The Healer’s Shame Around Needing Help (And How We Undo It)

Episode 5 – The Healer’s Shame Around Needing Help (And How We Undo It)

For many intuitive women walking the healer’s path, needing help feels like we’re doing it wrong. We are the ones others turn to. We’re the calm ones, the ones who know how to listen, how to hold space, how to show up with grace. We pride ourselves on having our own wounds “in check” so we can be of service. And somewhere along the way, we internalized the myth: I should be able to do this alone.

It works for a while…
until it doesn’t.

It’s a quiet belief. A heavy one. And it’s time to let it go.

Why Support Feels Unsafe for Healers

Support is tricky. For some of us, it has always felt like too much. Too vulnerable. Too dangerous. Maybe support didn’t fully show up when we needed it most. Or maybe it did—just not in the way we needed.

When you’re used to being the strong one, the capable one, letting yourself be supported can feel like everything might unravel. If you’ve spent a lifetime holding things together, being the helper, being the one who “has it all figured out,” the idea of someone else holding you can feel… terrifying.

Underneath that is a core shame wound. A belief that if I let myself fall apart, no one will be able to catch me. Or worse, they’ll see how messy I really am and leave.

That’s the voice of trauma. Of early conditioning. Of a culture that teaches women to self-sacrifice and call it strength.

The Myth of the “Healed” Healer

This myth is so sneaky, so pervasive. It says that in order to offer healing, you must be fully healed. In order to lead, you must no longer struggle. And if you do struggle, you must hide it. Mask it. Manage it in silence.

But healing doesn’t work that way.

Healing is not a straight line. It’s not a before-and-after. It’s a spiral. A return. A deepening. You might walk through one layer of perfectionism or grief or anxiety and feel victorious, only to have another layer surface months later. This isn’t backsliding. It’s not failure. It’s the work.

And yet, when that new layer arises, it’s easy to feel like a fraud. Especially if your work is helping others with that same thing. Especially if your livelihood depends on it.

That fraud feeling can breed shame. And shame keeps us isolated.
This is how many healers quietly burn out. Not because they can’t hold space for others—but because they don’t have anyone holding space for them.

The Early Days of Being Held

For those lucky enough to train in healing modalities in supportive communities, you might remember the first time you really let yourself be seen. Maybe it was during a group program, a training weekend, a circle where you let yourself cry for the first time in a long time. Maybe someone looked at you—not with pity or judgment—but with presence. And you felt something in your nervous system start to soften.

That kind of holding is medicine. It changes us. And yet, so many healers leave those containers, start their own businesses, and forget what it’s like to be supported like that. Or they no longer know where to find it.
Especially in the era of “girl boss” energy—where the focus is on productivity, packages, and performance—support can begin to feel like a luxury, not a necessity.

But real healing work requires real holding. For you, too.

Why Business Can Reinforce the Isolation

Let’s name it: running a healing business can reinforce the belief that you have to do everything yourself.
When you’re starting out, investing in support feels counterintuitive. You’re not making money yet. You’re unsure. You think, Let me get a few clients first, then I’ll invest. But healing isn’t a hustle. It’s a relationship. And the way we build the work reflects the energy we’ll bring into it.
In a capitalist framework, you’re expected to sell certainty. Results. Transformation. But what if your truth is more nuanced? What if your healing is still unfolding?
Many healers try to package their offering around the thing they think they’ve healed—only to spiral again and feel ashamed for still dealing with it. So they stop talking about it. They isolate. They quietly start to feel like they don’t belong in the healing world anymore.
But what if our spirals are part of the work? What if being human isn’t a liability—but a gift?

Reclaiming Support as Sacred

There is a new chapter emerging for many of us. One where we start to reclaim support. Not as weakness. Not as indulgence. But as the very foundation of our healing.
The truth is: the more healed you are, the more open you are to being held.
Healing isn’t about transcending your body or your needs. That’s an old paradigm rooted in disembodiment and spiritual bypassing. True healing is rooted in relationship. It’s in our soft animal bodies. Our breath. Our tenderness.
And we are meant to do it together.
Letting someone hold you doesn’t mean you’re broken. It means you’re wise enough to know we can’t do this alone. It means you’re brave enough to choose interdependence over isolation.

Building Networks of Healing

So what does this look like in practice?
It looks like mentorship that holds you emotionally, not just strategically. It looks like case study partnerships where healing flows both ways. It looks like communities that are built not around hierarchy, but reciprocity. Where you’re not expected to “have it all together” to belong. Where your spirals are welcomed, not hidden.
And maybe, just maybe, it looks like letting yourself be supported more than feels comfortable.
Because support isn’t supposed to feel comfortable at first. It stretches the parts of us that have been self-reliant for too long. It brings up the wounds we’re meant to heal next. And if you’re willing to sit with that discomfort, what opens up on the other side is intimacy, nourishment, and belonging.

You Don’t Have to Be Alone in This

If you’re reading this and you feel like you’ve been carrying it all—quietly, competently—for years… you’re not alone. So many healers are holding the weight of their communities, their clients, their families, without anyone truly holding them.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Let this be your permission to step into your chapter four: healing in community. Let this be the moment you choose to be supported—not because you’re weak, but because you’re worthy. Not because you can’t hold others, but because you shouldn’t have to do it alone.
This path is sacred. And you don’t have to walk it by yourself.