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Adventures in Adversity | Michael McGee, MD Cont.

vive rather than healing our pain to thrive. We can all do this, even when we know it is not good for us.

For example, I recently had a colleague make what I felt was a harsh critical remark about a talk I gave
on judgment, without affirming anything she found of benefit in my talk. Like all of us, I best receive
critical feedback when it’s wrapped in positive feedback. My experience of feeling invalidated probably
had more spin on it because of my own early childhood experiences of invalidation. After hearing this, I

didn’t immediately recognize my hurt, but instead felt a depression of my mood and some emotional
numbing. Old feelings of self-doubt and insufficiency arose. It wasn’t until I processed this incident with
my wife the next morning that I gained some clarity on what had happened to me. After I made these
connections and put it all into perspective, I felt much better.

Like with me, processing our pain, healing, grieving, and implementing corrective ways of being with
ourselves and others can take time and life-long practice. And, while very healing, it is also painful. We

too must feel it to heal it, and this can be very difficult, especially if we tend to focus more on being a
force of healing for others while neglecting ourselves. I recently had the humbling experience of being
told that I tended to laugh when discussing my own early trauma, showing that I too have more work

to do in my capacity to fully feel my pain and hold myself with compassion.
And healing is rarely, if ever, a one-time event. In part, healing is a process that requires several healing
practices done over a lifetime. One practice is to recurrently re-ground ourselves in our goodness. We
can do this in several ways. One is to tap into still awareness through meditation practices and then ex-
perience the compassionate nature of consciousness. Another is to engage in heart-mind practices such
as the benefactor practice that John Makransky describes in his book, Awakening Through Love. In this
practice, we visualize people who have loved and benefitted us beaming their love into our heart.
Another practice is to simply take note of our virtues and gifts with a sense of gratitude. You do a lot of
good in the world that matters, and you matter. This is easy to forget, so we need to intentionally re-
mind ourselves of this truth.

Still another way to healing is to engage in immersive practices such as a walk in nature, listening to
music that moves us, or engaging in some sort of art. For me, it is playing the piano just for the fun of it.

Yet another practice is to intentionally show ourselves compassion when we are in pain, and mindfully
note and let go of harsh self-condemnation as it arises.

Yet another very healing practice to remind ourselves of our goodness is to put ourselves in the pres-
ence of people who like and love us and really take in their appreciation of us. It you don’t have a loving
social network, it is imperative that you go out and intentionally cultivate one, and then just as inten-
tionally nurture it over time.

This kind of healing work entails a continuous ferreting out and renouncing of the implicit and uncon-
scious worthiness agendas and trauma-schemas that hum beneath the substrates of consciousness. It en-

tails processing and resolving the negative judgments of ourselves and others that continuously arise
and only die down gradually with sustained practice.

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NORTHERN CALIFORNIA PSYCHIATRIC SOCIETY Page 20 January / February 2023