Five Myths of Healing
A Sermon Given
by Sarah Childs Grebe
August 9, 1998
at Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church
Bethesda, Maryland
Chalice Lighting:
"We are not meant to stay wounded. We are supposed to move
through our tragedies and challenges and to help each other move
through the many painful episodes of our lives. By remaining stuck
in the power of our wounds, we block our own transformation. We
overlook the greater gifts inherent in our wounds -- the strength to
overcome them and the lessons we are meant to receive through them.
Wounds are the means through which we enter the hearts of other
people. They are meant to teach us to become compassionate and
wise."
In honor of the challenges we face in our lives and the wounds
we must release to travel on, I light this chalice today. Amen.
Reading #1:
My readings and sermon today are taken from Caroline Myss
in Why People Don't Heal and How They Can.
"I believe I was being directed to pay attention to the ways we
expect to heal our lives -- through therapy and [through] 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
(emphasis added) healing. They have redefined their lives around
their wounds and [around] the process of accepting them. [But] They
are not working to get beyond (emphasis added) 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."
Reading #2:
"The only way to release the pattern into which we have
locked ourselves is to release the weight of the past -- to get out of
the energy debt we can no longer afford to carry. Forgiveness is one
sure way out of debt. Forgiving does not mean saying that what
happened to you doesn't matter, or that it is all right for someone to
have violated you. It simply means releasing the negative feelings
you have about that event and the person or persons involved." She
states that, while this is a difficult and complex psychological
process, the value of forgiveness is made explicit in the Christian
Gospel. For example, Jesus said of prayer, in Mark 11:25,
"Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against
anyone; so that your Father also who is in heaven will forgive you
your offenses."
"Forgiveness is extraordinarily valuable, but it isn't the only
way to free up energy. Some of the events in the past we need to
release are not negative events but good times. You may not be able
to let go of the fact that your are no longer twenty -- you are fifty or
eighty [or older]. You may not be able to let go of the youthful
appearance you once had, or your athletic ability, or the former
quickness of your mind. This inability is another way of losing
energy by spending it on the past."
Reading #3:
"Refusing to let go of past events, whether positive or
negative, means throwing away some part of your daily energy
budget. If you start losing energy and don't do anything about it, you
will inevitably develop a weakness in your physical body."
"Nonetheless, even the holiest of people can and do become
ill. Extraordinarily saintly people have contracted the commonest
diseases, including painful cancers. Yet despite their physical
challenges, these saints and sages still strove to understand
themselves, to exercise compassion and to connect with the Divine
energy that directed their lives. While they may not have cured
themselves of physical illness -- or even tried to do so-- they healed
into an acceptance of Divine will and the higher purpose of their
lives."
Sermon:
While we may not, as Unitarian Universalists, accept the
concept of Divine will, I think there is much we can learn from
looking at the concept of woundology and of the healing myths
postulated by Caroline Myss. For example: Do we use our wounds
to connect socially or romantically with others? For those of you
saying an emphatic, "NO!" think about how you relate to those you
meet and to your friends and relatives. And how they relate to you.
When you see someone after a period of absence, do you launch into
a list of all the things that have befallen you? Or maybe you find
yourself unable to respond to someone's good news, but with their
bad news you can sympathize.
Myss maintains that it is virtually impossible not to be
influenced by a personal history of emotional or psychological
wounds. According to her, both literally and symbolically, wounds
permeate our blood and our bodies. These wounds are like
diversionary canals that drain the water and the spirit out of the river
of our lives. The more wounds we have, the more effort we have to
put into calling our energy back, stopping up the energy drains and
otherwise attending to our healing process. No matter the number
and depth of these diversions, true healing requires that our life force
be redirected back into our own life.
Many people come to believe, however, that their lives are
only a compilation of their psychological wounds and further they
believe they can do little to actually heal these wounds.
In her book, Why People Don't Heal and How They Can,
Myss talks about how she discovered the idea that she terms
woundology. She describes meeting two different women within a
day of each other, who, without any apparent provocation, voluntarily
revealed to complete strangers, the most intimate details of their
having been victims of incest. Both these women were in and had
been in for some time support groups specifically developed for
victims of incest and yet both seemed unable to move beyond these
admittedly powerful past events in their lives. Not only had incest
become the defining moment in each of these women's lives, it had
become the only definition of who they were and how they viewed
everything in the present. This was so much the case, that one of
these women demanded she be allowed to act rudely to others,
dominating all conversations because she had once been abused.
Myss, who was present when both women made these startling
revelations, asked each of them why each felt compelled to reveal this
very personal and intimate information to strangers. Both women
were outraged at what they deemed Myss's lack of compassion. How
dare she question anything about their behavior. Myss says she was
struck by both the women's seeming compulsion to reveal such
information to strangers and by the close proximity in time of these
two very similar incidents. She says she does not believe her
witnessing these similar events one right after the other was merely
a coincidence.
In fact, the belief held by these two women constitutes
Caroline Myss's first myth of healing:
MY LIFE IS DEFINED BY MY WOUND
After experiencing a traumatic or tragic experience, some
people tend to look at every new experience through the lens of the
wound the tragedy inflicted on them. They project their past
experience onto everything that has since come into their lives. They
describe their life as a continuum of personal and professional
disasters that cannot change because their wounded past has stolen
from them all positive opportunities that could have or should have
come their way. This state of mind is sad, self-limiting and defeatist,
but some people derive great power in maintaining it because it gives
permission to lead a life of minimum expectation and limited
responsibility.
If you want to find out if you might define your life by your
wounds, ask yourself these questions:
- Do I makes excuses for why I'm not doing more
positive things with my life?
- Do I compare my history of wounds with the wounds
of others? If so why?
- If I do feel more "wounded" than someone else, does
that make me feel more empowered?
Of these three questions, the one I can recall having engaged
in most is the second. I have found myself comparing wounds with
those of others -- either in conversations with certain people or in my
thoughts. Not to make excuses for myself, but I have come to realize
that for me at least, this is a natural stage in the healing process. As
I talk about the negative event or series of negative events that I have
experienced, they begin to lose their sting and their power to continue
to affect my life negatively. This reviewing of past negativity and
disappointments is a part of most "talking" therapies. I think,
however, that Caroline Myss' point is that we run the risk, without
proper guidance, of becoming stuck in this stage, and of losing our
perspective and our ability to learn from our experience and then
when it is time, to move on. We need to learn how to let go of the
past and not to dwell in it to the exclusion of the present and the
future. But to do so can be scary.
It's scary because of the second myth of healing:
BEING HEALTHY MEANS BEING ALONE
According to Caroline Myss, some psychologically wounded
people believe that becoming healthy and attaining independence
would automatically result in their also becoming isolated and
vulnerable. Myss says that this fear of what she terms "heroic
independence" -- and by extension, of being alone -- lies at the core
of their inability to heal psychologically and sometimes physically.
Moreover, such people believe, that once they are healed, they will
always be healed. Thus with the onset of health they think their need
for emotional and psychological support will somehow evaporate all
together. This mistaken idea is just another variant of the archaic
belief that once we reach the Promised Land, we have no more
traveling to do. I have seen this belief operating in people in my
professional work, so I know what she says can be true. But why
would people who are healing and who are healed not need
companionship and friendship like anyone else? Being whole
emotionally and spiritually does not mean that you can't or don't have
companionship. As Myss says, healing does not represent the closure
of the needs of the heart; rather, it is a doorway toward opening your
heart.
Ask yourself:
- Am I afraid that if I heal, my support group or my
friends with whom I have shared my wounds will
abandon me or be less sympathetic to me?
- When I picture myself as healed, am I the only one in
the room?
- Do I see the sharing of my emotional wounds as a
means of bonding with another person, and does
healing these wounds mean having to separate from
that person?
For me, the last one hits home most, especially if I have
originally forged a bond or seemingly strengthened the bond through
sharing my wounds with a particular person. When this is the case,
it seems particularly hard to then refocus the relationship on the more
positive.
Let me move on now to the third myth of healing:
FEELING PAIN MEANS BEING DESTROYED BY PAIN
Because pain usually represents the presence of illness, Myss
says it is normal to believe that all pain is negative. But pain can be
a teacher or a messenger directing us to pay attention to our bodies or
to move away from behavior and situations in which we are weak, to
those in which we practice integrity and strength.
For a revealing look at your own approach to pain, ask
yourself these four questions:
- Do you always think of pain as being an enemy?
- Have you ever learned anything from physical pain?
If so, what?
- To cope with pain, are you more inclined to take
chemical medication or to use meditation or some
other discipline?
- Have you ever been addicted to pain medication or
sleeping pills?
I would like to focus on the second one of these questions,
"Have you ever learned anything from physical pain?" since I am
right in the middle of my own lesson on this one.
Last year in the spring, I found myself furiously trying to
complete a critical phase of my dissertation research which involved
designing, printing, stuffing envelopes and mailing nearly 800 copies
of a research questionnaire. This was extremely labor intensive and
exhausting and in the middle of it all, I came down with a terrible
case of the flu which flattened me for several weeks. But I took
various over-the-counter remedies and vitamin C and plowed on.
Then I came down with bronchial pneumonia which I really could not
ignore, since I could not talk or move, only hack and cough and
groan. It got so bad that my oldest daughter, who was spending her
spring semester in Bogota, Colombia, called me long distance and
begged me to take care of myself, because she was afraid I might die.
Well that call got my attention and I took steps to slow down.
Over the summer, I started to feel much better and resumed
work. Then last September, Steve, my former husband, died
suddenly and a series of unbelievable and emotionally painful events
unfolded in the aftermath of his death. As all of this progressed, I
told myself, that no matter what, I could not afford to get sick again.
I was quite proud of myself, I continued to work at the same pace, I
dealt with the legal hassles that ensued, tended to the needs of my
remaining family, and I didn't get sick. No flu, no pneumonia, not
even a cold. I thought this lack of illness showed that I had learned
my lesson from the previous spring. Then in March of this year, I
went for a long walk in the rain (the rain part was not planned) and
even though I knew I had pushed myself a little too far, all in all,
there was nothing out of the ordinary about the day. However, after
I got home, when I sat down to rest and then tried to get up, I could
not move. I had ruptured a disk in my spine. I was flat on my back
for four weeks. I was in such pain that when I tried to roll over in
bed, my body just laughed. Clearly it was trying to tell me
something. I guess that I needed to relearn or perhaps deepen the
learning of the lesson I thought I had already gained from the illnesses
of the previous year. With this back injury, I went through months of
physical therapy and spinal adjustments and fortunately made a fairly
fast recovery. By June of this year, I was finally ready to get back to
work. I had (I thought) released the awful events of the past year and
was feeling pretty feisty. I joked to one of the ministers here at Cedar
Lane, that it's a good thing I am a Unitarian Universalist, because,
otherwise, with all the things that had happened, if I were not UU, I
would think God were testing me!
I did realize I needed to figure out what I could learn from this
painful back injury. Clearly, I needed to slow down. I could also
benefit, I thought, from figuring out how to effectively balance all the
various elements in my life and my physical need to take things more
slowly in the wake of a year of psychic pain and physical exhaustion.
However, in spite of the clear message the back injury seemed to
convey, I simply could not seem to slow down until all the things
waiting for me to complete were taken care of. I wanted all of them
to be over and done with and only then did I feel I could relax.
Have you guessed what is coming? Just when I was back full
steam, I re-injured my back! So what didn't I learn? Well I didn't
learn patience, because this time, I am not at all serene about the pain
I have been in, and I am certainly not patient with my injury and I
cannot wait for it all to be over so I can finish the work waiting for
me. I have been asking myself what is the matter with me that I can't
get it right!
And this leads me to the fourth myth of healing:
ALL ILLNESS IS THE RESULT OF NEGATIVITY AND
WE ARE DAMAGED AT OUR CORE.
I tell myself I don't really believe this. But we certainly are
surrounded by examples of this belief everywhere.
Caroline Myss says that our thoughts powerfully influence the
health of our minds and bodies, and delving into our inner selves is
essential to the healing process. However, she says, negative patterns
are not always at the root of illness, i.e., sometimes a cigar is just a
cigar. She also says that a failure to heal should not always be
blamed on negative past experiences or on negative beliefs buried
deep in the unconscious mind. Whew! Maybe, I am off the hook!
Well I know that is not true for everything, but it is comforting to
know that some things are just what they seem, including illness.
Myss also says that healing from illness would be better
served if we investigated our past for positive patterns as well as
negative ones, because what we really need is to bring our strong and
enduring parts into better focus. Instead, many people focus on the
negative to the exclusion of the positive, and seem to forget all that
is good and whole about themselves and about their lives.
I know this to be true from my work with divorcing couples.
More times than not, such couples have forgotten all the wonderful
things that attracted them to each other in the first place and instead
focus on the often quite ugly things that transpired near the end of
their relationship. This is normal. But this tendency to emphasize the
negative over the positive is so prevalent that in some cases, one
divorcing spouse will, for example, insist that one single negative
instance of negative behavior constitutes a pattern on the part of their
mate and act as if the many other instances of good behavior count for
nothing. We do this to ourselves individually as well, where we kick
ourselves for one instance of backsliding (hmmmm, interesting
choice of words) and ignore all the real progress we have made.
If you are interested in whether you believe in this myth, ask
yourself these questions:
- Am I always searching for what I did to deserve my
illness?
- Do I believe that until I uncover what I did wrong, I
won't be able to heal?
- Do I find myself dwelling on negative experiences
from the past, believing that doing this actually
enhances my healing?
For me, the first one, "Am I always searching for what I did
to deserve my illness?" seems most relevant. I frequently search for
what I did to deserve my illness or to deserve the bad things that
happen to me. I think this is the pitfall that a lot of people fall into.
We struggle to make sense of our lives and of the difficult events that
occur. I know that this past year has been a real trial for me in this
area, as one bad thing after another happened to me without any
apparent rhyme or reason. If something bad happens and we can
explain it by or blame it on our own past behavior, then at least we
seem to have some control over our lives and the events in them. As
Unitarian Universalists, we may try to do this even more than other
western faiths, since most of us probably don't believe that the various
things that befall us are due to some divine plan or are a result of
God's will.
This leads directly to the Fifth Myth of Healing:
TRUE CHANGE IS IMPOSSIBLE
Caroline Myss says that this myth is particularly debilitating
because it has such clout within our psyches, regardless of our
physical health or well being. None of us really likes change itself
and most of us do not like to change. Most people like the status quo
because it is familiar. I can't begin to tell you how many times I have
had clients lament the supposed unwillingness to change of their
spouse, ex-spouse, mate, partner, child, parent, etc., but when asked
what they themselves could do to change the situation, become
agitated and deny that they themselves changing could be needed or
useful. Most people, if they do want things to change, want someone
else to do the changing, rather then themselves. They don't want to
see what they are doing themselves to contribute to the problem, often
because doing so would logically result in their needing to make some
changes themselves and change is scary. "Why do I always have to
be the one to change," they ask. The status quo is very powerful.
I know this for myself as well. I have already described my
recent back problems and how hard it has been for me to change my
patterns of behavior that clearly contribute to the physical situation
for me.
But to really be ready to heal, I must come to recognize that,
as Caroline Myss states, healing and change are one and the same
thing. Healing and change are composed of the same energy. We
cannot seek to heal an illness without first looking into what
behavioral patterns and attitudes need to be altered in our lives. Once
those characteristics are identified, we have to do something about
those patterns.
The tricky part here is that saying we need to change certain
patterns in order to heal may seem contradictory in light of our having
refuted the previous myth about our illnesses being a result of our
being damaged to our core. But in truth it is not. The need to make
changes in unhealthy behavior patterns cannot be equated with being
a bad person. I can be a good person and still need to change
unhealthy patterns in my life. Just think -- if we all had nothing to
learn in this lifetime, wouldn't life be rather boring? I actually do
believe this, even if right now I could do with a little more boredom
in my life.
Myss says that our belief that we are damaged at our core is
accompanied by the belief that we are not worthy of help of any kind,
human or divine, or of acting on any of the help offered to us.
Ask yourself these questions:
- Do you think about change more than you act to bring
it about?
- Do you always imagine that change will be
troublesome and depressing rather than
adventuresome or exciting?
- Do you think of change as something that will make
your life feel out of control and chaotic?
I did not immediately relate to any of these questions. I know
that I have at times had difficulty changing ingrained patterns when
such change was clearly necessary, but these specific questions did
not immediately capture my pattern. But then I recalled how hard it
had been for me to find the energy to move my office when the old
space I was in was clearly no longer suitable. In fact it took the
building being sold and closing down around me to pry me out of it.
I am much happier in the new space, even though it is a bit farther
away from my home than the old and even though the closing that
forced me out came right in the middle of all the other turmoil of the
past year. It really was a bad time to move. But if I had moved after
one of the ten or eleven times I had previously considered it, this
would not have simply been one more thing I had to cope with in the
middle of everything else.
In closing, let me recap the five myths of healing:
1. "MY LIFE IS DEFINED BY MY WOUND"
2. "BEING HEALTHY MEANS BEING ALONE"
3. "FEELING PAIN MEANS BEING DESTROYED BY PAIN"
4. "ALL ILLNESS IS THE RESULT OF NEGATIVITY AND WE ARE DAMAGED AT OUR CORE"
and
5. "TRUE CHANGE IS IMPOSSIBLE."
Myss says she has rarely met anyone who does not believe in
at least one of these five myths. She says that because they are so
rampant, breaking free of them and the thought and behavior patterns
that accompany them is very hard work. But, she says, "Don't fear
the despair or exhaustion that you will inevitably feel . . . No one can
remain positive and strong all the time, not even under the best of
circumstances."
Please stand for the closing hymn.
Closing Words:
"Even though you are not to blame for your illness, you will
need to look within to learn to cope with it, find meaning in it, live
with and through it and heal it. Where else have we to look? We can
stare at the heavens, but ultimately we are always in our bodies. We
wonder about our place in the scheme of things. We wonder about
the nature of God, we wonder about the length of our lives. In truth,
we have no choice but to move ever more closely into ourselves --
the only way out, as the expression goes, is to go in."
AMEN.
Today's Chalice Lighting, Readings, Sermon topic and closing words
are drawn from Caroline Myss's book Why People Don't Heal and
How They Can.
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