Last night, I invited a colleague to do an integrity scrub of my healing services. Someone who’s very sensitive to healer’s being even the slightest bit “off.”
As I’ve grown as a healer, my sessions have gotten increasingly less controlled. The only thing I do these days is create a container in which trust is possible, and then trust that whatever wants to happen, will.
I create that trust by being vulnerable. Owning, as best I can, when even the slightest bit of “not trust” is present in my system. Which requires A LOT of trust on my part.
There are parts of me that think, “How can we be of service by admitting all the ways in which we are falling short of our stated intention? Aren’t we supposed to be the expert who models how to do something excellently? Aren’t we supposed to focus on them and not us?”
But to cave into those fears would only limit the shape of what can happen in our time together. Trust is trust. Any effort to control is not trust. What’s ultimately healing is not what I can do for someone else, but what they learn to allow in themselves.
So, after setting the container, permissioning co-creation, and sitting in the silence necessary to discover what wants happen, the first thing that arose in me were fears and insecurities of doing this wrong. So I voiced my insecurities. Even though one of the first things she said to me from the outset was that the most common way that healers fail their clients is by not being able to hold themselves while holding the container.
If what was true for me meant that I was failing as a healer, then I had to risk that. I couldn’t just sweep my truth away in hopes of appearing to be a good healer. I want to become the best healer I can. And I can’t do that if I don’t allow myself to heal along the way.
I can hear the critics saying, “Do your healing on your own time, you’re supposed to be there for the client!” But I can’t count the number of times where the healing that wanted to happen with a client required me to go somewhere I’d never gone before to help them. The more I’m willing to upgrade in real time, the more doors we can open together.
It’s like that scene from The Matrix where Neo asks Trinity if she knows how to fly the helicopter, and she calmly replies, “Not yet.” before instructing Tank to give her the pilot program that teachers her how to fly it right then and there. Imagine her saying, “Sorry, I’m here to rescue Morpheus. It would be selfish to grow as a person while doing so. My apologies for ruining the film.” 🤷
Anyway, back to the healing session. I share my insecurities. Trust is built. Compassion shared. And the shape that the healing session ends up taking is that a young, brilliant part in her ends up leading and teaching me.
Can you imagine a chef inviting a food critic to give him a review and then saying, “I noticed that you brought your little one. Instead of feeding you off of the menu, how about we let her tell me her favorite foods and how she wants them prepared and trust the creation will delight us all?”
Y’all. That’s exactly what ends up happening.
I surrender control. I connect with this little one. She starts teaching me all sorts of things about how I avoid grief, and the wisdom I lose access to by doing so.
“The deeper you allow grief, the deeper you allow love.”
At some point I slip back into adulting and she feels unmet, so I surrender once more and my body drops to the floor, and I end up crawling under my bed. I don’t know why I’m crawling under my bed, but I trust it.
Turns out that grief and loss are some of my deepest fears. Even deeper than rejection and abandonment (because rejection and abandonment lead to grief and loss). And when I’m under my bed I realize, “This is where monsters are alleged to be. When I embrace grief and loss, I realize there’s nothing to fear.”
Then, at the very end, while debriefing, we unpacked that what this little one wanted most was to be seen by someone else. Not just her and her mom. My willingness to see her brilliance and play with her on her level was exactly what was needed.
How Much Can Your Trust Hold?
I’m starting to learn that the wider I can hold trust, the more easily life can bless me.
Narrow trust defines success narrowly. If life drifts outside my desired range, I either have to risk failure or nudge my life back toward how I define success.
Wide trust gives success a wide berth. I don’t need to control the outcome because I can trust nearly any possible outcome, and that it will eventually lead to success.
This gives me tremendous freedom. And it’s something I want to invite more and more people to create for themselves.