A Shaman’s Guide To The Things That Hurt You
Every human on this planet has been hurt by something or someone. None of us are immune to hurt. But how we choose to perceive that hurt is vital to our health and wellness as we move through life. And every one of us is sometimes victimized by something. Sometimes these things catch us unaware. And many of us are victims without even realizing it. In this guide I will illustrate that your quickest path the healing is owning the hurt. And since many walk this Earth not knowing just how many times that they’ve been hurt I will show you how hurts sneak up on you. And how this leads to soul fragmentation. I will get into soul fragmentation a little later.
Be Your Own Hero
Rather than delve into “victim mentality” the victimization I speak of is an absolute form of the concept. To be hurt is to be victimized. And due to pride or ego some of us just can’t accept that we’ve been a victim to anything. Our ego wants us to believe that all is well but sometimes the slight hurts add up to one big bundle of pain. That’s why “victimhood” is nonglamorus because we look down on victims because they usually appear to like being victims since they keep being victimized. So denying that you’ve been victimized serves no purpose. But admitting you’ve been a victim can be quite a blow to the ego.
No one wants to be be a victim and the shame of that can sometimes prevent us from being whole or healed. In egolessness, there is no shame in being a victim of hurt plus you can’t heal from things you do not understand or realize. The ego keeps us blinded. Many people are walking around with what amounts to a giant knife sticking out of their chest oblivious to how hurt they are or even what to do about it. Hurts happens to us so that we can heal from them to make us stronger, wiser, better and more compassionate. Those who take the hurt by the horns and wrangle some meaning out of it will have much more peaceful and fulfilling lives. Hurt will happen to you regardless so learn to take the upper hand with it and get the lesson and move on.
In the case of an overworked person, they may fall ill as a sign that the body needs rest. The shamanic view of preventing this is to not work so hard in the first place and to have a healthy balanced life. In today’s society it’s easy to fall into overwork. The consumer lifestyle demands long hours to afford the latest trinkets and gadgets that are ultimately worthless when lying in a sickbed. A shamanic prescription for stress and overwork is to take a sick day when you aren’t really sick and just stay in bed all day as if you were sick. Or, if your ego allows it, deny yourself that fancy new iPhone when your old one works just fine.
While physical illnesses and traumas have their very specific functions in our lives, our quickest path to healing is to understand why the trauma happened in the first place. Did that broken leg lead to you into taking better care of yourself (or at least paying more attention to the hazards in this world)? Did a bout with cancer purify your life and reveal to you who your true friends were? Mostly we can get stuck in the injury without taking the longer view of it. Relationship advice columnist Dan Savage has famously said that most gay men have to contract HIV before “getting their shit together” to lead healthier more positive lives. Sometimes the illness is the cure.
From the shaman’s point of view, everything happens exactly as it needs to happen for you to progress on your life’s journey. And nothing bad ever happens. Nothing good ever happens either. Things just happen and how we react to those things can either keep us stuck in old habits or patterns (especially if we slide into anger and resentment) or they can be catalysts for powerful transformations if we see them as gifts. Certain things are destined to happen to you and you have free will in only how you react to those situations. That’s why it’s always a good idea to be in close relationship with your higher self (who is really running the show).
While it’s difficult to be grateful for a broken leg, if you can be grateful for it and see the lessons in it, you’re on the path to discovering your life’s purpose. And we all have a life’s purpose. And while the things that hurt us help purify and heal hidden parts of our life, it’s the people that hurt us that steer us back on track. Those who cause us emotional wounds snap us back to reality and realign ourselves with our life purpose. In the healing of the emotional wound, insights are gained so that they don’t happen again. These things keep you from making the same mistake twice.
Whether you choose to believe it or not, the people in your life are part of your soul group. Your friends, coworkers and family members all made soul contracts with you before incarnating here on this planet to help you on your soul mission. And every person you’ve met here on this planet made a contract with you to meet at that specific time and place to experience whatever it is you two decided to experience. You may have made millions of soul contracts with people and, depending on your life path how many of them you fulfill is up to you. This shamanic view of life keeps you open to new people and to new ideas and places and it also allows you to forgive others for hurting you since they were just playing their role. It’s all just lessons here on planet Earth.
Also in your soul group are enemies or antagonists. They are there to goad you and to taunt you and to make you better (if you choose to see it as such). From this view, it’s difficult to stay upset with someone for very long once you realize their purpose in your life. And that’s what a shaman can help you see. That we are all connected and we are just playing out our roles here. We can greet each hurt with an open heart or descend into lower levels of consciousness bitterly licking our wounds. We have free will in this regard. And if you become whole enough, you’ll get to the point where nothing can really hurt you save a knife to the chest.
Holding onto anger and hurt is self destructive and a shaman can help you see that in your life’s path the hurt needed to happen. The shaman himself is a man who has been hurt again and again only to recover from that hurt. As a wounded healer, the shaman has the wisdom and experience to help you see the hurt for what it is without judgement or fear. A shaman gains his insight directly from his ability to have healed himself from similar traumas. Shamans understand the mind-body-spirit connection. And they have first-hand proof that physical traumas heal quicker once the lesson for them is understood.
The same for emotional traumas. Emotional traumas, by and large, are caused by other people or situations. These can manifest themselves in abuse scenarios or getting fired from a job. The death of a loved one or the ending of a relationship. Sometimes an emotional trauma can be even more jarring to the soul than a physical one simply because emotional traumas tend to catch us off guard while also forcing us to stay in the traumatic situation. A broken leg is a broken leg, but an emotional trauma can be hidden by a tricky nest of lies and in many ways emotional hurts are way more devastating than physical ones simply because they are so insidious.
Getting fired from your job or being dumped by a person you love are both extremely traumatic. The soul protects itself by sectioning off that trauma so you can at least get on with life for awhile. But unless you heal from that trauma it can keep you frozen and stuck. You’ll be unable to move forward in life without that healed soul fragment. Mostly time will heal the fragment naturally provided the person doesn’t try to fill the void with drugs, alcohol or other distractions. A shaman can help you understand why you lost the job or why your lover left so that your soul fragment can be healed and reintegrated so that you are whole again.
Sometimes people get stuck on obsessing over why they lost the job or the unfairness of it all. Some try and win their lover back. So much time is spent on reviewing and processing the trauma that it’s easy to get stuck in those sad stories without realizing the past is the past and what’s happened is what’s happened. And what’s happening when you’re stuck like this is that you are longing for the soul fragment that was ferreted away upon the impact of the trauma. You don’t even realize that it’s gone. Whether lost love or lost job the quicker you retrieve that soul fragment the quicker you can be whole. That’s why soul retrievals are so prized by those who have sought the services of a shaman. They make you whole again.
You cannot realize or begin your life’s purpose unless you are whole and having a fragmented soul can lead to addiction or other behaviors that mask the fact your soul has been fragmented. From gambling to sex to entertainments of all types, there are plenty of distractions to fill the void of your lost soul fragments. Modern society caters to fragmented souls and incomplete people. Simply stopping drinking will do nothing but cause further agony as that void is still there and promote even further soul fragmentation.
Discovering the source of that void—that trauma will lesson the need and urge to drink alcohol. As drug abuse is just a symptom of the underlying hurt, find out and explore the hurt and you will be healed of the addiction. And ignorance of the things that have hurt you is not your fault. The voids of your lost soul fragments can be filled by overeating, watching television or engaging in gossip. These “entertainments” provide temporary cathartic release of emotion by mimicking the missing pieces of your soul.
In the cases of abuse, it might surprise you to know that the abuse an abuser metes out is not considered abuse in the abuser’s mind. Thusly, you have victims who don’t realize they’ve been victimized because to them abuse seems natural and normal. Abuse can happen anywhere. In families, in workplaces and on the playground. Sometimes an abuser will feel justified in what they do and get others to see their point of view making the victim even more willing to go along with it or making them feel like they deserve it.
People who have been abused are more likely to abuse others themselves and people who have been victims will continue to seek out abusers to fill that role for them. The victim sees abuse as normal just as much as the abuser. How a person gets out of this cycle is relatively easy but also very tough. If the victim gets hurt enough he will then gain the insight necessary to break the cycle. In this case, the shamanic view of hurt is that it is vital to healing. A victimized person must be pushed to their limit in order to have the veil lifted from their eyes and open themselves to new ways of living, loving and thinking.
Standing up to or confronting an abuser (or the thing that hurt you) rarely works since the abuser’s life is typically better and more successful than the victims. They “look” better to others (including the court system) so many victims are victimized twice. The abuser is not above lying to a judge or officer to get what they want. The abuser is completely oblivious to how much they are hurting someone (including hurting themselves) so this is where many victims get stuck. There is no one to blame. And blaming an abuser can lead to retaliation. And in fact many victims may be blinded by their love for an abuser so they feel bad blaming say their mother or their brother for the abuse inflicted.
Regardless of what happens or happened, the victim must understand that emotional trauma has been inflicted. And with both parties ignorant of what’s going on, the soul continues to fragment with each fresh trauma. Then these traumas are usually covered up with distraction or addiction. Many years of trauma can happen without the person even knowing it but there will come a point when the soul is so fragmented that the distractions won’t work anymore.
Usually these things manifest themselves with mental disorders such as depression and anxiety so many seek the help of a psychiatrist. This does nothing but give you a band-aid to the deep emotional traumas because medications only numb you and keep you stuck. Pain is a symptom that something is wrong and medication cannot free you from an abusive situation whether it be in the workplace or in the family home. The shamanic view of mental illness is to identify the things in your life that you are depressed or anxious over and then change those things rather than submit to them. And if you cannot change the situations or events then you can definitely change the way you perceive them—as lessons. As life should be enjoyed and the default of life is happiness, strive to enjoy every moment regardless of what’s happening.
But for those stuck in an abusive situation it’s even harder to escape, heal and grow. If your boss is abusive you feel you must endure the abuse in order to get the paycheck you need to survive. If your lover is abusive then you might feel a trade off for getting the occasional whiff of affection or maybe you are scared of being alone. But be warned. If an abuser starts to see you getting better it will expose unresolved psychological issues in themselves that they are unable to face. They are, after all, abusers for a reason. Most abusers use their victims to generate feelings of superiority and if you are getting more successful and stronger, they feel the heat. They will want to tear you back down again.
And it’s here where the victim must do their healing work in secret because if an abuser cannot realize the abusive things that he has done and he will work hard to maintain that he’s done nothing wrong which leads to further confusion for the victim and abuser…and even more abuse. See what a vicious cycle this can be?
This is why blaming people, situations or events for what’s happened to you rarely promotes healing. Blame keeps you stuck and still under the power of that hurt. You may want justice or restitution of some kind. You may feel that you deserve compensation or an apology. But you will never get what you want unless you accept the hurt as something that had to happen. That hurt you experienced was vital to your growth here on this planet. You can choose to wallow in it and feel pain over it or you can choose to see it for a lesson or a test. Did you pass or did you fail?
Unless you get over the hurt or heal the emotional trauma it will keep coming back again in an attempt to get your soul fragments back together. You will experience the same relationships, the same job situations and the same traumas again and again until that fragment is back where it belongs. And the spirits can be relentless in this regard. You can focus on the “why me?” of it all or accept the hurt as having been a part of your soul’s journey.
In the case of a physical trauma or illness that is life-threatening please understand that every person on this planet has chosen the exact moment and in the exact way that they will die. This was done before incarnating here and the shamanic view of death is that it is inevitable and nothing to be feared. What is to be feared is a life holding onto hurts and traumas that have fragmented the soul into oblivion. That is no life at all and to the shaman’s eyes that person is an animated corpse that can be brought back to life via soul retrieval and healing sessions.
Forgiving those who’ve hurt you is vital to healing. And also understand and cherish the fact that they hurt you because they had to hurt you. It was in the soul contract the two of you made. If you do your spirit work correctly and reintegrate your soul fragments you will be much better off. So bless the people and things that hurt you rather than wish things had been different or wishing harm on them. They loved you enough to hurt you is a fine way of looking at it.
Much love from your friendly neighborhood shaman,
Patrick John Coleman
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