The 2 Conditions for True Healing
I’ve noticed that most people have a conceptually vague understanding of what healing is and how it works. Many assume healing is either impossible, or that it simply means talking about difficult experiences, doing exercises to produce insights and catharsis, or learning coping skills. While these can help you feel better in the moment, they don’t necessarily create the deep, lasting change most of us are longing for.
There is a nearly endless array of therapeutic, restorative, transformative, insight-producing, grounding, relaxing, and generally helpful processes, workshops, seminars, and modalities, each of which has its strengths, weaknesses, and ideal applications. But when it comes to true healing, the most important distinction is whether you are using a method that can permanently eliminate the source of your emotional distress. There are a very small number of methods that can do this reliably, and a much larger number that can’t.
The larger category provides other benefits: insights or understanding, nervous-system regulation, reframing of negative thoughts, or reminders that we are capable adults with agency. These outcomes are valuable and even life-changing, but if your goal is the permanent cessation of specific distressing emotions and the behaviors they drive, you will ultimately be disappointed if the method you’re using doesn’t address the root cause.
The Reality of Healing
That disappointment is the reason I am here today writing to you about this. I spent thirteen years trying everything I could find – workshops, therapies, coaching, drugs, ceremonies – to resolve my grief and anxiety from losing my mother to cancer and living in an individualist, capitalist society. I learned a lot, grew a lot, and spent a lot of money. I met my wife. I bought a condo. But my distress never truly went away.
I didn’t find what I was looking for until five years ago when I discovered Peak States Therapy, the modality I now practice. I realized then that most people are looking for a way to permanently let go of their negative feelings and behaviors, but the market is saturated with information that suggests all you need to do is change your thoughts, exercise more, or follow this 1 weird tip, and your problems will go away. The reality is much different, and much harder to package into a video course or a social media post.
This isn’t to say that most methods can’t sometimes produce lasting healing. Many people have had the experience of doing an exercise or talking through a painful memory and suddenly feeling free of it. But that same release can happen through a heartfelt conversation with a friend, looking into a newborn’s eyes, having a good cry, or watching an inspiring movie. Sometimes it even happens when looking at an Instagram post. But it’s not reliable. You can’t assume it will happen; you’re just lucky if it does.
Having now steeped myself in all things healing for the last five years and pivoted from a career in technology to helping people heal trauma, I’ve found that healing is not tied to a particular technique. Healing happens when a specific set of conditions are met.
Conditions for Healing
You bring the source of your distress into conscious awareness. Said another way, you put your attention directly on the bad feelings, whether they arise in the present, from a memory, or through regression to prenatal, ancestral, or even past-life events. This can be simple (a single traumatic incident) or complex (multiple events, internal conflicts, inherited trauma, negative associations with feeling good, or unconsciously taking on the suffering of others).
You feel safe enough to face those feelings without flinching, to fully experience them and allow them to run their course.
What Happens
Your consciousness heals itself. It processes and digests the experience that created the distress and restores that part of you to optimal health.
The emotional charge that has been causing you distress and sending your nervous system into fight-or-flight disappears, permanently.
You feel free. Calm. Relaxed. Lightweight. Peaceful. Neutral.
When the next day comes and that familiar triggering person or situation arises, you simply don’t get triggered. No effort or thought is required; there’s just nothing in you to trigger anymore.
Notice that there is no mention of understanding, reframing, changing thoughts, having insights, implementing accountability structures, making lifestyle changes, or using coping skills. Notice also the feelings of freedom, calm, peace, lightness, and neutrality. These are the hallmarks of healing.
Just as someone who physically heals their broken leg no longer needs crutches, someone who heals emotionally no longer needs to do anything to stay calm in the face of formerly triggering situations. In fact, they may even forget that they used to get triggered, just like they might forget that their leg used to be broken. This is true healing.
If you’ve been working hard to resolve your emotional distress or change your behaviors, but keep finding that things don’t change in real life situations, or progress is only temporary, it may be because the work you’re doing isn’t fully meeting the two conditions for healing.
Often, the safety component is missing, which is common in approaches that focus primarily on talking, reframing, or understanding. Other times, the issue is simply too complex for the method being used, or there are unconscious blocks that the process doesn’t address.
Modalities That Produce Lasting Change
Most techniques that reliably lead to permanent healing belong to the family of “power therapies” discovered in the last few decades, although more are being discovered and invented as time goes on. Examples include:
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)
EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique)
TIR (Traumatic Incident Reduction)
Somatic Experiencing
Brainspotting
Holotropic Breathwork (in the hands of someone who knows how to navigate prenatal trauma)
Peak States Therapy
I prefer Peak States Therapy because it is ideal for resolving complex issues. The model of consciousness used is incredibly comprehensive, allowing practitioners to address a wide variety of problems, behaviors, patterns, and traumas.
If you experienced a single event, like a car accident that caused PTSD, any of the above modalities can help you resolve it. But for more complex patterns, such as self-sabotage or avoiding success, chronic anxiety or depression even when things are good, repeatedly attracting unhealthy partners, or simply not believing in yourself, Peak States Therapy excels. Time and again, I’ve watched people go from frustrated or hopeless to feeling calm, peaceful, and empowered – often in a surprisingly short period.
I hope this gives you a clearer understanding of what healing involves and what to look for in a modality. If your journey has led you here and you’re curious whether I can help you, send me a message. I’d love to show you what’s possible.
