Healing hurts, but not as much as not healing

The title of this post comes from a recent conversation on my Facebook page recently in which someone commented that “healing hurts.”

I have been on a healing journey since my first Saturn Return at the age of 28.  It’s a long and twisty story and one that you can find occasionally peeking from these pages, but suffice it to say that I am no stranger to the pain of emotional damage.  One of my specialties in my astrological practice is the healing of emotional wounds as signified by the planetoid Chiron.

All of us have been wounded to one extent or another, but the degree of emotional sensitivity is shown in the chart by the placement of Chiron. Some, like Robin Williams with a strong Saturn/Chiron aspect in his chart, experience that wound more intensely than others.  But all of us face experiences in our lifetime in which an old emotional wound will rise to the surface, seemingly out of nowhere, and demand attention.

This happened to me yesterday.  I’m not sure why the suicide of Robin Williams affected me so deeply and so personally, but I found myself face to face with old anxieties, fears and the wailing of a small child with no one to turn to – all surfacing from within my own psyche.

This old stuff is painful, and it usually seems as potent as it was when the original trauma occurred and the memory and feeling were stored in the neurologic pathways.  Over time we develop coping skills that keep these old emotions and fears from emerging, but until they are released they continue to linger until the psyche is strong and balanced enough for their emergence to occur.  At that point, if we are able to, the emotion can be released either in whole or in part, and healing can occur.

My own experience of this yesterday reminded me of the Facebook post.  Healing does hurt because release of old trauma often necessitates the full experience of the emotion and subsequent desensitization.  This is a painful and sometimes scary process.  But in the process of regurgitating this intense old stuff through breath and movement we can usually find real release, and ultimate freedom.  Note:  This kind of healing process may require facilitation by a qualified practitioner.  This post is not intended to promote any kind of healing modality over another, or to suggest that trauma release can be accomplished without facilitation.