The Real Reason Reason Your Healing is Taking Longer Than You’d Like

You’re a Healer Hopper and that’s holding you back

I want to talk about healer hopping, you know, the spiritual equivalent of dating five people at once and wondering why you still feel emotionally empty.

I’ve noticed an increase in a certain type of client; the ones with a pattern of hopping from healer to healer, collecting practitioners like followers on social media. One week, it’s Reiki. Next, a Shamanic soul retrieval. Then, past-life regression, cranial sacral therapy, and oh! Can’t forget about that one practitioner who promises to "realign your cosmic DNA."

Healing can be challenging, especially when you’re in what feels like the dark night of the soul. I do think there are times that it’s critical to be accompanied by a guide of some sort, because navigating your inner landscape when in the wounding can be a tricky endeavour, filled with shadows and blindspots that we’ve grown accustomed to glazing over. It's often tempting to hand over the reins to someone else - and sometimes multiple someones, so that you don’t have to go through the messier, stickier, uglier parts of the journey yourself. But as much as I’m an advocate for outsourcing the stuff you don’t enjoy doing in the day-to-day, you can’t actually bypass that in your emotional healing path work.

You’re Gathering Tools… But Likely Avoiding the Work

There’s a difference between building a support team and outsourcing your healing altogether.

Imagine you’re taking multiple medications to treat an issue. If you’re on five different prescriptions at once, all prescribed by different specialists who aren’t communicating about the whole person, how do you know which one is actually working – and which one might be making things worse? I do my best to apply the same logic to healing work. When you layer too many approaches at once, it can become difficult to tell what’s truly supporting your growth and what might actually be contradicting it.

That’s not to say that different modalities can’t work together beautifully. They absolutely can! For instance, working with a personal trainer pairs wonderfully with massage therapy, acupuncture, and even chiropractic care if you’re into that type of care. But in emotional and energetic healing, if you’re cycling through healers or going to ceremony after ceremony without giving yourself time to integrate, you might not be allowing yourself time to be uncomfortable in the integration period. Because each breakthrough is often accompanied by a time of contraction and reevaluation before you release the old and fully emerge into the new.

Beware the Healer Who Says “Only I Can Help You”

A good healer, just like a good therapist, coach, or mentor, should empower you – not make you dependent on them.

If a practitioner subtly (or not-so-subtly) plants the idea that they alone have the magic key to your healing, run. No true healer operates from a place of scarcity, fear, or ego. Your healing is always yours. A practitioner is just there to guide, hold a mirror, create a container, and support your own unfolding. If they tell you that they are the source of all wisdom, or have some special connection with Source, God, angels etc., this is a power play designed to create co-dependence and strip away your own inner guidance and is not holding your best interests at heart.

And this isn’t always a simple thing to identify. I know of many healers who start off as a positive influence for their clients, but then a shift subtly begins to take root. When you were previously empowered by your mentor, suddenly, you leave your sessions feeling insecure, like you’ve upset or disappointed them, or like you’re backsliding. Sound familiar?

Why does this happen? 

Be sure to read part 2, coming soon!