WHAT IS HEALER SYNDROME?

WHAT IS HEALER SYNDROME?

Many people working in health care, whether doctors, nurses, chiropractors, energy healers or massage therapists find themselves suffering from ‘healer syndrome’ at some stage in their career.

‘Healer syndrome’ is typified by giving: Healers are naturally caring, compassionate people, but those who put others’ needs before their own (often to the point of physical and emotional exhaustion) are typical.

Many healers find themselves struggling with this at some point in their lives, but with experience and support they can move beyond it and reclaim a healthy balance between giving their all at their own expense, and helping others on their healing journey.

HOW CAN I TELL IF I HAVE HEALER SYNDROME?

There are a number of signs to indicate you may have it:

• You are always the first person people turn to when they need support, advice, healing, or when they’re tired.
• You always put others’ needs before your own, no matter how YOU feel, helping others comes first.
• You constantly feel drained of energy, no matter how much you give. By the time you finish helping someone, they feel replenished and happy, while you are exhausted.
• You feel guilty saying ‘no’ if someone asks you for help or healing.
• You can see clearly where other people need healing, but fail to recognise the same in yourself.
• You feel a deep urge to heal others in order to validate yourself.
• You can take it very personally if someone feels your healing was ineffective, and this can often undermine your self-esteem. You have a hard time accepting criticism, even if it is constructive.
• You often feel underappreciated, manipulated or used. In spite of this, you open your heart and your energy to anyone who needs help.
• Sometimes you take on the illnesses and symptoms of those you try to help.
• No matter how skilled you are, you feel guilty accepting money for your healing (those of you who are healing practitioners). Others often take advantage of this.
• You are very likely to be an empath, and time spent alone helps you to recharge.
• Because you give so much of your own energy away, you rely on caffeine, sugar and carbohydrates to get you through low energy periods.
• You often attract ‘energetic vampires’.

So how do you get through this?

• First of all, recognise that YOUR HEALTH and wellbeing is paramount. You wont be able to help anyone else if you burn yourself out!
• Realise that you need to do a lot of work on BOUNDARIES. Particularly if taking paying clients, you need to recognise your own worth, set reasonable prices for your services, and stick to them!
• On the subject of boundaries, you need to learn how to say ‘no’ without feeling guilty. Your gut will tell you if something feels right or not to you, and this ability will strengthen the more you use it. For example, if someone asks for a healing session on a weekend at a time you had something else planned, do not feel guilted into cancelling your previous plans. Just find another mutually suitable time to work with your client.
• If you heal as a form of self-validation, you need to do some inner work on self-worth issues.
• Although the ability to heal others is a wonderful gift, using it to boost your ego or feel ‘special’ is not right. Again, you may need healing yourself to address issues around self-worth and self esteem.

I see many healers among my clients, and to a man, they have all had traumatic or difficult childhoods. In spite of this, they are kind, caring people who just want to help others.

Part of the ‘initiation process’ of becoming a healer is working through your own traumas and issues and healing them. If there are things you can’t heal, you address them through another healer.

In my healer clients, I often find issues in the solar plexus chakra relating to self-worth, powerlessness and lack of confidence. These issues can relate back to childhood traumas, or even past lives. Unless the wounded selves are released from the ‘trauma bubbles’ they are in, the same issues and emotions will loop round and round forever.

Healers often have blockages in their higher chakras (8^th-10^th chakras, sometimes higher) with cords leading to past life traumas. For example, if they were a healer in a past life and were captured, tortured then put to death as a witch, they may have decided to block and suppress their gifts. These blocks must be removed in order to move forward.

Karmic imprints of betrayal and abuse can affect healers over many lifetimes until they are removed and healed, and occasionally people make soul contracts renouncing their healing abilities or potential. These soul contracts must be removed to release the client from the agreement.

Karen is a Reiki practitioner who comes for regular sessions, and she displays classic signs of healer syndrome. She is a single mum to three children, and an empath. Her narcissistic father and toxic ex-partner run her ragged, but she has a lot of problems enforcing boundaries and saying ‘no’.

She is a very skilled practitioner, but she doubts her own abilities and refuses to charge for her services. As a result, she has a constant stream of people taking advantage of her excellent skills. They leave feeling relaxed and energised, while she is left totally wiped out, with three children and a demanding, manipulative father to look after.

When Karen came for her first session, her solar plexus needed a lot of work. There were two black snakes (it’s the easiest way to describe them) in there. I find these regularly in clients who have problems with self-confidence and self-worth. There were trauma bubbles with cords going back to her childhood, and her father in particular. These traumas were feeding her limiting beliefs around being worthless and powerless.

In her sacral chakra, there was a karmic imprint relating to not trusting herself, which came from a past life where she was abused and put down. These beliefs about not trusting herself had been further reinforced by her father in this life.

Karen had cords from her third eye and temples going to a past life where she had been a priestess in Atlantis with a great deal of responsibility. She had healing abilities from that lifetime which were repressed, due to a trauma caused by someone else. Valuable healing artifacts had been stolen from the temple, through no fault of Karen’s, and a council found her guilty and sentenced her to life imprisonment.

After the cords were removed, Karen discovered an affinity and an ability with healing crystals, something she now uses as part of her Reiki sessions.

Although this is just a snapshot of what a person with healer syndrome is working through, they illustrate similarities I see in most of my healer clients.

Do you recognise yourself in the traits described above? If you would like help healing these, or any other issues, get in touch!

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