The Dark, Windowless Room where Healing Happens

I have a sense that many people, when they think of themselves as having an experience of healing, conjure up the image of a wide-open, beautiful vista. Perhaps the sun is rising. Perhaps there is an ocean view. Perhaps characters from their past come bearing gifts and apologies. I myself have, in the past, imagined healing to be like this.

But I want to present a counter-image, based around my own experience and work as a therapist.

There is a point, I believe, in any truly deep life where personal freedom is recognised as a trap. Being able to go in any direction you want to might sound great. Especially if freedom has been withheld from you at times in your life. But it also makes it very difficult to face yourself.

If you can always escape, how can you face what you need to face, in order that your awareness may deepen? Only, I submit, by blocking off all the doors and windows that you habitually use to get away.

Only when all the repressed feelings can come, and there’s no way out, will we truly face ourselves and heal.

When I was doing years of group therapy, at an Osho centre in Europe, they often called it a “limit situation.”

In Gnostic Christianity, they called it being placed on the “fixed cross.”

When I work with clients online, I get them to agree to do a specific workout every day without fail, or otherwise message me why not.

The principle is the same. Create enclosure and allow feelings to come without the possibility of distraction or other forms of escape.

Of course, in order for this to work, you also need to be open. Simply placing yourself, metaphorically, into an enclosed space may just cause you to contract and shut down, to go into survival mode.

You need to have your mind, heart and belly open. You need to be able to allow feelings to come and stay with them, without external comfort. You need to allow feelings to process at the level of the sense of the body.

I have never done one of those workshops where they lock you away in a cave for three weeks, just dropping food off three times a day. Likewise, I’ve never followed the traditional Buddhist practice of spending January and February is total social isolation. Perhaps I should give those things a try. Though I often feel these days that it is my path in life to find and share ways to heal deeply, on your own and in a typical urban environment.

And living on my own in a city where I don’t speak the language, and where I spend long periods of time alone, feels like a challenge that I can get a lot from. The “challenge” part is actually keeping my body sufficiently open such that I can be present with my feelings, to not simply stay distracted online. Another part is also for me to go out and get enough social connection to keep myself above my shutdown threshold. This in itself is also challenging and requires me to stay open in a different setting. I find it like living on a knife-edge in some ways.

If you’re interested in healing, then I hope that you’ve found this short piece stimulating. Like Mick Jagger once sang, sometimes we can’t get what we want but we can get what we need.