You Have the Healer Archetype

There is still a lot of toxic fluff floating around in this sea of soul stuff. I was led to this conclusion today while reading an advertisement for a free healing “masterclass” that incorporates archetypes in their healing process. It appeared in my social media feed, of course, after publishing this post.

There are still people in the wellbeing industry prepared to take advantage of those who are vulnerable and therefore desperate for answers. When you’re desperate, you tend to think, what have I got to lose?

Modern spirituality has evolved to a point where it recognises that anyone who claims they’re a healer is pulling your leg. It’s a dangerous game to play with other people’s health. No-one is a healer. The Healer is an archetype. You are not your archetypes. You have archetypes. You—as your Self—have the capacity to heal your broken archetypes and how they impact your life.

According to IFS¹, your Self is not broken. Your Self does not need to heal. Your Self is pure and unadulterated. It’s your true, authentic Self. I like to think that our Self as sacred. I often need to be reminded of this, so I usually refer to it as our Sacred Self.

Please don’t let yourself be conned into thinking that someone can heal anything from your backache to a life threatening disease. It’s an easy assumption to make when people identify themselves as a healer and worse, advertise as one. If someone claims they are a healer, they are deceiving you. They are talking through the Healer archetype, and this is not their real, or true Self. Like I said, it’s the archetypes that need healing not your Sacred Self.

The self-titled “healer” relies on assumption. The one that assumes they will heal you simply because they claim they are a healer. If you claim you’re a healer, then it’s clear you’re in the business of healing. This could be why those who prey on the desperation of others need to add in small print of their advertisement, something along the lines of the following: 

“…results shown are extraordinary and are not intended to serve as guarantees…we cannot and do not make any guarantees about your ability to get results…” 

Maybe self-titled healers need to add a disclaimer to counter their claim about healing because their insurance can’t legitimately cover this aspect of their work? We cannot afford to continue to make false claims in this industry, especially when you need to make a disclaimer to cover the assumptions that you know your claims are creating in the minds of your audience.

I teach archetypes for identifying the learning behaviours that inform personal and spiritual growth that lead to personal transformation. Yes, transformation can be healing but I’m inclined to stop using the word “healing”, now that I recognise the risks, especially the unconscious associations people make. Deliberate or not, mixed messaging takes advantage of others, and leads to assumptions that generate false hope, wishful thinking, disappointment or worse, betrayal. All of which damages, rather than heals, the soul. Hardly the best legacy.

While I aim to clarify what it means to heal and continue to reiterate that we are not our archetypes, that we have archetypes, and that our Sacred Self is not broken, it’s clear I’m still off the mark. So long as people are desperate for answers, and there are “healers” prepared to prey on the vulnerabilities and desperate assumptions of others, then the quest to encourage no fluff soul stuff must continue…

1. Internal Family Systems model, developed by Dr. Richard C Schwartz, recognises that we all have different parts to our personality. These parts are like the archetypes that represent the many different parts of our personality. Archetypes also get stuck in destructive patterns, but learning to dialogue with our personal archetypes can enhance our capacity to transform them into constructive life patterns as we reveal more and more of our true, authentic Sacred Self during the course of life. ↩︎