I recently helped a women who got herself into a very difficult Reiki tangle, mostly because she didn’t know that she didn’t know what she was doing…. If you know what I mean.
She … let’s call her Susie Q… was working on her husband’s auntie who had ton of family trauma, childhood trauma and a pretty serious mental health issue. And a lot of physical pain in her body. Her auntie was “resistant” to doing the deep work so Susie decided to force the issue to the surface so that her auntie could confront the issues that she had been suppressing and release them. Susie is fairly new to the world of energy healing and has no experience as a therapist, or working with deep seated trauma and mental health issues.
She thought she was helping her auntie who really was suffering a ton. Susie had Auntie write down all that happened to her and her feelings about and kept pushing and digging for more. They did a marathon session and went at it for hours. Sadly and predictably, Auntie suffered an emotional breakdown that eventually had her hospitalized and psychotic.
Oh boy….
Susie was of course, distraught. She only thought she was helping. She had assumed that Reiki could do no harm and that it was just better to air everything out… She called on the angels to help with the healing- and she was very confused about how “Reiki” had let her and her auntie down so much.
It’s a sad, really tragic story for both of them. Let’s take a look at what went wrong here…
Don’t Do Deep Work on Family Members
It’s never a good idea to do deep therapeutic work with your family members. If you are a psychologist or doctor, they have strong ethical rules and guidelines against not treating people who are close to you- for very good reasons. We can’t stay objective. These are called ‘dual relationships’, and while it’s fine to give friends and family a little Reiki when they need it, don’t do deep, inner work with them.
Don’t Do Deep Trauma Work on People- Unless You are Trained
It’s a super bad idea to do trauma work with a client unless you have had been extensively trained in how to help people recover from trauma. It’s not something to play around with, and as energy healers, we can be part of someone’s team, but we need to know when something is outside the scope of our practice. This is when we refer them out to a professional that has that expertise.
Ditto for people who have mental health issues. Unless you are trained, you can be part of someone’s team but not in charge of their care.
Never Force the Issue to Come Up
We never force someone to look at something they are not ready to. The mind/psyche is complex and has ways of protecting itself from trauma. It’s horribly dangerous to a client to have their defenses dismantled if they not ready for that and can lead to a breakdown as Auntie experienced.
You might feel and know the second you meet them that something happened to them, but you should say nothing until they are ready to bring it up themselves. Then when they are ready, let them talk about it and hold space, don’t dig any deeper and refer them to a pro. We let the client lead if and when they are ready and never push or dig around for something- even when you KNOW it’s there!
What Susie might have done was lots of very gentle Reiki on Auntie for her physical pain and referred her out to get some pro level help from therapists and mental health specialists.
She might have asked the angels and guides to sponsor Auntie’s healing.
Susie will hopefully continue to get more training on how to hold space for people with serious issues and also continue to learn about the ethical responsibilities we have as healers.
I invited her to take my up-coming Mastering Your Healing Skills Program which covers all of this and more…
I wish the whole Reiki world would take my program so every practitioner could be well trained, experienced and working within the ethical guidelines- which sadly hardly anyone teaches. There a many, many well-meaning but incompletely trained practitioners like Susie who may well be doing more harm than good and not even know it…. Yikes.
I would love to hear your thoughts about this…. Let me know if you have every experience anything like this in your Reiki journey.
