In a previous article, I wrote that the healing process is a partnership. Healing usually seems to automatically spring forth from inside of us – at least, as long as we are in vigorous health. However, at the same time, we have the capacity to assist the healing process by distancing ourselves from what harms us, and by nourishing ourselves with what builds us up. Healing is a joint endeavour between ourselves and the mystical fount of health within.
But does prioritising our own needs not seem selfish when looked at from a wider perspective? Let’s take rest as an example. Rest may be necessary for us to heal. However, from the point of view of the community, it is often considered inconvenient, because that necessitates making allowances for individuals who want to take time off to rest. In school, we were told to be wary of allowing our classmates to borrow the notes we jotted down. True, some individuals miss class out of mischief, but in your experience, didn’t most people who ask for your notes do so as they had missed class because of illness, injury or a family emergency? Since teachers can rarely take extra classes or reschedule exams, to help those who were unwell, everyone knows that sickness means loss of opportunities. Not wanting to miss out, don’t some students show up even if they are indisposed?
Workplaces, too, discourage taking time off to rest. When I was an intern, I managed to injure my wrist. The orthopaedic surgeon diagnosed it as a sprain and highly recommended I took a week or two off. I chose to disregard his advice and push through the pain. I took great pride in doing so. A few weeks later, one of my friends injured her leg. Unlike me, she asked the Head of the Department for time off. She was granted it reluctantly, under the condition that she had to find someone else to take her place while she rested. My peers, while I was not around, decided that the person to fill my injured friend’s shoes would be me. Annoyed, I told off my friend saying, “I pushed through my pain, why can’t you?” Both, the department’s condition that she find someone to take her place and my annoyance, betray the sentiment that my friend’s desire to heal was inconvenient for us. Other workplaces may not require sick individuals to find replacements, but different rules may ensure that employees feel that they will be rewarded for working through poor health while being penalised for resting. For instance, the number of sick days permitted may be limited or some days off may be unpaid.
While taking time off was culturally discouraged prior to 2020, things seemed to shift for the better during the COVID-19 pandemic. As soon as the existence of the pandemic was officially recognised, anyone who coughed, sneezed or cleared a throat was told to stay home – and to return to work, school, or public places only after they were well again. Didn’t it sound like rest was being encouraged? Which begs the question, what changed during the pandemic? Why were we happy when people with COVID took days off to recuperate in solitude while we were reluctant to allow sick leaves just days or weeks earlier? Did the pandemic teach us to be more considerate towards the needs of the sick? Or was it just that we felt it was for the good of the collective or the community that the infected individual be isolated?
The degree to which the community or individual is given precedence is further revealed when we consider the other things that people need in order to heal. For example, in response to those moving away from toxic relationships, I’ve heard people say, “Why can’t you just adjust and compromise a little for the sake of your family?” Likewise, people who consider asking counsellors for help may be told by their communities, “Don’t share our private problems with others.” When people living with invisible illness, disability, neurodiversity or mental illness ask for consideration and adjustment, they often feel unheard, disbelieved, and may be labelled as “demanding” or “entitled”. Other forms of injury and hurt, such as psychological trauma, burnout, grief and heartbreak, may not even be considered as things that need healing. How much thought do we really give as communities to help individuals heal from such afflictions?
In any case, wouldn’t you agree that prioritising personal healing and doing what is necessary to facilitate it is neither communitarian nor altruistic? Rather than placing the community first, the person who prioritises healing is thinking first of their own wellbeing. This is self-centred. Not surprisingly, the community alienates the person who is healing while glorifying any action that benefits the group. Work is esteemed over rest. Compromise is preferred to rebellion or to taking a stand. Self-sufficiency is praised while getting help is thought of as a sign of weakness.
Negative attitudes towards healing can make us feel guilty when we are sick and attempting to recover. The reproach and shame that is felt could even stop us from doing what is necessary to heal. Simultaneously, we are also aware that it is our responsibility to uphold our end of the partnership in healing. The dilemma thus created, between healing being good and healing being bad, can cause considerable internal stress. Hence, it is important that we ask: is it really to the detriment of the community that a person who is unwell does what is needed to heal? And, further, is it at all right for individuals to be made to feel guilty when they prioritise their own physical, mental and spiritual health over the needs of the group (office, family or whatever)?
To answer these questions, let’s consider an analogy that is commonly used in the context of healing: the transformation of a caterpillar. The larva, before it transforms into a butterfly, builds a chrysalis around itself and dissolves its body into goo. Like that pupa, is a person who is hurt not vulnerable to new trauma? Are isolation and safety not necessary to the individual who is hurt as much as to the chrysalis? Nature is arranged in such a way that every chrysalis is given the possibility of isolation and safety. But, as a chrysalis, the insect does not contribute to the wider world. It does not pollinate any flowers, it does not migrate, it bears no offspring, it does not even look aesthetically pleasing. But if the chrysalis is able to remain isolated and safe for the requisite amount of time, it is then able to emerge into a butterfly.
Though the entire time that the chrysalis hangs wrapped up in its silken blanket, seems like a loss, we know that it is really a period of spectacular growth. the worm that wove the chrysalis is not the same as the winged creature that breaks through its encasing. The butterfly has strengths and contributes to the garden in ways that the caterpillar couldn’t. Transformation in solitude is what allows an organism that once only crawled and wriggled to float and flit not only from flower to flower but even to migrate across continents.
So, do we not need a more positive way of thinking of the self-directed attention that healing demands? As it does for the pupa, the process of healing can make people stronger. Though time off work does mean that things don’t happen at the expected rate, healing can allow people to return with greater mental energy, better comprehension and the ability to see the shape of the wood and not only individual trees. Thus, they become more productive and efficient, getting more done in less time – and sometimes move to doing things at an entirely new level. Disability, illness or diversity-friendly adjustments can be costly in terms of time, effort and money in the short-term. But, long-term, such costs will help others in the community too, and allow the community itself to become better and more conducive to healing. Further, the more we heal, the more meaningful and strong our relationships become. In addition, our experiences may teach us to be more sensitive to the needs of others, and less easily triggered when our wishes are given lower priority. Thus, in the end, personal healing helps rather than harms the community.
By prioritizing our health, we act as good stewards of our bodies and minds and, concurrently, we help our communities get better. Hence, we need not feel uneasy or guilty when we prioritise our health. Instead, we can venture into the healing journey with hope and joy.
