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The Role of the ‘Wounded Clinician’ in Mental Health Care

Updated: Sep 17

An offering by Anthony Fidler


At in2gr8mentalhealth we honour many ways that providers with lived experience of mental health difficulties might like to engage with their experiences of both having and providing mental health help. We have never felt constrained by thinking inside of a traditional Western clinical box of two people sat opposite each other on chairs in a room.


Between us we have daily practices in cold water swimming, yoga, Tai Chi, qigong, standing (zhan zhuang) and sitting meditation. We are open about our own spiritual paths and always interested in others', for example Natalie is a Druid of Celtic pagan practice, a member of the British Druid Order and involved in sacred activism with her local Grove and wider (Yes that finally the Stonehenge tunnel has been cancelled!!). We are serious in our knowledge of the roots of these practices (i.e Taoism, traditional Chinese medicine and meridian systems, animism, Mother Earth-based spirituality and Indo-European shamanism). In this way we see past standard offerings of the mental health field that most of us are connected with today, into the many ways of engaging with The Way of life, the mournings, celebrations, breakdowns, breakthroughs and initiations.


This led to very interesting conversations with Anthony Fidler who draws from Eastern Traditions in his work. In October, Anthony Fidler will be offering a first workshop for clinicians with lived experience, please connect with him here:https://easternpeace.com/events/heart-touch-london-october-2024. We were delighted for Anthony to write a bit about himself and his work which might be of interest to our community, read on for more from Anthony who has written the blog below for us...


 

“Through my twenties & thirties, I passed through extended periods of high anxiety,

depression, chronic fatigue and mental burnout, dissociation and states part ‘psychotic’, part deeply nourishing and spiritual, once the emotional mess had been processed. I passed through the psychiatric system and took antipsychotics for eight months, but thankfully was able to get away and set my own course for recovery.


This path brought me into contact with Chinese & Japanese teachers rich with knowledge of the body’s deep capacity to heal itself and our capacity to deeply enter into resonance with another to support them.


I have built on their work to create a framework for learning to regulate one’s own inner distress while meeting another in theirs and co-regulating with them, which I call HeartTouch.” Anthony.



A HeartTouch Training


Anthony goes on to say:

With few exceptions, when someone is experiencing emotional distress or trauma, their natural need is for authentic safe connection with another human being. How effective a therapist is in supporting their patients will depend on how much of their implicit empathic warmth has survived their professional training. This is not said to devalue the clinical training, but to re-value the human qualities which are essential for supporting someone to face extreme inner challenges.


Any clinician can cultivate their capacity for empathy and compassionate connection

with others and offer this in combination with their training to provide quality care. When a clinician or therapist has their own wounds though, the archetype of the wounded healer comes to play offering resources for healing others, possibly beyond anything that anyone can achieve with training alone.


Whether it is acknowledged or not, the relationship that forms between the two

individuals is one of mutuality. Both are on the path of journeying towards their

wholeness having been broken open by life. Empathic connection is natural, often

instantaneous.


The clinician will have hopefully walked their own path sufficiently to be conscious of

their own inner journey and have tools for regulating their inner emotional state when

the meeting with the ‘patient’ brings up aspects of their own wounding.


In compassionately meeting their own need to return to inner balance, the other is

invited both on a physical level through co-regulation and on a consciousness level

through the healthy modelling of the clinician to establish a more harmonious inner

state of their own.


And they do so in an empowered way which lays the foundation for them continuing

their journey independently as they go off into their life. The natural mutual relationship

excludes the clinician taking a power role over the other and denies the inclination

within the ‘patient’ to take a passive dependency role curtailing their capacity to heal

themselves.


The meeting of the wounded clinician and the patient is one that offers healing to both

individuals, but still there will be times when the clinician becomes tired or takes

‘homework’ away to continue with on their own.


Anyone who has walked their own inner journey is naturally authentic and unable to

deny their own inner challenges when they are brought up to the surface and this

creates a healthy invitation to the clinical ecosystem to support them so they can meet

their own needs.


Every clinician whether having gone through a breakdown process or not will meet the

same situation at times when demands have been too much. This embrace of the reality

of human vulnerability in the clinical ecosystem will support them to acknowledge and

recover from their own challenging times and lead them on the path towards deeper

inner awareness and authenticity, allowing them to perform their role more effectively.

From this embrace of the wounded clinician, the resilience of the clinical ecosystem as

a whole will be enhanced as will its capacity to meet the challenges of the patients, they

are there to help.


© Anthony Fidler July 2024


 

If you are interested in Anthony's work and offer, please get in touch with him directly here:https://easternpeace.com/events/heart-touch-london-october-2024


in2gr8 now closes for Summering in August (a we do for Wintering between December and January, to follow a more natural seasonal path of breaks for rest and play at the energetic apex and nadir of the year. We will be back in September.

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