Tapping into the Gift of the Wounded Healer: Exploring a Personal Journey Through Woundedness

Abstract

The following manuscript is an autoethnographic study in which the author explores her journey and process as a wounded healer. In order to gain a deeper understanding of her experiences, the author connects her personal narrative to scholarly data on “wounded healers”, vulnerability, and shame. The author offers a detailed account of her personal experiences with depression, a suicide attempt and experience in a psychiatric ward to shed light on her “wounds” and examine the beginnings of vision for a new model of care. The author seeks to explore her process of growth as a wounded healer through describing how this experience has influenced her current approach to counselling and contribution to a community that celebrates “woundedness” as an essential part of embracing one’s humanness. By offering her personal story, the researcher’s aim is to be a source of hope, strength and inspiration to both counsellors and clients by taking the first steps to break down the barriers of shame surrounding mental illness, being vulnerable and having “wounds”.