Recovery Healer
Introduction
When re-establishing a profession and professional service in response to the obvious shortcoming of another or filling in a societal truth that has failed to be recognized, the new profession, philosophy, and their practice must justify its existence to the other existing professions. Why? because it is the tradition of anything new become established, however, Healing has always been a profession. Just not one that historically has had the science behind it to confirm itself to doubters, confused, and those in power.
In define ourselves, we define ourselves as different or other, which leads to different societal issues, interpretations, professional conflicts, and tests our philosophical understanding of what is true and what is false. This is particularly true for mental health, which is why we broke it down emphatically (O’Brien, 2023a; O’Brien, 2023b; O’Brien, 2024a; O’Brien, 2024b; O’Brien, 2024c). With our research (O’Brien, 2023a) and healing process (O’Brien, 2023b; O’Brien, 2023c; O’Brien, 2024a) we do not have to keep explaining ourselves, but what we will do is re-educate anyone on any confusing aspects or uncertainty to same people who have defined us as other than them. This is because of the world that they come from and the definitions they use. We are qualitative, they are quantitative. Both realities deserve existence within society and culture. Not that their definitions are different from ours, it is more about how they are used, by whom, intentions, motive, if there is agreement of outcome. Also, if the complete symbolism and meaning of the words used are understood by both parties and the developmental age of said party (e.g., how conscious their unconscious is).
If this is confusing, we have an orientation process to help with this.
Orientation
What may seem like mysticism or hocus-pocus, is really the conscious healing reality that we need to help you push through or activate so you can relate to what we are writing. If you already do, then please bear with us. Our example of words and labeling is: What some would term as a breakdown, we would call a breakthrough. Another is that we have to get sick to get well. Yet another, by knowing what is wrong, we can know what is right. These implicit messages are all we need to explain ourselves for the psychological-minded readers. For the non-psychologically-minded readers (e.g., spiritual and moral human beings), our guess is that you already know what we are getting at.
Psychedelic knowledge and meditative processes are how we open minds and hearts. Our work does not have to involve a drug and you can get very psychedelic, but to us psychedelic means that healing and recovery is actively manifesting in the mind. We do re-educate people on how to heal with psychedelic medicines because from what we have seen from the field recovery is what is professionally lacking in psychedelic training programs (O’Brien, 2024b; O’Brien, 2024c). This is also missing from our insurance-based psychology culture that was born out of our the professional needs for standardization. From our research-informed approach (O’Brien, 2023c) we set to chart a new path for modern Healers to unite against corporate greed, political violence, and damaging creeds. We re-educate on how to use and not use medicines through our dissociation-informed approach and harm reduction model (O’Brien, 2023c; O’Brien, 2024a). We provide a healing space to learn how to heal.
As we are reclaiming a profession, we have outlined the philosophical differences between the two (O’Brien, 2023a; O’Brien, 2023b; O’Brien, 2023c) and addressed professional gatekeeping in other works (O’Brien, 2024b; O’Brien, 2024c). Healers do not see the need to convince people who are already convinced that they are correct, believe they know nothing or everything, or their profession is needed over ours. We are equals because we represent common sense and that balances their truth, power, and control. If the academic denial remains after reading our academic work (O’Brien, 2023a; O’Brien, 2023b; O’Brien, 2024c), then we can see that they are addicted to their level of denial and the benefit/reward they get by maintaining their shortcomings (as a profession or individual). This is the reason why the Healing profession needs to be (re)created in opposition to the current system. Also, because neuroscience and research have confirmed what we were already saying is true.
If they refuse to accept us, our abilities, our stance, our existence, then we can rely on the Constitutional law and the separation of church and state because spirituality is a religion by the nature of opposites, mutual arising, or dependent origination. If Constitutional law fails to be recognized in the spiritual truth, then we continue “doing time” in their world waiting until “they get it”. “It” you wonder? True awakening. But with psychedelics, it changes things because we can induce states of conscious awareness that have not been directly and clearly defined as our work does. So, not much really changes if they do not accept us, but what is coming is a psychedelic and recovery revolution that they are not emotionally prepared for. As our point of view contradicts theirs, it is good for their business too, but we are taking the moral high ground while they are legalizing ethics, which has historically not been good for the the citizenry. Accepting us is not required to understand that what we are saying is true. If that is not able to happen, then our work on how dissociation may be being diagnosed as a learning disorder, diet in mental health, and that people can become addicted to anything” would be relevant.
Coming from a historical perspective, Healing profession has been a long time. We do not want to confuse readers or customers, so we will be as clear as we can with our stance. If our work excites and is attractive to you, then let us know…
Psychological Healing is the process of memory reconsolidation (MR) and is in the literature (O’Brien, 2023a). MR has been confirmed by brain imaging (O’Brien, 2023a). MR is evidence-based already. MR does not have to be certified by some standard, board of professionals, or professional associations. Like a new kid in town, Healers have a past and have been doing our work for a very long time so the template exists. What is different about our re-educational programming is that we offer a researched path to justify and protect our/your existence. This could help you not get burned at the stake, electrocuted, or murdered; however, we cannot guarantee this as they have already drowned, hunted, murdered, and spent years in solitary confinement (O’Brien, 2024a). We have only been able to solidify our stance in the face of their academic ignorance, group think, mass psychosis, and their inability to qualitatively accept or quantitatively confirm our existence.
Since psychological Healing, in the form of MR, has been confirmed by brain imaging, their own quantitative measures and rationale has demonstrated that we exist without exception (O’Brien, 2023a; O’Brien, 2024c). We should exist and it is good that we do. The fact that they have not accepted centuries of qualitative reasoning, presentations, artistic expressions, or common sense demonstrates the level of denial that we are dealing with. Their objectivity and non-acceptance only serve them now. This is no longer our problem because they have confirmed for us what we already knew. Artists are Healers and Healers are Artists… and dissociation is the key to understanding how healing happens.
Our work has confirmed their observations of us (O’Brien, 2023a). In doing so, they have defined who they are and what they represent (O’Brien, 2023a; O’Brien, 2024b; O’Brien, 2024b). To differentiate between Healing and Therapy, in a less technical way, is what we aim to do in this writing.
We do not really care if “they” agree with our experience, but hope that “they” will start to see that the Healer they were meant to become, cannot because of their dependence on their reality being real is too strong to think that someone like us could exist. Unless they have been there, they cannot know. Until they do, they cannot. Many have, but most have forgotten. The very same system of compliance that relegates them and call their approach Therapy, is why we are not them. We have grown from our trauma, journey, and are in recovery from believing that a system of power and control can do the morally “right” thing. Instead of the ethical-law of a greater good, we aspire to the higher moral good. Which, as it turns out, outperforms their greater good logic and reasoning every time (O’Brien, 2024c) because the difference between their words are our actions.
Healing
As Gabor Mate has said, “healing is a subversive act”. The subversive act is taking action against the cause of why the wound happened. This is what a Healer does differently from a licensed therapist. A Healer, if appropriate, helps you get into therapy. A Healer also helps you get out of therapy.
If a Healing revolution is needed, then we have to define healing. This is what the system has refused to accept because they cannot conceptualize it themselves because the definitions of pathology are off (O’Brien, 2023a). Just like they did not or could not define addiction, we had to (O’Brien, 2023a). Since Healing is defined (O’Brien, 2023a; O’Brien, 2023b), then Healing and Recovery can be measured (O’Brien, 2023c). This means that moral development through healing can be achieved and can be confirmed. Therefore, this can be applied to systems and professional associations. The problem then becomes, how can you make someone else heal? For example, there are laws for kids to be in school and obtain an education, should there be morals laws for professions or is that called ethics? Or should we require that all professions be in therapy or healing to support their performance and moral development?
Healing and Healers are based on long-term love; Therapy, as a profession, is based on short-term love, otherwise known as fear (O’Brien, 2023a; O’Brien, 2024c). Fears are regulated through systems of control mechanisms that require needs to be met. Love is accepting of all and sees value in process, connection, and community. Acceptance is not always reasonable in our modern world and our modern expectations, but common to our biological purposes. When modern expectations are applied to ancient healing, we have major conflicts. This is why we are creating what we are because if they do not understand addiction and dissociation, therefore, they shouldn’t be prescribing and shouldn’t be taking psychedelics… yet. The reemergence of a Healer comes on the heels of a string of bureaucratic, academic, and medical atrocities (O’Brien, 2024c) that demonstrates that the system is not ready for psychedelic medicine to become legal for popular consumption and use. Our clinical experience has shown that most of the population is not biologically regulated (e.g., Neurofeedback level of regulation) for it and the system is not able to do the preparation work because they are dependent on not knowing these terms or diagnoses. For this we are very concerned because psychology is so far off that they do not know it (e.g., diagnostics (O’Brien, 2023a)).
Our Path of the Wounded Healer highlights (O’Brien, 2023a; O’Brien, 2024a) that the Healer Profession has always been there, but has been co-opted by modernization and the industrialization of the medical and psychological professions (O’Brien, 2024b; O’Brien, 2024c). History is filled with the gaslighting of our experience through their reasoning and rationale for why Healers cannot and do not exist (O’Brien, 2024a). In essence, because they could not confirm us rationally, we do not exist emotionally. Yet, we must exist because they are telling us that we don’t (e.g., we exist because they tell us we don’t; therefore, they must see us so we exist).
As we receive their messages of doubt, we can either take it personally like we have done something wrong or we can accept the information, observe, and act accordingly. What we mean by “shouldn’t be here” is that we have died and come back, not that we do not belong. The message we bring back from our trials and tribulations (trauma) makes us who we are. Their lack of confirmation over common sense and decency, implies that we are lying, being manipulative, or are “imaginary”. This is why we can take it personally, but as we have argued (O’Brien, 2024c), even though we are not here, we very much are. We are the ones who had to heal to come back. Our message is usually profound to the unaware mind – but never that profound to the human heart or soul who knows what is what. Those who do not feel the profoundness of our journey are probably numb, self-serving, and living dissociated and not know it.
Acceptance of us as Healers is not our job, but we can walk people through it and they will understand what we mean. Some will already know; some will never know. What we see is that they have set up a systematic way of monitoring, regulating, and creating consequences that suit their end goal. They have labeled us as children, yet we are older than they are. We are the past dissociative world that refused to die because we know what it costs to be alive. They refused to believe us. That is on them. This is because they are in a system of denial that allows for existence to go both ways, but they believe that it can only exist the way they were taught. This is the seat of their ignorance and it is a belief that can change with experience, guidance, and a re-education.
As Healers, we seek individual freedom from all systems of ignorance, denial, and contemptuous reasoning. Our Western systems of managing our population growth as a society is a replication of the minds they come from. They create prisons for the sick because that is what they are in the business of. We live in an insurance and legal-based world that the government supports because it shapes how people behave, think, act, and feel. Education is so lacking in the West; therefore, the population would not know the difference. This is why science, research, evidence, and critical thinking have shown different outcomes (O’Brien, 2024c). By manipulating these, you can manipulate a society or individual.
Also, their philosophical rationale (O’Brien, 2024c), approaches and therapies (O’Brien, 2023b), and their standards of care (O’Brien, 2024b; O’Brien, 2024d) are what separate us from them. They believe that something is wrong when it is not right. We know that everything is a process and will work out in its own time, positively or negatively. Accidents will happen and cannot be prevented, but with the modern pace, equipment, and products that force accidents that are much more severe, people’s lives should not be ruined if one bad thing happens because the cost of a mistake is too high. Historically accidents would have been relatively minor comparatively, but everything does work out in the end – just not fairly. Everything returns to neutrality in time. Nowadays however, we live so separate from our shared lived experience and our modes of injury (toxicity and power of the products we use) are so powerful that any accident or injury becomes a financial question mark because the medical and insurance-based models of our society need to meet their shareholders’ bottom line. If what is fair is moral, then we have problems in our Western society (O’Brien, 2024b).
To Recovery Healers, problems are solutions in hiding, but the solution to them is often more therapy or more training. Healers “prescribe” doing less because what and how much is being done is the issue. A Recovery Healer is someone who has demonstrated a level of recovery, equanimity, and practice that they can guide people back from their netherworlds. People, professionals, and professions who have not done their work may find this difficult. A Healer, with our approach, retraining, or re-education can claim the title of Recovery Healer (O’Brien, 2024a).
In a lovely twist of fate, the dissociative ability we have gained from our drug use can be used to help people find their way back. Once mindful dissociation (O’Brien, 2023a) is cultivated and our re-education programming introduced, people can dissociate into other states of consciousness and can help heal the deepest wounds people have.
Recovery Healers have their roots in recovery research, psychedelics, traumatology (e.g., dissociation), addiction recovery movement, posttraumatic growth, positive psychology, and self-help traditions (O’Brien, 2024a). Along with our Meetings Area Screening and Assessment (MASA)), Healers stand to help people perform this recovery assessment so they can become aware of their universal addictions (O’Brien, 2023c). Based on our doctoral research and the Addiction as Dissociation Model (O’Brien, 2023a), MASA helps people answer life’s biggest and deepest questions. If they can stand to have them answered, they can ensure that they get what they need from their psychedelic journey. Therefore, we are helping Healers dissociatively recreate themselves with psychedelic medicines for memory integration, neuroregulation, and meditative practices.
Discussion
A Healer can be a Therapist and a Therapist can be Healer, but they are not the same. Healing, as a profession, is the inverse of Therapy. Therapy as a practice can heal and also leave wounds that are not diagnosable. Meaning that there are times when maintaining a relationship is what is necessary to heal the attachment or developmental wounding caused by our modern evolution (or de-evolution from our perspective). For example, allowing clients to discharge when they are ready instead of when their symptoms are “gone” or insurance says so. As a profession, therapy is bound to medical, law, and business models that negate the kind of relationship that therapists need to create to help people achieve effectively healing and to truly address what is predominantly causing their distress (e.g., unresolved developmental trauma, attachment wounds, pace of modern day stress, environmental toxins, lack of exercise, poor diet, and intergenerational trauma). The fact that the system has yet again got diagnostics wrong, is another tell that people should question therapy as a practice (O’Brien, 2023a). At this point, we see therapy dependence or addiction as the main culprit as to why people do not leave therapy (O’Brien, 2023c; O’Brien, 2024c).
A Healer is born through a direct lived dissociative experience (mindful dissociation) when life separates us from the pain of dying. This protective measure is instilled in all of us. Sometimes this is a near death experience or a trauma of some sort, but it is the breaking of the amnesic barrier that creates the conditions of mindful dissociation that Healers use to access our shared collective wisdom (O’Brien, 2023a; O’Brien, 2024a). As time and genetics can be seen as a form of memory, then our reality is a series of memories (O’Brien, 2023a; O’Brien, 2024c). Healers can dissociate and differentiate themselves from a situation, mind, or body and know what is what because they have lived experience of both (e.g., being the victim and the trauma happening). Healers will use their Healing skills to guide others and will refute clinical practices when unjust laws are in the way of their ethics and morals for what is right for the client. When recovery and morals are the only things left, one can find their healing power, potential, and the Healer Self (e.g., the one who knows and cares because they know the score and keep it).
Historically, there could be no indirect education for this profession because Healers are seen as outside of the norm because of their experience or trauma. Oftentimes, they are the part of self that “just knew what to do when it happened”. This is especially due to their moral values and beliefs that they have brought back from their lived traumatic experience. Access to higher principles and expectations would be more readily available to those who have than those who haven’t. Training does not produce the direct experience needed to awaken to the truth of what the Healer is. From our perspective however, we can now train people to become Healers because psychedelics and we know dissociation better than any training program that we have seen or been through. The fact that we can measure conscious awareness with MASA, qEEG, psychedelics, and our developing work with frequencies and meditation suggests that Healing has a new frontier. We are excited to bring our healing and artistic process to participants and the world (O’Brien, 2023c).
A Recovering Healer is one with the terms generally outlined here and can follow the moral path in the face of great consequences. In essence, Healers prepare you for life and death, while therapy diagnostically suggests dependence. Healers set you free, while therapists embody you into a societal reality that has been industrialized. A Recovery Healer is someone with enough staying power to fight back and is the healthiest part of the self-structure because they know the difference between right and wrong, ethics and morals, and life and death. A Recovery Healer is one who goes to war or sacrifices themselves for the higher good, not the greater good. The greater good is manipulated by profit motive and the systems that therapy represents. The higher good is history’s moral test (O’Brien, 2024c) but the individual question is, what are you willing to risk your life for and would you actually do it?
This is the measure of any Healer who has become what they were meant to be. We cannot become what we already are so we are Healing Artists. We know enough to know that they do not know. We now have our research to back us up and to justify what we are doing (O’Brien, 2023a). We have obtained the evidence needed to confirm what science has forgotten: we already have everything we need, we are one, we cannot be separated in awareness or truth (O’Brien, 2024c).
Conclusion
If therapy is all about the therapeutic relationship, then why do we have to have a treatment plan? Healers have no goals other than truth in Healing. Why not trust the relationship and the process to heal? Is it because we have to be doing something in order to be reimbursed? Therapy is about needing a relationship (dependence). Healing is about needing and wanting the relationship to bring about our own inner Healing. Healing is not only about the relationship; it is also about the longevity of the Healing relationship.
Therapy is a job, career, or vocation. Healing is an advocation (O’Brien, 2024a). Some relationships are just needed and wanted. Healers have their answers and will share them with you for your benefit. Most people come for help expecting symptom relief like going to a doctor, which is not really possible therapeutically because the relationship is paramount and we hurt each other in the relationship. If people are looking to exchange knowledge or information to see if what they are or are doing is right, this is for a lawyer or teacher. If it is knowledge you want, then get a therapist or google it. If it is confirmation as to what is right and wrong for you, then you want to consult with a Healer. If you want someone who can fix you (but can’t), see a Therapist.
If you want someone who can heal and grow with you, then seek a Healer. Healers know that you have and don’t have all of the answers. Healing is about going through the process, therapy is talking or educating about going through it. One comes before the other in the healing process. Healers access memory reconsolidation; Therapists might. Therapists are responsible for your mental health. Healers, see mental health as your responsibility and where you learned how to care for yourself.
What Healing/Therapist comes down to really is that is not “your therapy”, it is “our healing work” together. Those who have done their work, know this. Those who don’t are still seeking their answers to the questions they don’t have yet. How long will we continue to injure, debate, and hurt each other without seeing that we are one? Or another way of asking, “How long shall they kill our prophets, while we stand besides and look?”
Summary
In summary we cite Plato, “Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed by the masses.”
References
O’Brien, A. (2023a). Addiction as Trauma-Related Dissociation: A Phenomenological Investigation of the Addictive State. International University of Graduate Studies. (Dissertation). Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/
O’Brien, A. (2023b). Memory Reconsolidation in Psychedelics Therapy. In Path of the Wounded Healer: A Dissociative-Focused Phase Model for Normative and Pathological States of Consciousness: Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/
O’Brien, A. (2023c). Path of the Wounded Healer: A Dissociative-Focused Phase Model for Normative and Pathological States of Consciousness: Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2024a). Healer and Healing: The re-education of the healer and healing professions as an advocation. Re-educational and Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2024b). Diagnostic Privilege: Meta-Critical Analysis. In Healer and Healing: The re-education of the healer and the healing profession as an advocation. Re-educational and Training Manual and Guide. Appendix 2. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/
O’Brien, A. (2024c). Meta-Critical Analysis: The “Science” of Pseudoscience. In Healer and Healing: The re-education of the healer and the healing profession as an advocation. Re- educational and Training Manual and Guide. Appendix 3. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/
O’Brien, A. (2024d). Moral-Ethics. In Healer and Healing: The re-education of the healer and healing professions as an advocation. Re-educational and Training Manual and Guide. Chapter 14. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2024e). Path of the Wounded Healers for Thrivers: Perfectionism, Altruism, and Ambition Addictions; Re-education and training manual for Abusers, Activists, Batterers, Bullies, Enablers, Killers, Narcissists, Offenders, Parents, Perpetrators, and Warriors. Re-Education and Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
