Curing and Healing

The difference between curing and healing has been discussed many times, but is an incredibly important distinction and one worth highlighting.

Healing can be defined as learning the lessons offered up by the experience of illness or accident, and no longer being disturbed by its effects; i.e. finding peace within the situation. Sometimes this is accompanied by a lessening of the physical features of the illness and possibly even becoming ‘cured’, though this is not always necessarily the case.

Curing is removal of all traces of the physical trauma or illness from the body. Again, this can occur alone, without healing, or it can be go hand in hand with healing. If healing isn’t experienced alongside a cure, if we don’t learn the lessons our bodies try to signal to us, we essentially replicate the conditions in which it occurred in the first place, and illness may recur.

Personally I learned this distinction when I began suffering from tinnitus, ringing in the ears, essentially a harmless physical condition, but mentally very disturbing. I didn’t know how I could continue living without the peace of silence at night or in my quiet times, and indeed I didn’t manage to sleep a whole night through without the help of sleeping pills for over two months; a tormenting time.

I initially fought against the tinnitus, could not accept it and couldn’t fathom how I could learn to live with it. And yet I knew deep down that it was signalling many things to me that I had been ignoring for quite some time and that I needed to listen to. And though there was a long period when I couldn’t see it this way, the change it was firing within me was necessary and one that, eventually, I came to be grateful for.

I wasn’t able to find anything that decreased the volume of the tinnitus – so I could not cure it, but I did heal from it; I began to accept it, I listened to what it was trying to teach me and ultimately I made peace with it. Eventually it stopped disturbing me, and I slept.

The lack of sleep and exhaustion however taught me many things. I learnt about living moment by moment and following my instincts, since that state allowed me little option; I found out how much people cared for me at these times; I found out how much I could go through and come out the other end; I appreciated how much I had taken for granted and I discovered a core and strength within me that I hadn’t really been aware of before. In short tinnitus was a rude awakening, but an awakening that I needed.

During this time I also discovered EFT and hypnotherapy, both of which offered me peace within my experience. Additionally during the times when I couldn’t sleep, I wrote. I began my children’s book ‘Still Me’ and began my path towards becoming a therapist – something I had wanted to do for years, but had not had the impetus to action until I was spurred on by my experience with tinnitus. And then I truly feel that once I learned what I needed to learn from the experience, I was freed from it.

I can say now that I am healed from my tinnitus. I still have sounds in my ears, though they have decreased, but because I pay no attention to them, I no longer notice them and they do not disturb me. I am able to be at peace, despite their presence.

Healing can also be accompanied by incredible shifts within our physical bodies towards health. There may be scars or longer term physical consequences after illness, but healing in essence takes us to a better state emotionally than we were at before, because we are transformed by our experience and have allowed it to teach us the lesson it offered.

If everything is ‘an inside job’ as Gary Craig, the innovator of EFT puts it, then addressing ourselves internally is the most powerful place to start to make changes. Of course we can affect the body from outside sources with drugs or surgery, and sometimes that is essential, but healing has a different quality and a different purpose. Finding peace within, despite the shifts and changes that occur in the world and our bodies (which will naturally wind down over time in any case), is always going to be our greatest achievement.

Tools such as EFT and hypnotherapy are incredibly potent in allowing us to interact with and positively affect our inner landscape; and healing, whether emotional or physical, is always ultimately their aim and their purpose.