I’m on a hunt to get inside the movement and experience of healing. The first practitioner I asked was Dr Johanna Lynch[1], leader in trauma informed practice and author of the ground-breaking Sense of Safety protocol[2]. As she paused to think through her response, she began by describing what healing is not:
Considering What Healing ‘Is Not’:
“…So not healing involves a lot of disconnection, confusion and invasion…” Upon hearing invasion, I had a sense of being, well, invaded, not in a way that was damaging, but in a way where the word conjured a strong visceral response. Johanna deepened her description of the terrain of ‘not-healing’ by walking me through how our capacity of sensation, designed as it is to protect us, is constantly protecting our community connections, “…reading the room all the time trying to check for threat…there’s a sense of our own integrity that it’s trying to protect…(to protect) our own coherence that the world makes sense in some way (along with) our sense of connection safely to other people and…anything that it does against those things is sort of anti to healing.”
What the movement for healing might more closely resemble:
When you listen to Johanna get closer to her experience of what healing is, there is a recognition of a patient, integrated, whole and very human movement, “…the whole direction of therapy is towards safe connection, coherence and how you understand the world and a sense of your own physical and moral integrity…it’s personalised and it’s safe”.
Be on the lookout for ‘healing moments’:
There is a hint of paradox in the insight to healing being described too – while it is a movement, there are moments of connection[3]:
“They’re kind of a moment of connection between me and the other person where something really true is happening…that we both understand, that we both sense it…
There’s some element where it’s not too theoretical and it’s not too emotional. It’s in what we call the window of tolerance that between being too aroused and under aroused, there’s this place in the middle where you can have a new realisation.”
As Johanna moves closer to what healing is like, it feels like home to me:
“These little tiny revelations that are done in safe connection, I think is how healing happens. It’s because I’m known in a way that protects their dignity, helps them to make sense of the world and connects to them in a just the right amount of connection”
Kind of like Goldilocks.
What about you? What’s happening when healing is happening?
For training, articles and further information on Johanna, including a free masterclass on the Sense of Safety Framework, go to https://www.drjohannalynch.com/
[1] https://www.drjohannalynch.com/
[2] Read the academic paper on this protocol here – https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1441493
[3] James Finley talks about ‘axial moments’ – occasions when the patient comes across a moment where they meet what limits on the edge of an infinite abundance that is trustworthy and good. Go here for the audio recordings of James Finley where these insights are referred to.
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