Is It Healing or Reinforcement of Your Strategy?

If we learn that our emotional pain, like grief, is a burden, then we’ll adapt to turn away from it. We’ll also be more prone to turning towards ideologies that reject the reality of our wholeness, which includes our grief.

One of the things that happens in “high vibe” culture is an insidious rejection, of parts of us that aren’t perceived as high vibe. Communities and practitioners that tout high vibes can end up mirroring our previous experiences where our emotional pain couldn’t be met and attended to.

So if we learned to bypass our pain, we might find ourselves initially gravitating towards communities who will do the same. Bypass our emotional pain. It can feel safer and less vulnerable, because it means we get to continue to avoid feeling discomfort. It can also create a false sense of belonging, as we can end up continuing to subconsciously reject our pain and wear the masks we learned to put on to hide that pain.

These masks tell everyone we’re okay. That everything is great! We’re awesome! We’re blessed and grateful. None of these are inherently wrong, but are they authentic and true when we need to disown parts of ourselves? Are we actually experiencing healing in these communities or with these practitioners if we can’t bring all of ourselves? If they reinforce our adaptive strategies and coping mechanisms? Are we actually healing if our wholeness doesn’t belong? I think not.