The Me-Millennium

In the context of the Wounded Healer the ‘thriving’ response is seen in the person who experiences a traumatic or stressful event and benefits or gains in some way from the experience. An example would be Beethoven who overcame his deafness to find joy in his music making.

But this response type may not always be what it seems. I believe it may sometimes be similar to what I prefer to call the ‘self-help response.’ Those popular ‘self-help’ shelves in the bookshops groan with the weight of titles on how to overcome adversities, how to succeed, even how to get rich or how to achieve our own personal dreams. These can perpetuate the selfishness of the ‘Me-Millennium’ and are very often written at the expense of other people who are more vulnerable, weaker, more wounded.

We have to take healing beyond this potentially egoistic self-help genre that is so often aimed purely at personal gain; we have to travel beyond that goal to help others and stop being so self centred and selfish if we hope to heal the world.