In this series, I am reviewing the Cliff Notes of everything I should have learned in medical school but did not, as well as what I have learned since from my own research and self-study about healing. If you have not yet read the first 10 revelations about healing that I didn’t learn in medical school, please read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.
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Healing is an interdisciplinary process. Western culture focuses on breaking whole systems down into their constituent parts and then developing expertise in smaller and smaller reductionistic splits. However, healing requires a step back and looking at all aspects of yourself in a new relationship with each other. Breaking up the healing process into silos robs you of your opportunity to heal.
Medicine, psychology, spirituality, and science are all tangled together and cannot (and should not) be peeled apart. Healing does not behave according to the principles of the Cartesian mind/body/spirit split. The etymology of the word “healing” comes from the Proto-Germanic word “khailaz,” which translates as “to make whole.” Therefore, healing is a unifying phenomenon that restores academic splits into a reunion of integration.
Optimal health requires regular nervous system hygiene. Nervous system hygiene requires caring for your own safety, emotional health, relationships, and protection from abuse or exploitation. To practice nervous system hygiene and bring your nervous system into an optimally healthy state capable of somatic self-repair, you have to heal trauma. Developmental trauma and other “little t” traumas affect every one of us and impact our health. Therefore, healing and adequately treating psychological, emotional, and spiritual trauma is essential for whole health healing.
Lasting cure requires physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual healing. Conventional medical interventions might cure disease temporarily, but unless the necessary healing also happens, patients are likely to get sick again. Likewise, you might temporarily feel better if you engage in spiritual practices or interventions, but you can’t bypass the necessary psychological and emotional healing with spiritual healing alone.
Trauma healing and nervous system hygiene require basic safety and survival needs getting met, psycho-education, nurturing resilience, resourcing, and meaning-making, understanding adaptive strategies, embodiment practices, and somatic mindfulness, nervous system regulation, metabolizing implicit sensations, emotions, and memories, treating negative core beliefs, installing a new identity and rewriting your story, and safe, brave communities of healing. Positive Childhood Experiences (PCEs) can also protect against the harm caused by Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs).
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