The Importance of Mental Health and Trauma Healing for the Spiritual and Intuitive Development Student (And Seasoned Practitioner)

One of the things that I have noticed over the years of being public on some sort of social media platform as a psychic medium/witch/shamanic practitioner/healer/herbalist/mystic is the number of people who try to sell their trauma responses as intuition.

No, I'm not kidding you.

It's a thing.

And based on the number of people who I see on social media do it it must be a somewhat successful thing to some extent.

But it's also dangerous.

For one, you aren't actually helping anyone in the long run. Instead you are just building up this facade that this is what intuition or psychic abilities are when in actuality it's not attainable to do it the way they are marketing it because...it's not real.

It's just their trauma response.

And since no one really ever has the exact same trauma even if they have been through things that are very similar or even the exact same--at the end of the day the way that the person and their nervous system and mental health respond to that is very different and so your responses to that aren't the same.

This also means that many "spiritual healers" typically aren't actually equipped to deal with actual healing processes that are perhaps more complex.

As someone who has spent years working through my C-PTSD I can vouch that in reality the number of healers/therapist/psychiatrists/psychologists that are actually equipped to deal with complex trauma...is pretty much next to nil.

Another thing that often times isn't acknowledge in the psychic/intuitive development/healing space is that mental health and trauma often causes massive blocks in your subconscious that prevent you from being able to expand your abilities to the fullest extent. As a result of that you often meet people who are blocked (even if they don't call it that) or are stuck in a state where they refuse (or can't) expand beyond that level of psychic/intuitive/healing ability.

Many people make this work to some extent.

But it's still not healthy for them. Or for their clients who are relying on the expertise of a person but ultimately are dealing with a person that isn't qualified to provide that expertise because...they haven't dealt with their own shit.

Now..I want to take a moment to clarify something at this point.

It doesn't mean your teacher has to be "perfect" and have all their shit together.

That is ultimately a near impossible task.

But you should be vetting your teachers and mentors and healers to make sure they are doing some level of self work and expansion in order for them to be able to help you to their highest ability.

So..what is all of this leading to?

Ultimately I want you to start *now* doing that healing work.

Hopefully by the time you are reading this you have already started some level of a meditation practice and are keeping some kind of journal....both of which are things that are beneficial to help notice potentially toxic patterns in yourself or behaviours that you may want to change upon reflection in the future.

Maybe you have a therapist.

And I hope you have healthy coping mechanisms in place for your emotional and mental well being.

At some point you will want to dive into shadow work (if you haven't already) to aid in this.

I also want to finish this off with a reminder.

You don't need to be constantly healing.

In fact it's impossible to ensure that you are constantly healing. Your system on all levels needs time to process the healing you do.

So if you are reading this and going 'Well I'm sick and tired of doing shadow work all the time' then...don't.

You shouldn't be doing shadow work all the time.

It does you no good to do some healing and then never apply it into your life...which then allows you to apply it to help others.

And that part is probably one of the most important aspects of doing this work which is to help yourself and in turn apply that to help others.

That’s true development.