Celebrating the wounded healer

Abstract

Aim For many therapists woundedness is a hidden secret. This deceit is sometimes masked as ‘professionalism’. We need to unravel the mystique which we unawarely embrace, and examines the cost of this illusion. This paper unusually begins by discussing these issues which emanated from specific research. It is contended that we stand a better chance of making an authentic relationship with those we seek to help if we are prepared to celebrate our scarred, glorious, mis-shapenly successful, and often faulty selves for what we are. Method The heuristic research conducted by the author explores the lives of 17 self-selected therapists and how their own life crises affected their work with clients. The stance is phenomenological qualitative method which is an adaptation of Moustakas’s (1990) protocol. The method used develops Moustakas’s methodology, here privileging a co-constructed account of each co-researcher’s (participant’s) story. Findings The outcomes of this research were predictably idiosyncratic and this accords with the postmodernist stance of the researcher. There were commonalities too: many co-researchers found it was better to celebrate our shared but faulty humanity, while protecting our clients from the worst of our failings. Co-researchers indicated that the power and the peril of being more nakedly human is worth it. Implications for practice The research appears to make a case for the theory that life is the best teacher, if only we are prepared to learn. It challenges the reader to find within themselves something akin to the wisdom which can come only from the examined life.

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