More Practitioners, More Problems: The Healing Trap

I have been deeply immersed in the layperson psychiatric drug withdrawal and injury space since 2017, and in that time I have talked to thousands of people. Over the years I have noticed a number of patterns emerge, and I am going to talk about one of those patterns here today.

When faced with a myriad of distressing, disruptive, and even potentially dangerous symptoms related to taking/stopping psych drugs, it’s natural to seek help and support especially from professionals. But the seeking of professional help and support becomes a trap as often as not.

Why More Help Can Sometimes Be a Hindrance

One pattern I notice frequently is that the more practitioners a person is working with, the more confused and stuck they seem to be, and the more slowly they seem to heal. Read that again.

A person might have their regular doctor, and their (supposedly) withdrawal-wise psychiatrist, and their withdrawal coach–maybe multiple withdrawal coaches, and their therapist, and their naturopath or their functional medicine practitioner, and their neurologist, and their gastroenterologist, and their chiropractor, and their acupuncturist, etc, etc, etc.

And there is not necessarily anything wrong with having a team of people who you genuinely trust to help support you. But when you are engaging all of those different practitioners at the same time, to try and navigate withdrawal, things can get really messy.

Every practitioner is likely to provide different information and input on your situation, and on what you ‘should’ do, and on what will help the most. It becomes a full-time job to keep all of these people updated, to research their suggestions and ‘fixes,’ and to try and make sense of everything that’s coming in enough to discern what the next right thing is and why.

Photo: Andrew Seaman on Unsplash
The Danger of Losing Your Inner Wisdom

Very often what I see is that people with ‘all the practitioners’ stop being able to hear themselves and their inner wisdom. They become more and more frantic and hopeless as they drown in the noise and the confusion of it all. And there is nothing more dangerous than not being able to hear yourself. For many of us, it was not hearing ourselves, or not listening to our inner wisdom, that landed us where we are wishing to no longer be.

Nobody else has your answers. Nobody else has your ‘fix’. That is the scariest and most empowering truth of all. Once you really see this, you will be free.

How to Choose the Right Support for Your Healing Journey

As I have said, it isn’t inherently “bad” to work with people. Indeed, information, support, and expertise from different perspectives can be really helpful. But it is so important to get very clear with yourself about why you are working with each person, and how the relationship is benefitting you. This is especially true the more people you are working with at once.

Questions to consider relating to anyone and everyone you may be working with:

  • Do you feel more empowered after you see them, or do you feel more confused?
  • Is helping you to reconnect you with your own agency and power central to your work together, or are they ‘selling’ you a solution outside of yourself?
  • Are they reinforcing a diagnostic identity, or otherwise putting you inside a box that no longer feels aligned with your self-understanding?
  • Can you clearly identify for yourself how you are benefitting from your work with them, or are you just seeing them because you think you ‘should’?
The Mindset and Actions of Those Who Heal

What I see over and over again in my work, is that the people who have the best outcomes are the people who take matters into their own hands, and who keep their work with any practitioners to a smaller number of people who consistently help remind them of their own power and capacity to heal themselves. And what I mean by ‘best outcomes’ is this: they are not staying stuck in a victimized, disempowered state where they are largely not engaging with the world. The people who I see keep moving forward in a way that feels empowered and meaningful are the people who can hear themselves, and who insist on continuing to engage with their lives in the ways that they can, even if it’s at a very reduced capacity.

When a prospective client comes to me and wants to work together, one of the things I make sure to find out in our first session is how many other people they’re currently working with on a regular basis for withdrawal support. If they have a laundry list of other practitioners, we may have the conversation I am having with you in this article. I make it clear that I will be able to work with them more effectively if they aren’t also working with everyone else at the same time.

Worth noting is that I see similar patterns of stuckness in people who have all the practitioners, as I do in people who are intensely focused on finding a doctor who really understands withdrawal and drug injury. Just like all the practitioners are not going to save you, neither is having ‘the’ doctor who ‘truly gets it.’

Because once again, nobody else has your answers and nobody else has your ‘fix.’ It is the scariest and most empowering truth of all, and once you really see it you will be free.

An Invitation to Curiosity and Self-Empowerment

If parts of this article feel hard to read, or you find yourself feeling defensive, consider it an invitation to get curious. Get curious about the beliefs or stories you are holding onto, that this article might be bumping up against and asking you to reconsider. It is my aim with everything I write and share, to help support the kind of empowered curiosity and agency that will help you free yourself and heal. No matter how it may feel sometimes, you are powerful and capable beyond measure.

Reminder: nothing written here is medical or personal advice.