Psychoeducation Self-care

The Five As of Healing

The journey toward healing often requires a multifaceted approach. This article unpacks the Five As of Healing: a potential framework for conceptualising this journey.

By Mental Health Academy 2024-03-06 04:54:44

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From embracing one’s true self to challenging oppressive systems, the journey toward healing often requires a multifaceted approach. This article unpacks the Five As of Healing: a potential framework for conceptualising this journey.

Related article: Rethinking Wellness: A Holistic Perspective on Health.

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Introduction

In navigating the complexities of healing, it becomes apparent that certain fundamental elements are essential for genuine transformation and well-being. These foundational requirements are encapsulated in the five “As” of healing, a framework proposed for fostering individual and societal wholeness. From embracing one’s true self to challenging oppressive systems, the journey toward healing unfolds through a multifaceted approach that addresses both personal and collective well-being. Without further ado, let’s delve deeper into each of these “As” to uncover their significance in the pursuit of holistic healing and transformation.

The Five As of Healing

Authenticity

The quality of being “real”, “genuine”, or “truthful” is much vaunted in contemporary western culture, but the essence and philosophy of authenticity is paradoxically hard to pin down. In fact, we can’t chase after it so much as embody it. How do we do that? And how do we detect it at work within our own lives and the lives of our clients?

We know through texts available to us that focus on authenticity – such as popular media, movies and novels – that separation from our authentic selves often causes us to defeat the fulfillment of our own deepest needs, and can even blind us to the actions we’ve taken that culminate in that self-betrayal. So, here’s a counterintuitive truth about this first “A” of healing: it is more often observed in its absence than by its presence. When we realise that we are suffering psychopathology – anxiety, depression, or merely irritation and fatigue – chances are that we acted inauthentically, creating cognitive stress.

When we feel tense, we can ask, “What expression am I denying or withholding in myself, perhaps to ensure I do not lose approvals, affection, or even my job?”. When we realise that we have abandoned a cherished value to say or do something that conflicts with it, we find ourselves asking, “Why did I do/say that?”. It challenges our sense of authenticity and over time, it erodes our sense of self.

The good news, though, is that these internal dialogues reveal that, like the sun hiding behind a cloud, our authenticity is trying to peep through, to bring truth and clarity into the situations we find ourselves in. In that moment of recognition, we may see a different option – one that can strengthen our authenticity and, in doing so, bolster our integrity, sense of self and wellbeing.

Agency

Another characteristic most notable in its absence, or possibly misunderstood (or in graver situations, purposefully misconstrued) is agency.

Being deprived of agency, the ability to freely take responsibility for the decisions affecting our lives, is a major source of stress. We have only to consider such external factors as poverty, injustice, or marginalisation to connect the dots from the lack of agency there to psycho- and other pathology. In his recent book, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, illness, and healing in a toxic culture (2022), Dr. Gabor Maté writes about a psychologist who has studied many cases of spontaneous remission of so-called “terminal” malignancies. She told Maté that, often, the “good”, “nice” patients (those who did what they were told, causing less friction and making themselves more obedient and thus, convenient) didn’t do as well getting past the cancer as the annoying ones, who asked a lot of questions and generally tried to do it their way.

Agency is not about a false sense of omnipotence, of trying to take control of events well beyond our sphere of control; it is about choosing which parts of ourselves we identify and act from. This means we may need to renegotiate relationships with those aspects of personality that – earlier – “held us”, keeping approvals and care coming our way, but now “hold us back”. Agency means having the response flexibility to question a request or instruction when it may not be right for us. The person with agency is not acting from either blind acceptance or blind rejection of authority, and certainly not from the emotion of the moment. Rather, agency grants us the ability to choose our actions, not merely defer to either what the world expects or what we have been internally conditioned to do. It’s about having a proactive role in our own lives, wielded and directed via choice, rather than surrendering that to popular opinion, the whims of those around us or the circumstances of our past.

Anger

While blind rage, resentment, or spite are not anger-associated expressions that lead away from psychopathology and onward to wholeness, “pure” anger is. Known as “The Great Protector”, anger is the emotion that lets us know there is a threat and we need to take protective action. The full functioning of this emotion is not just necessary for wholeness, but for survival. As a healthy response, it is an in-the-moment response without moral content which rises up when necessary, deals with the threat, and then subsides. Sadly, in many families and many societies, the emotion is feared and disallowed. But putting it “into the basement” only fuels resentment, which then breeds the unwholesome explosions that parents, teachers, and other authorities feel the need to suppress, fuelling a deeply harmful cycle (for tips on how to manage anger in your therapy rooms, read Assessing and Treating Problem Anger and Anger Management: De-escalating Anger).

People subjected to such authorities’ dampening down of this essential quality find themselves minimising their own anger, or the situations that ought to give rise to it, to the extent that some people do not even recognise their own anger! This repression represents a genuine danger to a person’s health, as the stress caused by this repression is closely associated with high blood pressure, heart disease, and a weakened immune system. Psychopathology from this source includes anxiety, depression, and increased substance misuse (Todd, 2023). Moreover, Maté (2022) reports that patients with either amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or fibromyalgia (two medically baffling conditions) are most at risk for quick degeneration when they are seen as particularly “nice” patients (i.e., their natural anger response has been repressed, often in favour of a conditioned sense of apologetic obedience).

The last word for anger, then, as a quality necessary on the road to wholeness? The question is not whether we should be angry or not, but how to relate healthily to the natural feelings – including anger – which ebb and flow as the “old” (earliest developed) parts of our brain register threats and other stimuli which we must respond to, and potentially how we can best care for ourselves in the aftermath of an anger-inducing experience.  

Acceptance

The quality of acceptance seems related to complacency or resignation, but is in fact quite different. With acceptance, we acknowledge that something is. We may not like or condone it, but we admit that it exists, without denial. Acceptance makes room for the other three As, in that it provides room for authenticity in our response to an experience, including anger if it is present, and in doing that, agency is likewise invited in as we consider our choices, unclouded by repressed anger and informed by who we are at our core (for tips on how to help clients embrace acceptance, read From Resistance To Acceptance).

An important side-note here – accepting something is not the same as tolerating something. Acceptance helps us to feel more alive, as we experience more of ourselves, whereas when we tolerate something, particularly something that should not be tolerated (such as abuse or disrespect), it deadens us. Consider, for example, the tolerance of an abusive relationship by the abused partner. Few experiences could constitute a more express route to psychopathology than rejecting, hiding or neglecting parts of oneself that deserve (and need) respect and integrity, such as happens when abuse is tolerated.

In the macrocosm of the broader society as well, acceptance is a prerequisite for doing the advocacy and activism that may change social injustice.

Advocacy and activism

While the first four principles of healing can be initiated at individual levels, this last A (counting advocacy and activism together as one “A”), manifests at a broader level of transformational change. When we bring together authenticity, agency, anger, and acceptance and add in connection and collective action, we can inspire healing at societal levels. Advocacy is about using whatever relative privilege we may be enjoying to give voice to those whom society has denied a voice. Activism is about helping people organise to take needed action. These two together are an individual “no” writ large into the community where the action is taking place. Just as a healing individual says, “No, I will not tolerate this; it is hurting my health and wholeness”, so advocacy and activism say “no” to harmful trends, habits, or attitudes – including discrimination, marginalisation, and the after-effects of slavery and colonisation – which become the chronic variable stressors for some groups that induce ongoing trauma. In that way, advocates and activists attempt to clear obstacles to wholeness at the level of culture. 

Conclusion: Qualities in concert

In the pursuit of holistic healing, it is perhaps unsurprising that the framework we have proposed here is cyclic in nature; any one of these qualities could inspire or give air to another within the framework, once broached. Nor are these qualities necessarily fixed in terms of growth – rather, they inspire a continuing upward spiral of self-knowledge and healing, addressing more granular aspects of trauma as the bigger traumatic “watershed” aspects move towards healing. Each “A” serves as a beacon guiding individuals and societies towards a state of wholeness and well-being, intertwining to form a tapestry of transformational change.

Authenticity beckons us to embrace our true selves, navigating the often challenging terrain of self-awareness and honesty. Agency empowers us to reclaim our autonomy, steering our lives with intention and purpose even amidst external pressures. Anger, when channelled constructively, becomes a potent force for protection and boundary-setting, vital for our emotional and physical health. Acceptance invites us to acknowledge and integrate all facets of our experience, fostering a sense of aliveness and integrity. Finally, advocacy and activism – or perhaps, more succinctly, Action – propel us beyond the individual realm, urging us to dismantle oppressive structures and cultivate inclusive societies where every voice is heard and valued. This then necessarily gives rise to even greater opportunities for individuals of all manner of intersectionality to engage with these qualities, informing a world that shifts – even if only slightly – towards greater health for all.

Editor’s note: For more on this topic, refer to the Mental Health Academy course, Psychopathology: A Primer for Clinicians. This course explains the traditional paradigm for identifying and classifying psychopathology and explores the emergent paradigm, which understands that not only individual trauma and stressors but also those in the sociocultural and interpersonal environments strongly influence the health or illness of an individual.

Key takeaways

  • The core qualities or authenticity, agency, anger, acceptance and advocacy & activism are highly interconnected, and foster holistic healing.
  • Reclaiming autonomy and responsibility for one’s decisions, even in the face of external pressures, promotes psychological resilience and reduces stress, allowing for a greater exploration of anger as it arises and a higher degree of authenticity.
  • Anger is a protective emotion and learning to navigate it healthily is key to the recognition and management of emotional balance in the face of threats. Repression of anger can lead to various health issues and psychopathologies, and helps to entrench an unhealthy cycle of resentment and backlash.
  • Tolerance is a poor substitute for acceptance. Acceptance leads to a deeper understanding of oneself, while tolerance may lead to complacency or resignation.
  • Moments of inauthenticity are an invitation to engage in self-reflection, understanding how our actions (or inaction) can contribute not only to our own psychological stress, but to the psychological stress of those around us.
  • Advocacy and activism allow us to address these greater social impacts, fostering an upward spiral of betterment.
  • The five A’s framework embraces the cyclic nature of healing and personal growth, understanding that the pursuit of authenticity, agency, and societal change is an ongoing journey towards greater wholeness and well-being for individuals and communities alike.

References

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