Sacred Transformations

In spiritual healing work, we tend to focus on what’s wrong, and what needs to be fixed within ourselves. It is, of course, important to look at our bad behaviors, faults, and making them right. I don’t want to discount that. But I am concern that only looking at faults bars us from complete healing.

This realization was further solidified for me while working with a client, whom I will call Catherine. Catherine had over 10 years of sobriety and came to me to work on shame issues. Catherine maintained sobriety through AA. She was married to a successful man, had children and overall had a pretty good life. But Catherine did not feel she deserved a good life and her pervading sense of shame remain fixated.

It certainly didn’t lend itself to complete healing...

Catherine’s discussion of AA brought up memories of myself attending Al-Anon while going through my separation and divorce with a drug addict/alcoholic many years ago. I found the program helpful in the beginning because it offered structure and guidance for my own healing process. But, I had difficulty embracing the concept that poor choices were a disease. And it certainly didn’t lend itself to complete healing by reiterating that I was doomed to a life of disease. After about a year of participating in the group, I found myself feeling depressed going to the meetings. I was told it was important to continue, otherwise I would “slip”. It was also instilled in me to show up for others, but I did not feel healed enough in other areas of my life to be fully present for them. After training as a Social Worker, I recognized a blurring of boundaries. For myself. Al-Anon was not only my primary social circle, but a place to give intensive support to others; which, at times, felt like unprofessional therapy.