A Straightforward Plea for Healing and Self-Responsibility

It occurred to me the other day that we humans are (generally) in desperate need of inner healing. This is not news, of course — but it suddenly hit me with great force.

For I realized: as our world seems to be imploding and crumbling around us, we always, always look to external causes and external solutions only. If we can just DO this, or tweak that, or manipulate some process, or fix this problem — then everything will be OK, and things will just ‘work out.’

Well … NO. Things will not just ‘work out,’ because we human beings ourselves are not ‘working out.’ It’s the height of idiocy — and of human arrogance — to think that we just can remain ‘as is,’ and yet somehow, it’s all going to ‘work out.’

Plus, we humans ourselves are not ‘working out’ in several different ways: first, our technological and scientific knowledge has far outstripped our emotional, mental, and moral evolution; second, our rapid population and consumerism surge over the past 50 years is straining the carrying capacity of the planet; and third, we’re not making good use of the therapeutic and healing tools we already have, and aren’t choosing conscious growth and healing … and thus also aren’t ‘working out’ mentally or emotionally (in a close parallel to physical training workouts).

It’s this third kind of ‘working out’ — or not ‘working out’ — that I want to explore today.

Refusal, regression, and suppression

I’ll start with a question: Why are most people so, so afraid of entering their inner world, exploring it, and dealing directly with inner issues or ‘problems’ they encounter?

This question — and its answers — may help us get to the root of why humans generally choose to NOT ‘work out’ on this inner level.

What amazes me — and greatly concerns me — is this: over the past century, and especially the last sixty years, we have made astounding progress in our understanding of the human mind and emotions, and in our methods of psychological and emotional healing as well — yet most people still simply refuse to ‘go there,’ and refuse to make use of the wonderful tools and information we have at our disposal.

Or, if they don’t refuse outright, they’re often strongly discouraged from ‘going there.’

Somehow, just as our horizons were really opening up, and our possibilities and potentials were expanding greatly — a great societal ‘closing’ and counter-reaction set in, and actively sought to reverse many decades of real progress.

How and why did this happen?

A revealing personal anecdote

Here’s a personal story that illustrates this awful trend. In the late 70s and early 80s, I explored and utilized several types of psychotherapy, and also went back to school and got a Master’s degree in Counseling and Psychology. My therapy experience was very positive, as was my counseling training, and I was looking forward to utilizing my counseling skills and helping others experience healing and inner breakthroughs.

So, I took a job as a ‘Milieu Therapist’ at a nearby psychiatric hospital; I would be part of a multi-disciplinary treatment team and would mingle with the patients, run group therapy sessions, and do some individual counseling as well. It all sounded great, and very positive — and at first, it was.

But soon I started noticing a strange, negative (in my view) trend. Though the hospital and the doctors gave lip service to counseling and various psychotherapies, what they mainly focused on and believed in was drugs: medication ‘therapy.’ To them, medications were the essential therapy, and the others were useful only as secondary ‘adjunct’ therapies.

To me, however, this seemed ass-backward and just plain wrong. At one point, doctors had wanted to put me on anti-depressants, but I resisted and instead sought out psychotherapy — which worked wonders for me. So, to me, actual inner work and therapy were the essential healing processes — and drugs just helped balance people’s chemistry and set the stage for the real inner healing.

But I soon realized that my attitude toward healing was very, very different from the prevailing attitude at the hospital. There, the focus was on the ‘wonders’ of psychoactive medications — and using them to quickly ‘fix’ the patients.

However, with that belief system fully ‘in control,’ the actual inner work of therapy and healing got short shrift, and was basically shunted aside.

And in the 40 years since then, this ‘quick fix’ belief system has spread and accelerated.

Big mistake.

Real inner healing is too liberating — and ‘dangerous’

Why is that attitude mistaken? It’s a question of priorities and fears, I think: in our society, we’re all trained to be afraid of our inner worlds and emotions, and we’re also trained to focus exclusively on manipulating our outer world when we want to ‘change things.’

You know: get a new car, a new house, a new job, a new lover, a ‘facelift,’ a vacation, more money, etc. (and etc., and etc., forever!)

So, in the psychiatric setting, using external, ‘easy’ methods like medications was seen as the ‘superior’ form of healing, for two reasons — it took less time, and it was cheaper for the hospital. And it truly was faster — but it was also superficial, and often got rid of patients’ obvious symptoms without ever requiring them — or the doctors — to deal with their deeper issues and inner reality.

To sum up: I was seeing the expansive explorations and opening-up processes of counseling and psychological therapies quickly being replaced by a narrow, external focus on medication therapies. To me, this indicated a profound regression and a deep loss, in terms of utilizing the amazing healing potentials that were already available or being developed.

Sadly, this regressive trend was just one small aspect of a massive societal counter-reaction to the openings and wild explorations of the 60s and early 70s. It seemed someone or something had decided for us that deep inner work and healing was too untested and dangerous, and was NOT the way to go.

Or perhaps … inner exploration and healing were way too liberating and freeing. Perhaps there are forces and people in power that don’t want us to feel liberated, healthy, and joyful.

Our society is clueless about inner growth

This brings us right back to my original question: Why are most people so, so afraid of entering their inner world, exploring it, and dealing directly with inner issues or ‘problems’ they encounter?

Clearly, one major reason is that we’re all taught to be that way, quite consistently, and for many, many years. And the reason for that is: our society is, and has always been, extremely externally-focused and action-oriented. “If we can just DO this, or tweak that, or manipulate some process …”

The problem is, this viewpoint and this way of dealing with life are utterly inadequate, and totally unsatisfying as well. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, ALL of our experiences, emotions, and thoughts take place inside us, and are ours alone — meaning that each of our inner experiences is unique to us, even in situations where many people have the ‘same’ outer experience. In a sense, our inner experience is all we’ve got.

So if we ignore, minimize, or deny our own inner experience — well, we’ve got nothing.

What I’m getting at is that our happiness, frustration, or misery are totally our own inner experiences — and the only effective way to ‘deal with’ our own inner lives and inner experiences is to actually ‘go there’ … to willingly dive into our inner depths, explore them (with some help, hopefully), seek out our problem areas or pain, and set to work understanding and healing them.

But our society and the ‘powers that be’ don’t see things that way — at all. Thus, I have to say: in a very fundamental, damaging way, our societies are anti-life and anti-growth.

We’re all for endless, manic outer growth, of course — which is now completely out of control, and which we mistakenly call ‘progress’ — but true, deep inner growth and healing are somehow verboten, and to be avoided at all cost.

How sick, how crazy is that?!

The pain of growth vs. the unending pain of stagnation

I’m forced to conclude that in many ways, and on almost every level, our societies are terrified of real inner freedom, and work hard to keep us inwardly locked down, unconscious, and miserable.

This means that we can’t expect much support — if any — from the society and culture around us, in terms of self-healing and self-actualization. That’s why we all need to take personal responsibility for our own growth and healing — and seek out others to support us in our quest.

Overall, inner growth and exploration is a glorious adventure and often a profound, even joyous experience — but it also involves pain, especially initially, and the willingness to go through levels of inner pain in order to heal, grow, and thrive.

Cliched as it is, the old saying “No pain, no gain” really does apply to our inner lives and our ‘inner work.’ The thing most of us forget is that there is simply NO WAY to avoid all pain — since pain often comes in unexpected and/or unavoidable ways, so there’s truly nothing we can do to avoid it. And since some pain is totally inevitable in life — we might as well consciously choose the type of pain we experience, as much as possible.

We can experience the initial pain of growth, opening, and healing … or we can experience the lasting, deep pain of depression, avoidance, and non-aliveness. The first can be scary and anxiety-producing — at first — but the second is sheer misery, through and through … forever.

If humanity is ever to ‘grow up,’ evolve, and thrive, many, many more of us need to choose the first path — the path of opening and healing.

If more of us are to be happy and fulfilled … many more of us need to choose the pain and glory of growth over the endless pain of stagnation and ‘safe’ inner deadness.

—

This post was previously published on medium.com.

***

From The Good Men Project on Medium

What Does Being in Love and Loving Someone Really Mean?

My 9-Year-Old Accidentally Explained Why His Mom Divorced Me

The One Thing Men Want More Than Sex

The Internal Struggle Men Battle in Silence

***

 

Join The Good Men Project as a Premium Member today.

All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS.

A $50 annual membership gives you an all access pass. You can be a part of every call, group, class and community.
A $25 annual membership gives you access to one class, one Social Interest group and our online communities.
A $12 annual membership gives you access to our Friday calls with the publisher, our online community.

Register New Account

Need more info? A complete list of benefits is here.

—–

Photo credit: Brett Jordan on Unsplash