The Art of Healing: Fragmentation and the Movement Towards Wholeness
Illuminating Shadows, Processing Trauma & Resolving Attachment Wounds
Conventional approaches to human development prioritize productivity and effectiveness, often at the expense of meeting one’s needs for healing. A post-conventional perspective contrasts in seeing healing as an integral part of one’s developmental journey.
What is Healing?
The word heal comes from the same root as whole and holiness. Based on this etymological root, healing is a process of becoming whole. This means opening to, embracing, and integrating a wider range of experiences particularly those that we tend to repress or neglect. It can also be seen as a process of increasing our threshold for the intensity of experience.
Healing is often seen as a deliberate process but many cosmological thinkers have long believed that the movement towards wholeness is fundamental to the universe. Complexity science is now catching up.
The concept of emergence states that when systems become more complex, they give rise to entirely new, unpredictable properties that can't be reduced to their individual parts. These emergent properties are a testament to the universe's inherent tendency to self-organize, continuously evolving into more intricate and interconnected wholes.
As energy flows through systems, it naturally pushes them toward greater complexity and order, suggesting that the universe is always moving towards creating new forms of unity. In this light, healing isn't just a deliberate act—it's a manifestation of the universe's fundamental drive to bring all things together into a greater, more harmonious whole.
As the Buddhist nun Pema Chodron says:
“The ultimate nature of everything tends toward goodness and there’s no way to stop it, no matter what we believe.”
The Turn Inward
To deliberately engage with the healing process is to participate in the universe’s innate movement towards wholeness. Usually, people begin to deliberately engage with the healing process after undergoing what I call the post-conventional shift.
In conventional states of consciousness, we are preoccupied with the external world. In post-conventional states, we recognize that the external world is largely a reflection of our interiority. The post-conventional shift also marks a transition from pre-tragic to tragic stations in life.
Before the shift, we are largely ignorant of both our own & the suffering of the world. After we can no longer ignore the tragic aspect of life. We may also begin to see how in some ways we contribute to that suffering. In that seeing there is a desire to heal, harmonize, and help the world as well as a recognition that to do so we must start by transforming our minds.
“Ultimately, happiness comes down to choosing between the discomfort of becoming aware of your mental afflictions and the discomfort of being ruled by them.
-Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
Fragmentation
One way to conceive of the mind/psyche is as a mirror. Primordially the mirror is clear and reflects reality and the self as a whole, integrated image. Over time, due to social conditioning and trauma, this mirror becomes cracked and eventually shatters into many smaller pieces.
In a sense, our minds develop in a way that they become divided against themselves. We can call this splitting of the mind fragmentation. These splits or divisions can be understood as parts or fixated patterns of interactions. The more fragmented our psyche the more rigid these patterns are.
Healing in this metaphor involves reassembling the pieces of the mirror, not to erase the cracks but to make the image whole again—acknowledging and integrating all the parts of the self, even the painful or disowned ones.
“There is a crack in everything that’s how the light gets in”
- Leonard Cohen.
Early childhood experiences
Fragmentation is an inherent part of the human experience, though the extent to which we encounter it is profoundly shaped by our early childhood.
The British psychoanalyst and pediatrician Donald Winnicott came up with the term “good enough mother” which reflected the idea that a parent doesn’t need to be perfect to raise a resilient and healthy child. “Good enough parents” attune to their child's needs, providing care that is consistent and reliable, while also allowing the child to experience and cope with small frustrations.
Those who received good enough parenting as children will usually experience a more manageable degree of fragmentation however, when childhood needs are not adequately met fragmentation is often exacerbated and experienced as particularly distressful. In extreme cases, it can lead to personality disorders like Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), and Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID).
Shadows, Trauma, and Attachment Wounds
When working with fragmentation we are attempting to bring awareness to aspects of our experience that have been cut off. A helpful way to do this is by refining our understanding of fragmentation through the lens of shadows, traumas, and attachment wounds.
Shadows are repressed parts of ourselves. They are aspects of personality that we fail to see in ourselves and instead project onto others.
Traumas are unprocessed emotional pain. Similar to shadows they distort our view of reality making it hard to see clearly.
Attachment wounds correlate to our sense of insecurity in relation to others. Many of our struggles in relationships can be tied back to insecure patterns of attachment.
Psychotherapist and Zen Priest Chad Bennett differentiates shadows, traumas, and attachment wounds in the following way “Shadows are psychological issues and are resolved by thinking and insight. Traumas are biological issues and are resolved by sensing and resourcing the body. Attachment wounds are ultimately spiritual issues and resolved by being.”
Illuminating Shadows
Shadows and traumas are often interrelated but also distinct. In his book Owning Your Own Shadow, Robert A. Johnson, a Jungian analyst, delves into how shadow aspects are often repressed due to cultural or personal reasons rather than because they are traumatic. Shadows can include socially undesirable traits that aren't necessarily linked to trauma but rather to the parts of ourselves that we haven't accepted or integrated.
Shadow work is more psychological and introspective, often involving self-reflection and insight, whereas trauma work involves somatic practices and emotional regulation to process and integrate traumatic memories. What also differentiates shadows from traumas or attachment wounds is that they are more pervasive.
Some people are largely free of unprocessed trauma or attachment wounds, but no one is completely free of shadows. There will always be aspects of the psyche that remain hidden from us.
Processing Trauma
Traumas are adverse experiences that a person is unable to understand, process, and cope with. They become encoded in the deepest and most primitive layers of our brain which makes them more difficult to address than shadows. Trauma can be delineated into Big “T” and small “t” trauma.
Big “T" trauma refers to experiences that are typically life-threatening or severely distressing events. These are events that overwhelm an individual’s ability to cope and often lead to significant psychological distress, including conditions like Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Examples include natural disasters, serious accidents, war or combat experiences, physical or sexual assault, severe abuse or neglect, witnessing death or severe injury, and life-threatening medical conditions.
Small “t" trauma refers to less extreme but still distressing events. These events do not involve a direct threat to life or physical integrity but can still cause significant emotional pain and psychological impact, especially when they are repeated or chronic. Examples include emotional abuse or neglect, chronic stress from work, school, or relationships, divorce or breakup, bullying or harassment, financial diffculties, loss of job, and significant life transitions.
Not everyone has experienced a big “T” trauma but throughout our lives, we all will undergo many small “t” traumas. Trauma can happen at any point in life but it tends to be most devastating in childhood. Childhood trauma is often called developmental trauma because it prevents a child's brain from developing properly increasing the likelihood that they will experience mental health issues as an adult.
The ACE’s (Adverse Childhood Experiences) quiz can help us assess the level of trauma that we experienced as children. Your ACE score is not a final designation but a way to illuminate potential risk factors. One can have a high ACE score and still thrive although many people who experience significant distress as adults have a history of childhood trauma.
Resolving Attachment Wounds
Attachment is an innate system within the mammalian brain, designed by evolution to shape and guide how we experience motivation, emotions, and memories related to key caregivers. Children who receive “good enough” care in their earliest years go on to develop secure attachments. However inadequate care can lead to insecure attachment patterns or wounds.
Attachment wounds can be some of the most challenging issues to address since they tend to emerge in the first two years of life before we have a fully developed sense of self. They are resolved by being in relationships that facilitate and encourage secure attachment patterns. Such relationships should make a person feel safe, seen, comforted, valued, and supported.
You can take this quiz to determine if you have secure attachment.
Healing with Psychotherapy
It’s possible to resolve shadows, traumas, and attachment wounds through solo inner work but since most of this fragmentation is inherited through our relationships its resolution is most effectively facilitated in a relational context. In an ideal world, many of our relationships would be healing or therapeutic but this is rarely the case. This is where psychotherapy or counseling can be useful.
A good psychotherapist can create a container that facilitates our healing and mirrors what a therapeutic relationship can look and feel like. Even though many modalities have significant overlap in what they can treat there are still particular approaches that will be most effective depending on which type of fragmentation we are attempting to address.
If you want to illuminate shadows try Family System (IFS), Gestalt Therapy, or Jungian Dream Work. If you’re looking to treat trauma consider approaches such as Somatic Experiencing, Sensorimotor Therapy, and Eye Movement and Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR). Modalities that specifically cater to healing attachment wounds include Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) & Integrative Attachment Therapy (IAT).
Whatever modality you decide to work with it’s important to keep in mind that psychotherapy often requires a considerable amount of time and commitment to produce true healing.
Healing with Psychedelics
In today’s world, we cannot talk about healing without mentioning psychedelics which are emerging as powerful allys in accelerating people’s healing journeys. Due to their ability to temporarily relax ego boundaries, psychedelics allow people to more easily access and process unconscious material. That’s why some say that one psychedelic journey can be equated with ten years of psychotherapy.
An increasing number of studies are showing that psychedelic substances like psilocybin mushrooms, ketamine & MDMA are effective for resolving various mental health issues such as anxiety, depression & PTSD. I’ve personally experienced significant healing through conscious psychedelic use, particularly in the context of Ayahuasca Ceremonies.
None of this is to say that psychedelics are magic pills. They often require a lot of work before, during, and after a session to lead to lasting positive change. And while psychedelics can accelerate healing they can sometimes increase fragmentation particularly if done in the wrong context. As psychedelics become more accessible it is important that they are facilitated in containers of care, reverence, and skill.
Healing through Relational Practices
While not a substitute for therapy many people find that relational practices such as Circling, Authentic Relating, & Collective Presencing can provide immense healing. Typically our interactions include layers of masks, manipulation, and social maneuvering. In relational practices we work to see through these conventions, interacting in ways that foster increased vulnerability, intimacy, and authenticity. Although at times uncomfortable most report that relating in these ways leads to a deeper sense of well-being and connection.
Healing through being
Thus far we’ve mostly spoken about a deliberate approach to healing but as stated earlier healing is not just something that we deliberately do, it’s a natural inclination that exists in all living organisms. For example, in many instances of sickness, the body will heal itself if we only get out of the way. In the same way, psychological and emotional healing can happen merely by being.
Meditation in its purest form is the suspension of all doing. The meditation teacher Michael Taft regularly mentions that simply sitting in meditation can lead to significant psychological and emotional healing over time. When we stop engaging with discursive thought, deeper layers of the mind unfold, allowing unconscious processing to surface and be integrated.
This process is not exclusive to formal meditation. Some people will notice this kind of unfolding while engaging in simple tasks like cooking, cleaning, or walking in nature. It’s unclear if this more passive form of healing can adequately resolve all emotional wounds, particularly in highly fragmented psyches, nonetheless, it is important to mention because it is a viable “non-approach” towards wholeness for some.
Healing as an Art form
While there is an increasing amount of science emerging around psychological healing, at its heart it will always remain an art form. My favorite metaphor to describe the healing process is Kintsugi - the ancient Japanese art of repairing broken pottery. Similar to how a Kintsugi artist applies golden lacquer to the cracks in broken pottery, we apply awareness to the fragmentation in our psyches, transforming severed parts into beautiful art. The goal is never a perfectly smooth canvas but an increasingly unique masterpiece.
Limitations to healing
In an earlier piece, I laid out the HGA (Heal, Grow, Awaken) framework which see’s healing as one of three domains in an Integrated approach to Human development. I mention that all three domains are essential and while we can miss immense value if we don't adequately engage with each domain we can also get stuck by becoming preoccupied with any one of the three.
Getting stuck in the healing domain can be equated with trying to get a kink out a carpet. No matter how much you try to smooth it out the kink simply moves to another part of the carpet. In the same way, attempting to smooth out every fragmentation in our psyche is an impossible endeavor.
As psychotherapist & long-time dharma practitioner, Bruce Tift writes:
“This unexamined project of freeing oneself from the past can result in an endless self-improvement project—as well as endless therapy.”
What Tift calls the fruitional view is an antidote to getting stuck in the endless process of healing. It is the realization of fundamental okayness. There is nothing wrong with you. You don’t need to fix yourself because you're not broken. Your flaws and imperfections are what make you uniquely you. Of course, the fruitional view can also be used to spiritually bypass.
Tift writes:
“If we focus only on acceptance and immediacy, we may ignore historically conditioned patterns that are causing harm to ourselves and others.”
This is why learning to move between fruitional and developmental views is essential.
Conclusion
In this piece I attempted to lay out an in-depth account of what psychospiritual healing is and what it entails but by no means is it conclusive. There are far more ways to think about and facilitate healing than I can mention here. With that said, I’m curious to hear what is healing for you? What has helped you find healing in your life?
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