PART ONE

People have all sorts of explanations for how we got here – nationally and globally.
It’s financial. It’s political. It’s patriarchal. It’s prejudicial. It’s misogynistic. It’s abuse. And more.
Each viewpoint can be discussed and seem to explain the cause from a valid standpoint.
Yet … they all are accounts at or near the surface. No matter how longstanding they seem to apply … no matter how deep they appear to go … none of them reaches the roots of the way in which we got here. And none of them even alludes to the reality that the roots underlie each explanation.

So … how did we get here?
The poison is the medicine.
“What?” you ask.
The poison is the medicine and we’ve neglected to use the poison as medicine.
“What in the world are you talking about?” you question and exclaim at the same time … probably in a more colloquial manner, and understandably.

I’m glad you want to know.

There is a knowledge in many healing traditions – both spiritual and otherwise –
that “the poison is the medicine.” ¹
It is the heartbeat of homeopathy.
It is the transformation in numerous natural healing traditions.
It is the healing crisis that brings us into and through a healing passageway,
with the potential of our coming out the other side.
It’s inherent in the depth psychotherapy I practice.
It’s the essence of why, in addition to calling myself a depth psychotherapist,
I identify myself as a midwife to the soul.

“The poison is the medicine” reaches to the root of the difficulty.
It works from the root.
It works from the inside out.

Stay with me as we go deeper.

“The poison is the medicine” means …
If we are wounded as children –
and we all are in one way or another –
we create ways to defend ourselves against the pain of that wound,
ways that take hold within us and in our lives way into and through adulthood.
Perhaps we shut down our feelings.
Perhaps we numb ourselves physically and emotionally.
Perhaps we are paralyzed by the trauma of the wound.
Maybe we build walls to keep others from getting close and hurting us again.
Maybe we hide from others and even from ourselves.
Maybe we go through life waiting to be hurt … in the same way we once were.
Or perhaps we do the hurting of others as a means of defense.
Possibly, the wounding was before we had words.
Even so, it is likely that once we’re old enough to have words, we attach an early decision to the wounding experience.
Decisions like:
“No one will ever hurt me again.”
“If anyone’s gonna do the hurting, it will be me.”
“I will always be hurt.”
“No matter how much I try to protect myself, they always get me.”
“When I grow up, I’ll be the one with all the power …
to do what I want …
to make people do what I want …”

Most often, people aren’t aware of these defenses, including the early decisions.
And if they’re aware, for example, of an early decision …
They don’t realize that the early decision drives their life beneath their consciousness.
So if someone has decided “No one will ever hurt me again,”
that person will very likely draw into his/her life experience
people who will be hurtful, people who will, perhaps,
re-enact the same wound s/he experienced as a child.

Here’s the vicious circle, or as I call it “The Maze”:
When the wound is re-enacted, the person proves to him/herself
that people are trying to hurt him/her …
and uses that proof to decide once again:
“No one will ever hurt me again.”
This becomes the justification to use the same defenses all over again,
maybe even doubling or tripling them in number and size.

If this person doesn’t utilize the re-enactment of the wounding as the poison …
and if this person doesn’t utilize the poison as the medicine to heal the original wound –
at its root …
the re-enactments will keep occurring,
over and over again,
at some point beginning to escalate.

The longer the person goes without utilizing the poison as the medicine to heal …
the more the re-enactment and cycle escalates,
until possibly the wounding  becomes really harmful, even dangerous.
Then the person is “living the medicine,”
instead of using the poison as the medicine for healing.

This is not a criticism.
This is not a punishment.
It is simply the consequence of not using the poison as the medicine.
It happens to all of us.
Even without our being conscious of it.

So how does this connect with our living the medicine communally,
in our country, in our world?
Stay tuned for Part Two coming very soon ………………

© Judith Barr, 2018.

1 I explained “the poison is the medicine” over 2 years ago, November 19, 2015. This article can be found on my website on the carousel, by clicking “Read More” under “Reflections on How Healing Ourselves Helps to Heal Our World” and then clicking on “Grief, Shock, Another Tragedy and … the Poison is the Medicine …” or by going to “PoliPsych Blog” at the top navbar, and then clicking on “Blog Spotlight: The Paris Trilogy.” It can also be accessed through this link: https://judithbarr.com/2015/11/19/grief-shock-another-tragedy-and-the-poison-is-the-medicine/