Healing through Communion

“Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion.”

~bell hooks, All About Love

I have had one of the most beautiful weekends of healing in communion with people I love. And when I say love, I mean it to the fullest extent of how M. Scott Peck defines love— “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.”

Historically, I have struggled with communicating my needs and defining boundaries because I often reacted from the place where I had been hurt opposed to taking time to respond in love and illustrate a desire to find a constructive resolution. Driven by my ego, I would attempt to alleviate my pain by eviscerating people with my words, often to the point of no return. This served no one, and only resulted in my becoming somewhat notorious for cutting people off and burning bridges.

While I do believe it is important to protect ourselves from toxic relationships with appropriate boundaries, I have also had to take a hard look at myself and be open to accountability for how I have fallen short in the past in addressing pain. Many of us tend to fail in our conflict resolution tactics because our words are grounded in the intent to induce shame, which can cause each person to feel attacked, and hence get defensive.

In reality, there are situations where people can unknowingly cause harm to those they genuinely love and care about. But society and our upbringings do not usually give us tools or teach us how to constructively work through problems and take responsibility for our actions in a way that does not promote shame in any person involved. We are also not encouraged to take stock of our issues in a manner that avoids propagating a victim mentality. As Brené Brown says in her book Daring Greatly, you likely either feel like a “viking or a victim.”

Another critical area that can complicate our healing work is that we usually don’t receive guidance on how to establish appropriate boundaries so that as we make progress in our own healing journeys, we can still show up and be supportive to others in a way that is not a detriment to our own emotional wellbeing. Ultimately, everything takes two to tango and each scenario has to be evaluated on a case by case basis, because the ability to effectively raise and resolve conflict depends heavily upon each person’s level of self awareness and emotional maturity.

I feel immensely fortunate to have people in my life who are also on their own healing journeys and are thus committed to the healing process (which is hard work). This inherently provides a critical foundation for their being open to having difficult conversations and subsequently being receptive to constructive feedback.

For one of the first times in my life, I was able to effectively communicate my needs and boundaries without compromising connectivity with a dear friend who is navigating a very challenging season of life. Brené Brown defines connection as “the energy that is created between people when they feel seen, heard and valued. When they can give and receive without judgment.”

I endeavored to be very intentional about not compromising my connection with my friend as I shared with her that we needed to be able to vent to each other in a way that’s healthy for both of us. I came across a great article that explains the difference between venting and emotional dumping. It can be hard to self-edit to discern this distinction in the heat of a moment, particularly when you or someone you love is hurting a great deal. One tactic we can employ is to evaluate our intention for sharing and then assess whether we have taken time to reflect and process the situation prior to telling our story about it. This can potentially help us determine if we are about to begin a “pain purge.” Often our pain purges are driven by an intense desire to be heard, so all we can do is try to be compassionate towards ourselves and others as we grow in this area.

Communicating the need to establish a boundary can be highly uncomfortable because we ultimately don’t want to inflict further pain to someone who’s already hurting a great deal. But, in the end, I believe loving honesty is in the best interest of everyone. Here’s the approach I utilized to preserve connection while communicating my needs and boundaries to specifically address concerns around venting vs. emotional dumping:

1. Begin by acknowledging your loved one’s situation and express empathy for what they are going through. It’s also important to indicate that you recognize that they have placed trust in you to even be willing to be open and vulnerable with you. Trust is usually earned, so it’s important to convey that you do not take it for granted and that your intention is to speak from a place of love.

2. Be direct, but also compassionate. Identify specifically what the issue was and how it made you feel, as well as concrete things you need moving forward. Feelings are not facts, but by identifying the emotions the action engendered, it can compel your loved one to respond from a place of empathy. Their intention likely was not to hurt you, so the desire to repair can be a shared objective. Pema Chödrön poignantly explains that compassion is “not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others.”

3. Express that you value the relationship and be open to finding middle ground and receiving feedback. Reinforcing that you value the relationship and are seeking ways to grow together can potentially help lessen the likelihood of the person on the receiving end having an ego-driven reaction. But, it’s also important to recognize that your delivery may not have been entirely flawless, so check in to see how they feel afterwards and if there was a way you could improve upon communicating your needs to them in the future.

None of us come with directions, so we sometimes have to teach each other how we need people to show up in our lives. I can wholeheartedly attest to how wonderful it feels to make progress in this area because I was able to simultaneously cultivate an important skill for my own healing journey while hopefully helping a friend reach a new level of awareness in their own process. The discomfort was transient and I actually feel we have grown a bit closer as a result.

However, I also fully recognize that the major caveat of why my approach was so effective is that I engaged in this dialogue with a self-aware, healing-focused friend. All bets are likely off if you find yourself dealing with a narcissist or sociopath. In that case, I highly recommend reading Jackson MacKenzie’s Whole Again: Healing Your Heart and Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse. In it, he shares insights on how to identify these personality types and tactics to advocate for yourself.

I have never been a person to avoid conflict, so this newfound approach to healing in communion is quite liberating for me because relationships had previously been one of the biggest sources of pain in my life. As a result, my prior tendency had been to retreat inward when I am working through issues, and just try to work through things on my own. But emotional and psychological isolation can not only be a detriment to our healing work, but it can also be a breeding ground for further disconnection and depression. I am now bearing witness to the power of healing in communion. And this has truly made life beautiful.