Take Two & Call Me in the Morning

Alternative title: Healing Over There Ain’t Like Healing Over Here.

If you would have asked me 5 years ago whether I felt working healing people would be in my future, I would have laughed in your face and told you no. Even now, I have a hard time coming to grips with the fact that a large part of what I do Over There technically falls under the category of “healing”. Much like the medical field here in the Seen, there are many different types of healing that I’ve come across during my travels. And much like over here, there are many people who specialize in a certain type of healing. The notion that there is someone who can cure everything or do it all seems to be pretty scarce in the places I’ve been, and if you live in the bad parts of town like I do- and you’re smart- you’ll have a Rolodex filled with different healers who have different specializations. That way, when you end up with random health problems, you’ll have plenty of people to pick from to get yourself patched up.

And that’s probably the hardest part about healthcare Over There- there are just so many damned ways to get hurt that don’t exist over here. Some things are very literal like they are here-you take in a virus that needs to be worked out of your system or maybe you break a limb that needs to be reset and not used until it heals up. But generally speaking, the stuff that goes wrong there is not the type of thing you run into here.

Limbs don’t break very often there, unless you’re in a plane with really rigid physics. Nope. Instead you get limbs that get eroded off by poison laced weaponry. Or you find that someone ate two of your fingers off, and now you have to either learn how to re-grow those fingers, or find someone who can recreate those fingers and stitch them back onto you.

Other times you’ll get things like energetic infections- where your energy lines (possibly the equivalent to blood vessels or nerves in the human body) start feeling like fire every time you’re awake. Or sometimes you’ll get things shoved into you (literal things, yes) that end up emitting an illness from the inside- and in those cases you have to fish the item out (this is not as easy as it sounds), and then combat the infection that is now in your system.

There are also illnesses that can effect bond lines or threads- and there are people who perform surgeries and other similar methods to help clean those up or remove bonds and threads that are destroying a person’s health. And because bond lines are super fun and so many things are connected, what infects you could very well infect your entire house because it travels down the bond line. Kinda like when one kid comes in with a cold, and infects everyone in their class. And then those kids go home and infect their parents, who then go to work and infect their coworkers. If you’re not careful, it’s really easy for one well placed illness or injury to take out an entire household in the span of a few hours. Which is why the Rolodex is so important.

I also think it becomes pretty obvious pretty quickly why there are specializations. It’s difficult to learn and master all of these various areas of focus, and even seasoned healers come across new stuff that they have to formulate solutions to. However, no matter what focus you specialize in, there are a few lessons that seem to be applicable to all healers that are working Over There. Here are some lessons that I’ve picked up over the few years that I have been poking around people’s insides:

Lesson One: Leading Horses to Water Doesn’t Always Work

The first lesson to learn about healing Over There is that it is very difficult to heal someone who doesn’t want to be healed. This is less of an issue if you happen to be a healer that can tell someone to take some medication and call it day. However, most healers that I’ve met require their patient to be compliant and willing in order for healing to be successful- and you’d be surprised how hard it is to find patients that are both willing and compliant.

This is probably a big deal for me due to the type of work that I perform. Generally speaking, the work I do would be the equivalent to some forms of shadow work performed over here. And like many people here, many of the entities that I’ve worked on have wanted to be healed in a sort of abstract, distant kind of way. But for whatever reason they weren’t ready or prepared to do all of the work that comes with the process of healing. There have been many occasions where we will begin the healing process, only to have the entity revert or regress a short time later. Old habits die hard, and the death of those habits is usually part and parcel of the healing process. An inability to face that usually results in backtracking once a healing session is finished, and I have witnessed more than my fair share of backtracking in the time that I’ve been working Over There. This, of course, can be frustrating when a patient comes back a few weeks later, and you see all of the hard work you put into them completely undone like it was nothing. Which brings me to lesson two…

Lesson Two: Distance is Crucial

The second lesson I learned about healing is that you must be distant in order to be effective. This isn’t to be confused with being calloused- as that usually doesn’t get you anywhere either. What I mean is that you must always be in control of your emotions, and you must remain a bit at arms length from whoever you are working on. To draw on an example that is probably closer to home- imagine if you called the ambulance because you just got run through with something. If the ambulance showed up at your house, and all of the EMTs came out and started panicking and crying, you’d end up dieing on your living room floor. Or if the EMTs got you to the hospital, but your surgeon saw you and broke down in the operating room because they were devastated over your condition, you’d be likely to die yet again.

Healing over there is no different. You will traipse through people’s awful memories and have to stay compassionate but composed as they break down in your lap. You will have hurt people lash out at you and call you all sorts of names, and you have to not let it effect your mood. You have to learn how to keep your head above their water while keeping them from drowning- all while they scream profanity at you.

And when your patient comes back a few weeks later with all of your work undone, you have to be able to not explode in their face. To do so would likely cause more harm than good, and it would end up undoing even more of your work.

Lesson Three: It’s Not About You

I personally think this is the most important lesson to learn hands down, and it is something that I have experienced both over here and Over There, and it’s something that I’ve seen many people fail at many many times.

When you are healing someone, it is not about you. It is about them and what they need in order to be healed.

To bring up the person showing up a few weeks later, you may want to yell at them. You may want to teach them a thing and ream them about how they are screwing everything up. But much like parents who yell at their children at the worst possible time, doing what feels gratifying in the short term will often result in backtracking in the long term. Part and parcel to being distant from whoever you are healing, you must learn that you are not the focus of this situation.

This can extend beyond wanting to yell at someone, too. Putting your patient’s needs first means that when their body truly says “I am done”, you oblige them. Putting your patient’s needs first means that your expectations and desires come after whatever is truly needed for healing to take place. I’ve experienced this in a number of ways throughout the years. I had mentioned my friend “Waffles” in a previous post where he ultimately decided that he no longer wished to continue forward, and opted to essentially be euthanized. It was me that had to handle that.

In another situation I was healing someone who we expected to stick around and stay with my household after we were done. Except that once the healing took hold, he faded off and disappeared to who knows where. There have been other times where relationships have to be purely platonic while healing is occurring- because that’s what is needed, even though it wasn’t what either of us really wanted.

In every situation where healing is occurring, you have to remember to keep your needs second to the needs of your patient. If you can’t do that, then you are not the right healer that is required for the job. Sometimes there are certain cases that you’re not able to take on or shouldn’t take on, and sometimes you need a healer that is further removed from whatever is going on to get the job done right.

Lesson Four: Know When You’re Out of Your League

Healing is one of those things where you never really know what to expect when a patient walks through your door. There are times when people come in, and it’s an easy case where you can get it done quickly and send them on their way. Then there are other times when someone walks in, and you don’t even know where to begin. Learning how to figure out when to keep trying to heal a difficult case, and when to pass that case onto someone else with a different skill set can be the difference between someone who is successfully healed, and someone who ends up worse for wear.

This easily ties back into lesson three and remembering that it’s not about you. Letting your ego, feelings or desires get in the way of a healing session that you’re not really able to handle can prove disastrous not only to the patient, but yourself as well. I know that I want to be able to fix everyone that comes my way, but there are times when I know I’m in over my head and I know that I’m not the best person for the job. Being able to come to terms with that, and being able to pass the patient over to someone who has better tools to fix them is important. Because, again, it’s not about you- its about what the patient needs in order to heal.

There are obviously many other caveats, lessons, and things I could write about healing Over There, and this list only barely scratches the surface. However, hopefully it gives at least some sort of basic primer for anyone who has ever considered taking up healing in the Unseen, or will give some tips for anyone who has accidentally found themselves charged with the task of healing someone else Over There.

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