I have feelings for my healer! What now?

Love is a beautiful feeling. From all emotions, it might be the OG emotion. Spiritually, it ties everything together. Many people say, we can't even live without love. This is not entirely true. But let's get into that later.

Most people enjoy being in love. They sometimes even spend their entire lives to find it. Because there seems to be a difference between love and true love. The real deal seems to be different from other types of love. But is falling for your healer the real deal? Let's find out...

The second most misunderstood human concept is love, in my humble opinion (stay tuned on this blog to find out which one is the most misunderstood one). The skin up my neck gets goosebumps whenever someone says that jealousy is a form of love. But love is not violent in its nature, which is why is does not manifest in a violent way. And let's face it, nothing was used as an excuse for violence against women as often as jealousy. But jealousy is an expression of an insecurity and/or a wound on the jealous person's end. Not every type of wound will cause jealousy. But some do and masking the root cause for them will only delay, if not prevent an important healing process for a person who tends to get jealous.

Healing is not a must. In fact, if someone is forced to heal instead of being open towards it naturally, this can cause regret so strong that they will not turn towards healing any time soon, if ever.

When a person decides to heal old wounds or insecurities or both, it is recommended to seek help from different directions. Professional help is only one aspect of help that someone should seek. If we use "healer" as a very overarching term in this context, this could include a mental health professional, but also a spiritual healer (such as a Reiki Healer or Shaman).

Help is important as healing requires lots of unpacking and reflection. A healer can be the mirror that we need to understand ourselves and get to know our own mind. In a world full of judgements, we are already confused about what we feel. If I got one pence for every time that a client asks me, "Am I crazy to feel this way?" I would probably be a lot wealthier.

The ones seeking help are never the ones that are violent, abusive, or "crazy." The ones showing up at the Zohalogy Studio are the ones who were hurt by people who are violent or abusive. I do not ever use the word "crazy" but it is sometimes used by clients (often to describe the abusive behaviour of people around them who struggle with their mental health). It is natural to feel hurt when someone lashes out at you. This can be more subtle and camouflaged under "harmless" jokes that are, in fact, condescending, disrespectful, and hurtful. But whatever shape this takes, it leaves a mark with a human that finds their way to healing.

The healing journey of every individual is divine. As a psychologist and Reiki Healer, I am amazed on a daily basis how much courage clients find to go through their pain. In my role, I help unpack past situations, find out what feelings and needs were involved, which gives my client the opportunity to find out what lead to the situation and their perspective on it. Techniques from empathetic communication (aka non-violent communication or NVC) support this process. Reiki treatment helps to stabilise the energy of a client while going through a process like this. People leave the studio lighter, relieved, calm, but sometimes tired as well, if there was a lot of work. Healing does not always feel great. It sometimes feels like chores around the house, which can be tiring and draining. But if you keep working on that "house," you will be rewarded with sustainable inner peace.

A person who allows a healer to enter this - at times - intense process, truly trusts them. I am very well aware of the responsibility that I carry in this context. Trust is a privilege and sacred. Abusing it almost seems like a cardinal sin, especially since clients find their way to me after their trust has been let down by previous helpers. What a client brings to a healer is a lot. They carry pain and burdens. Though it isn't always possible for a healer to lift that burden (at least not immediately), the healer can be present, they can show congruence, they can listen without judgement, with Reiki they can offer fresh energy and stabilisation, and they can meet a client in their pain when they might feel the loneliest.

This actually explains why it is quite common to develop loving feelings for your healer. If you find yourself feeling guilty about it, have some reflections on this first. It is possible that you do not know exactly why you have those feelings.

Genuine healers radiate something that is related to their ability to help you on the way of healing. It is called life energy. It is the energy of creation and it is life-giving. It represents the opposite energy that hurt a client in the first place. The energy that created a client's wound is the energy of destruction. That energy is life-draining or in other words deathly energy. Emotions representing life energy are joy and love. When you spend a lot of time in the presence of life energy, your psyche will over time feel comfortable with it, safe, at ease, and it might want more of this type of energy.

In my experience, loving feelings towards a healer are common and often harmless. They represent a client's desire to be in the presence of life energy. Healers are under no circumstances supposed to act on those feelings. If a client brings this up, it is important to educate them about the effect of life energy during a healing journey. Reflection is often enough to gain more consciousness over it and feelings settle down.

This type of feelings also occurs due to psychological reasons. Transference is a psychological concept that describes this. In this context, it is also not uncommon. Ethical practice is to reflect on the situation, set healthy boundaries, assess the ability to move forward, or refer to an appropriate colleague if this cannot be worked through.

Healing requires a purely safe space provided by the healer to a healing, help-seeking person. Safety means that a client's psyche can expand organically in the presence of a healer. Denying romantic feelings towards your healer could possibly lead to flirtatious behaviour, which should to be met with compassion but has to be shut down by the healer.

Having feelings for your healer can also be form of self-sabotage. Healing means to eliminate parts of your mind that want to remain like a mental parasite. Reflecting on these feelings can help identify the self-sabotage and working out where exactly it comes from. This can be very productive content for at least one session. In this case, patterns of the same behaviour might be remembered from the past. This is an important first step to break through those patterns.

Another reason why client develop romantic feelings for their healer relates to those individuals who have shut out love and relationships for a longer time and now feel ready to fall in love again but they have no consciousness of feeling ready yet. Whenever there is past heartbreak at play on a healing journey, your mind might try to "practice" love with a safe person. If a healer does a good job, they will be perceived as safe hence romantic feelings occur. This does not mean that a client wants a real relationship with their healer. It means that they want to practice what they have pushed away for a long time because they have been hurt by someone they loved, but was not a safe person. Not every breakup automatically means that an ex is not a safe person. But those types of breakups do not result in trauma.

This article could continue and mention more reasons for your (subconscious) mind to create loving feelings towards your healer. But the above already gives an idea what possible reasons could be.

Now...do you still think you are really in love with your healer? Or could it be something else...?