Merging Is Not Healing

We can merge with wellness culture and take on the “right” language and ways of being, but still lack in our sense of self.

Merging is not healing.

I did this in the beginning. I merged to what I was being taught. I merged to teachers and coaches. I merged with “communities” because it was the only way I knew how to belong. That happens when you don’t belong to yourself. When you don’t have a strong sense of self. There’s a developmental piece that contributes to this.

Many of our family systems and the greater systems at large don’t support our individuation. As we complete these developmental stages we might not have been able to during those developmental years, our sense of self begins to form. We begin to feel anchored within ourselves. We can sense where we end and the rest of the world begins. We gain access to our agency and our autonomy. We start to sense our needs and our boundaries, as our inner protective predator energy comes online.

I’ve been in communities where questioning what was being taught was met with defensiveness. Where gaslighting occurred. Where simplistic spiritual jargon was used to keep you in line with the group think, just reinforcing patterns of merging and fawning. And it was packaged as healing the more you conformed.

Merging is not healing.

We can merge with the information spouted on social media too. It might sound like healing because you’ve adopted the language you learned here. It’s sneaky how our patterns can just end up being transferred onto this ‘work’. Shifting the pattern of merging often requires pulling away from external influence. From constant consumption.

There can be a seeking to label and identify your experience. To put it in a box so it feels contained, because not having that strong sense of self feels untethering. In the desire to know self and feel secure in yourself, there can be an experience of trying on ways of being as taught or expressed by others.

The thing is, we find that true sense of self internally. By going through the discomfort, protectors, walls and parts of ourselves we’ve learned to turn away from. Merging is not healing.