The Wounded Healer

The Wounded Healer

Hello! My name is Courtney. I thought I would begin my journey here with you today on my private practice website blog by telling you a little bit about me and my journey to become the woman that I am today.

At Pacifica Graduate Institute, a depth psychology program which focuses on the many ways we can raise consciousness through the therapeutic process, I was steeped in the paradigm of the wounded healer. The wounded healer is based on the idea that we are one and the same, you and I, traveling this road of life together. The idea that one of us is “sick” and one of us is “well” is based on the medical model and dehumanizing. In fact, you and I are on this road of life in which there is no hierarchy. I can serve as a guide to you through healing work around your wounding in relation to, or as a result of the work I have done to heal my own wounding.

The wounded healer paradigm resonates with me strongly because my own desire to become a therapist grew out of my work as a client, then patient in psychoanalytic/dynamic terms. I was a dedicated psychodynamic psychotherapy client for a period of eight years from 2005 - 2014, with a concurrent 5 years as a client in a Modern Analytic Group.

As I did my own healing work throughout my journey, I recovered and reclaimed parts of myself that make me the therapist I am today. While Pacifica introduced me to the concept of the wounded healer, it was alive within me from the moment I took my own first step on the healing path. I always tell my clients that the wound is the gift. From our deepest woundings, we can ultimately cultivate our greatest gifts.

In my case, hypervigilance became powerful intuition; a wide chasm of unclaimed feelings transformed into a deep sense of empathy; an overdeveloped sense of my own importance became an acceptance of humility; an unending striving led to embodied compassion, and the sense of not being enough became a knowing that we are each inherently worthy.

I hope to continue to tell you more about my healing journey and how it transformed me through these blog posts. Your healing journey may be mirrored in my own. I love this work, and I love the idea of us doing it together. Join me in claiming your gifts and redefining yourself and your story…