with all sorts of connotations that I was not ready for. But it was freedom and it was like oh wow like I'm finding something that uh really fits part of my spirit. Like I remember reading um Stephen Hawkings book about quantum physics on the beach at OKH when I was like 19 and I couldn't really understand it but it just felt like a transmission to me. It felt like quantum physics was something I really needed to understand and um I went to watch the movie what the bleep do we know with my mom when I was about 16.

same thing like something in my body just like screamed yes. So at first it's a liberation and it it it it made me kind of walk my own path, differentiate from my people for you know we want to find ourselves and here I was finding myself that's amazing and then I ended up working at a um a school where they taught energy work and I did a whole certificate there and I um I was the coordinator with the teachers and many of them like mentored me and it was amazing and I really felt like I felt like I found my people.

So, at first it was like a a homecoming doing healing work. But at first, like learning healing work is also learning to receive support or at least it was for me because I was taught really well and I was asked to be embodying the work every step of the way. was always teaching not just theoretically very little theoretical. It was always taught in experience, always taught by doing. And it was incredible. And within those containers of group programs, I got a kind of support. I allowed people to see me in ways that were completely novel and different to me.

So in the beginning of my healer's journey, I was very very supported and it was a reckoning and it was like um it was it was a bit like a whole earthquake for me because all of a sudden I was in this world where I wasn't the one holding. I wasn't the one that was graceful and kind and non-judgmental and people would come to when they had problems or people would discuss things until some wisdom would emerge which of course like I love doing that. That is my favorite thing and always has been. But here I was being held in these containers.

And so it really learning to be a healer was medicine for me because I had all these other healers around me holding me as well. And it allowed for some truly deep work to happen in that network. not even having someone oneon-one really holding space for me. Although that happened too because the teachers could see that I was, you know, a 22, 23 year old who had a lifetime of holding her stuff in because she thought she had to be perfect to be worth something in this world. And they were like, "Yeah, we're going to we're going to help her.

We're going to give her some spaces to get to be messy, get to be in process." And I was just so so incredibly grateful and lucky to have that on my path. Like I didn't know I was going to tell the story on on this podcast, but I I feel that deeply. I don't talk enough about my origin story as a student of this healing or it was two to three years of working in this school where they taught acupressure, massage, um energy work and naturopathy. day in day out with the the students, doing newsletters, uh setting up the course schedule, all the things I do now in my own business and the coordinating with the teachers um and also doing my own courses and I'm learning and learning and learning and learning and learning was amazing.

But what happened then is I entered my girl boss era. So I um went back to school. I did my neurosychology degree. Um that kicked up back into gear all of my um got to be perfect, got to really criticize, got to be all that conditioning. Seriously. And I started my business. And if you've already started this part of the the healer's journey of starting a business, trying to do um to sell your healing work, there are it's like a mind field of beliefs that are not always aligned with the healing way.

And this can really reinforce this like I have got to do it all myself. I got to do it my own. So in the beginning when you are starting it feels very counterintuitive and weird to decide that without any clients without any money coming in you're going to yet again invest in somebody to hold you. So let me name just a few. Okay. The capitalistic model is saying okay I'm selling a service. I'm selling a result. Fair. You have done your own healing work. You've got some modalities. You've got some tools.

you've got some ways of providing something and we know that healing is the spiralic, right? So, you might be going through one healing journey and you come back to the other side feeling quite victorious and then boom, you reembark on it once again. And this can be quite tripping for the mind because here you are deciding, okay, I'm going to be focusing on something that I know. And for me that was very much perfectionism, social anxiety. And back then anyways, like the model of this was very much like before I had social anxiety and now I don't anymore.

It can be true for you as well. Except then when your next spiral inevitably happens, when your next layer of social anxiety gets excavated, when your next so level of perfectionism is being shown, you can feel like such a fraud. And you can feel that feeling that you're being a fraud can make you feel ashamed, which makes you not reach out to anybody because god forbid anybody knows that you still have the thing that you're selling that you can help with. Now, of course, I was it wasn't so bad for me because I was Reiki Montreal.

And so, all I had to do, can I still provide Reiki? Yes. Even with all of that, I wasn't selling a solution to something. I was selling Reiki. I was selling myself as a Reiki practitioner and energy healer. So, that's what saved me and that's what allowed me to look at these dynamics. That's why social media always felt like very icky and strange to me because at the time I was very much seeing these before and afters that I didn't really have something clear like that or I was seeing these big stories of transformation these big stories of rags to riches and I didn't have one like that for me it was little bit by little bit little by little bit and so even if I had started my healing journey and I had gotten a lot of support at the start as I moved into the business aspect of it.

Other questions took hold. The archetype and the trope of the healer being somebody who is healed. And if you are healed, you no longer need anybody. Right? I think it's wrong. I think the more healed you are, the more you realize that you do need other people. Life, despite what our culture of individualism has tried to convince us of, is way better when it's shared. Yes, it can be one of the beautiful aspects of life to learn to pull yourself up by the bootstraps. Um, figure out how to do a lot with not much.

uh to be humble, to not draw attention to yourself. But in the end, aren't we erasing ourselves in this nobility of doing it for others, being of service? And I so am touched by that. Like I'm I'm not negating that. But if we continue with that belief, if you we go with it further and further and further, there is a self eraser that happens. And this is this has Christian roots. I I believe personally my read on this is that in the middle ages life was wretched for a physical body. Life was pain.

And so if you could transcend your body and get disembodied and disassociate, you were seen as holy. You were seen as somebody like closer to God, closer to heaven. But when we do that, when we float up there, our soft animal bodies, I don't know. I don't know what it is about our soft animal bodies, but they don't they don't live in community as well. And this is, I believe, an era of where we have very good lives physically. And it is a time where at least my generation, we all have our Pluto and Scorpion, which is like excavating the deep stuff, like doing the deep healing.

I'm starting to wonder if we are not as a generation right now asked to do the deep healing of things that have been in our bodies since the Middle Ages and beyond. I believe we're really creating a whole new world with our healing work. So, we get disembodied and we get disassociated and we think we don't need anyone and we're oh so holy and everybody could come to us and we will give our last rib. Um because we are so kind and self- aacing and self-loving. When push comes to shove, we don't know how to receive.

And this happened for me when I had my son. I had been holding for others. I had been successful in the girl boss era thing. I had figured out how to twist myself into that package and I I did it well. There was something that felt like a bit shameful about it doing it well. Like succeeding in charging for it. That felt a bit shameful. I didn't feel like it could go back to my friends who weren't doing that. And then also um I was it felt like I was supposed to be able to let all the energy stream through.

That is what I was told. That is what I was teaching. And that is one of my spiralic things that I will forever be studying. And so getting support for that, it just felt like weird or it felt self-indulgent because there's another element to this where it felt like um if I get support, I felt like everything might break. Felt like I was holding it all together. And if I let myself be held and if I let myself be supported, I felt like there would be too much. And unfortunately, I had a few coaches because that confirmed that story for me.

A few people that I hired at lower rates at smaller containers because I was trying to, you know, bootstrap and do with not a lot. And it was confirmed like every time I would finally get some support, every time I would finally get some help and I hired I don't know maybe a dozen different coaches over the years. Um so much of them would be like whoa there's a lot there. Wow, that's there's a much. And it never hit me that badly in the moment. It felt a little bit like being seen in it, but it would always leave me with a bit of a sour taste in my mouth of like, see, nobody can heal, hold me, nobody can contain, help me grow.

And so I would continue the pattern of just holding it all, packing it all up. And I feel like there's a whole paradigm shift that is happening collectively but also in the healing world. And it is time that we figure out together and I don't have the full answer to this but I am attempting and I will be attempting for the rest of my life. How do we do networks of healing? How do we keep getting support all the way through? Are the current coaching packages are the current ways this work is done, are they adequate?

Are they overpriced? Are they all of these questions are things I've been asking myself. And so, this one's a little personal and wacky and wonky today. really telling you about my jour journey today offering myself as an example and part of that I'm going to have a vulnerability hangover over over after this for sure but part of this is to start breaking the spell that there's anybody out there that has it all figured out and that only when you have it all figured out you should be holding others cuz that doesn't make any sense either.

It's happened to me so many times that I'm personally doing like so so but then I get to hold space for someone and the healing lands for them and I feel better after and it's not just because of work. It's just like we need each other and helping each other heal is something that we need. So maybe there's something to reciprocal reciprocal healing that could be really beautiful. I've um experimented with that as well with like case study partners. One time they would work on me, then one time I would work on them.

I always felt so yeah vulnerable and exposed because of the things I just mentioned the the shame stories. This one doesn't have a nice bow on it would invite you invite you to take a breath. Just think of somebody who holds you and choose to start walking this path with someone else. So I told you my three chapters. Chapter one, the graceful natural healer just happily taking on things. Chapter two, being really supported and held for the first time. Chapter three, the girl boss era, offering healing for others.

And for a couple years now, I've been exploring my chapter 4. Chapter 4 is healing and community networks of healing. I would really like you to be a part of it. So, if you're listening to it on the day it drops, tomorrow, Thursday, April 10th, we're doing a healer reclaimed meditation to mark the launching of this podcast to mark us walking the healer's journey together. And if you're ready for your chapter two, where you're learning and beer being held more than you knew it was possible, healer embodied is for you.

We're putting case studies forward. You're getting one-on-one mentorship with me. We're doing group programs. We're really creating this network of healing. So, in it is Raiki 2, Raiki 3, the energy healing toolkit. If you've done all all of them already, come anyway because this is going to hit at a level that it's never hit before. This has been the Healer's Journey podcast. I'm Inge Broer. The music is by Lana Shakra. And thank you to everyone who is walking this healer's journey alongside me.

You mean a lot.