Self-Centered Healing

There is a deeply disturbing aspect of hyper-individualization present in the field of healing and regeneration. This makes no sense and usually makes our suffering even worse, but in spaces where the disconnection from nature and community runs too deep, this mindset of separation seems logical, or should I say, feels safer.

The main difference between countries with high and low mental health issue rates is hidden in how they perceive suffering within their community and their relationship to it.

Those who see suffering as a collective issue and mobilize the entire community to help the suffering person regenerate effectively usually have lower rates of sickness.

Those who view suffering as a personal burden and leave individuals to deal with it alone and in isolation usually struggle to heal and to extract valuable lessons from their suffering. More often than not, they further numb their pain because they simply cannot process it without the community's support.

We need each other to heal.

.:. The Illusion of Individual Responsibility

Healing is not solely the personal responsibility of anyone. You cannot take full responsibility for your inner suffering because it doesn't belong only to you. You feel your own trauma, but you also feel the suffering of us all. There is no clear boundary between what is yours and what is ours.

It is completely futile to build walls around suffering. No matter where you draw the line between the pain that belongs to you and the pain that belongs to another, it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. The shadow possesses the exact same quality of wholeness as the light.

Our pain is collective, and we are all deeply interconnected in our suffering. There is no such thing as sovereignty and personal responsibility when it comes to genuine suffering or the process of its transformation.

Most of our suffering is not ours alone. It is already shared among all of us. It belongs to our ancestors, to our tribe, and to our humanity. It is a space where we are all interconnected and interdependent, no matter what.

.:. The Isolation of the Suffering

It always amazes me when people say: "Oh, this person is not doing well, they're depressed or something, so I'll let them deal with their issues before reconnecting with them. When they're healthy and well again, they'll be more worthy of my attention and time."

Most people who suffer do so completely alone. They feel ashamed of what they carry inside, yet they're too scared to share it with others because they've been conditioned to believe that excessive suffering is their personal problem. Something must be wrong with them, so they isolate even more, and people around them don't seem to care either.

Everyone seems relieved when the suffering person is absent. Because their presence is heavy and uncomfortable. It forces us to witness their suffering, and we don't like to feel it with them, so we prefer when they don't show up or don't speak to us too much if they're too depressed.

.:. The False Categories We Create

We are so enamored with division, separation, and polarization that we even classify people into categories of "well" and "unwell." We have created social codes about how to "respect ourselves" when dealing with unwell people. We sever our relationships with them. We let professionals handle suffering people and protect the community by establishing boundaries of separation between suffering and society.

Depressed or suffering people become a distinct category of humans. They should be independent, we believe, and they should take ownership and responsibility for their inner state before collaborating with others. We expect them to hide their emotions and neither show nor discuss their suffering when in society.

This is nonsense.

.:. The Cost of Silencing Pain

When we cut ourselves off from or numb what remains unsettled or uncomfortable inside, we contribute to our shared suffering even more. When you stay silent and don't express what's truly happening within you, you deprive us all of a tremendous opportunity to heal something deep and transform it into something more beautiful.

When your suffering is hidden or silenced from the larger community, we all become increasingly blind to our own pain, and we all will suffer in one way or another.

When you deny, ignore, and judge the suffering of another, in reality, you do the same to yourself simultaneously. When you refuse to witness and be present with the wounded part of another, you condemn your own self from healing. The suffering of the other lives in you as well. When you reject the other, you reject a fragment of your own self.

.:. The Puzzle of Humanity

Imagine that as humanity, we have a common goal to accomplish. It's a game we all play together. Imagine each of us is one unique piece of a huge multidimensional puzzle. Our objective is to assemble it in a way that makes sense, to see a clear, coherent, and beautiful picture of shared reality that we can all enjoy together.

Imagine if you destroyed half of your pieces—how easy would it be to build a harmonious whole? Or if you hid some pieces because you didn't like their colors? When you look at them, you feel uncomfortable or in pain, so you decide to simply discard those "ugly" parts from the set.

Do you think the entire puzzle would make sense without those pieces? You might personally dislike and judge them, but they remain useful and necessary for creating a coherent and meaningful whole.

Each human and each living being is a unique, irreplaceable, and important part of our collective song and pattern of evolution. Do you know how frustrating it is to work with a puzzle that has missing pieces, when you can never complete the full picture? It's the same with us. When we purposefully destroy, hide, or ignore the existence of certain parts of our humanity, it becomes profoundly frustrating and difficult to build a shared reality that makes sense and brings happiness.

A puzzle piece has two sides. One side clearly displays the picture, while the other is usually just cardboard. They typically all look the same—a uniform color—on the reverse side. If you've ever tried to assemble a puzzle upside down, you know how nearly impossible this task is.

When you can't see the picture, you have no idea of the potential pattern, what we're trying to accomplish, or the actual logic of how different pieces should fit together.

.:. The Upside-Down Pieces

When we have a suffering person in our community, they are like an upside-down puzzle piece.

They have no idea where they're supposed to fit in the grand scheme of things, and others don't know yet their purpose either.

What happens then? What is our usual reaction?

We hide from view the pieces we don't understand or don't yet know what to do with, and then we complain that our game doesn't work. We cut suffering people from society and wonder what's missing to make the collective picture whole and coherent again.

But what if? What if instead of hoping and praying that one day they'll find a way to flip themselves right-side up all on their own... What if we as a community made a collective effort to help the suffering being see its true colors? What if we all helped with the flipping process of the unicolor piece to reveal its true colors and purpose?

What if we worked truly in collaboration to win this game together? What if we understood that evolution is not about competition? It is about completion. It's about unifying everything into a coherent, living, and dynamic pattern. If we hide or destroy half of our puzzle pieces, we will never win this game.

To truly win and be free, we all need to win. This is the real game of life. It's about radical inclusion and integration. It's about stillness in the unbreakable interconnection with the whole. It's about collaboration, co-creation, and the pure emergence process in the now. It is not about competition, abuse, or control of the past or future.

.:. Indigenous Wisdom on Suffering

Virtually all indigenous communities express the same insight: suffering is never merely a personal problem. They recognize the ancestral nature of suffering and the responsibility of the entire community to address it properly.

For them, every human and every living being is already unconditionally pure. It is in their authentic nature to be divine, no matter what. But there is a collective shadow that can use any being or system to express itself to the community—to be seen, acknowledged, and transformed into something else.

So, when someone suffers, it is like a gift guiding the entire community to heal something for everyone. Because they deeply understand the interconnected nature of suffering, they do exactly the opposite with people in pain than what our current system does.

Instead of isolating them and cutting them off from social resources, they come together to give even more love, care, and tenderness to the suffering person. Instead of telling an addict or a mentally ill person to hide somewhere, they do the opposite. They gather the entire community around the person in pain to show them they are not alone. They create a circle of support and safety around the pain. They hold what hurts, together.

They don't see suffering as a personal failure of an individual; they see it as a failure of the entire community. Therefore, for them, it is a shared responsibility among all to heal the community system to ensure suffering can be transformed into joy for everyone.

They make sure they help each other flip to the colorful side of their puzzle, knowing they are always supported and held by the larger tribe. They all understand that it is in their own shared interest to ensure no one suffers in their community.

They know they will all lose if they let go of even a single piece of the puzzle. They understand the game of wholeness and how to properly play it. They know how valuable suffering is as a teacher to their entire social network and its wellbeing or systemic performance.

.:. The Folly of Our Modern Approach

Our modern world has chosen to act as if suffering always belongs to someone else. We compare our suffering. We judge it. We try to save some from their suffering just to feel better about ourselves. We abandon, ignore, and reject other types of suffering because we don't like how they make us feel.

We have hyper-individualized suffering to the point of complete nonsense. We've created an equally nonsensical system, mainly because we've convinced ourselves that suffering has an ego or a property right.

We will never heal if we don't recognize how deeply interconnected we are in our pain. We will never transform our suffering into authentic joy and well-being if we continue seeing the suffering of others as their personal problem and responsibility.

No one can heal alone. No one should heal alone.

Everything is healable, regeneratable, and fixable, but only when we recognize that every being is valuable and important. When we see and have the courage to work together and not against each other. When we welcome suffering as a beautiful opportunity for collective transformation and not as an excuse to create even more division and separation in the world for no reason.

We must understand that healing cannot be egocentric. That's not how it works. Authentic healing is always systemic, and it always impacts the entire community. We can only heal humanity when truly together.

If we separate the world into good and bad, light and shadow, pain and joy, we cannot become free of the suffering in our community.

.:. The Path to Freedom

To be free of suffering, you need to know how to welcome it, accept it, forgive it, love it and transform it. If you act like it simply doesn't exist because you don't want to deal with it, you will never be able to make your social system coherent, performant or meaningful.

The more you deny the suffering of others, the more your entire system becomes dysfunctional and inefficient. The more you deny suffering, the stronger and more powerful it grows. The more you reject someone who suffers, the more the entire community risks suffering even more.

If you reject someone from your life because their suffering is too much for you, that's okay and it is understandable. No judgment here. It's a wonderful protective mechanism to keep you safe. Thank you for making sure you survive by using your own denial of suffering to protect your deep vulnerabilities and fragilities.

But even if you do consciously disconnect from a suffering person, you should never pretend that their suffering belongs only to them and is solely their personal responsibility or problem.

You didn't reject the person; you rejected the suffering it caused for you to be related to them. You rejected it because you became frightened or ashamed yourself. You had no idea how to feel or what to do when confronted with someone in such pain. So, it was easier to cut yourself off from the source of that pain.

But that pain had nothing to do with others. You rejected your own deep suffering. You were being a coward who doesn't want to take responsibility for their own personal part in our web of collective shadows or ancestral suffering, so you prefer to use the excuse of self-contained pain and place fictitious walls between our hearts.

.:. The Call for Collective Healing

Suffering is always something collective and systemic. Therefore, the healing process should involve the participation of the entire community, and we should all properly share our responsibilities to address it once and for all.

"To heal the world, heal yourself first." True. But to heal yourself fully, you also need the entire world to collaborate with you to heal you completely.

You need to see suffering as a unified field connecting us all.

It's a multidimensional network where we are all interconnected, no matter what. The more you personify and individualize suffering, the harder it becomes for all of us to heal. The more walls and boundaries you try to create between those who suffer and those who don't, the more you disconnect from your own self and your humanity.

The more you refuse to witness, accept, forgive, love and be present with compassion for another's suffering, the more you might suffer yourself without even realizing why.

When you judge someone else's suffering without truly understanding what you're talking about, you become its next perfect host or ‘’victim’’ to experience.

Suffering loves to go where it was rejected, judged, and harshly denied. If you mindlessly criticize someone's suffering simply because you are scared or ashamed yourself, you can be certain to provoke the queen of shadows enough to make you regret your judgments one day.

When you close the door in the face of suffering or someone who suffers, you essentially tell the universe what fears you have yet to transcend. When the universe sees you judge the suffering of others, it usually ensures you experience similar suffering to make you humbler and wiser.

To properly teach you the lesson of interdependence and non-judgment, the universe might place you in the role of an active participant in the suffering you rejected in others, rather than as a simple observer or witness.

.:. The Teacher of Suffering

Suffering is the most powerful teacher. Say no to suffering, and you will learn nothing. But to be alive and to serve life, there is only one thing asked of you in return: never stop learning.

Use all experiences as majestic and valuable. Make a conscious choice to fully participate in the co-creation process of our shared reality with life, with nature, and with humanity.

Judge someone who is suffering, and you'll end up playing their role, feeling the same pain one way or another.

Learn how to witness with authentic compassion and real non-attachment the suffering of another, and you will easily and with genuine pleasure learn how to ensure no one experiences such suffering anymore.

By opening your heart to others' pain, you don't just help them heal faster, more gently, with more fun and better. You also simultaneously heal yourself, our community, and our world by simply being a compassionate witness and providing a safe holding space for those who need to be reminded how much loved, amazing and valued they already are.

The more we continue making the healing process ego-centric and creating polarization between suffering people and the rest of society, the more confused, inefficient, and completely chaotic our shared system and culture may become.

Because we all, as a community, might be called to experience firsthand what we have so harshly judged and condemned in others all this time.

There is an ancient saying: never say never. This especially applies when you lack the courage to feel your own self before voicing your judgments too loudly and rejecting others' suffering too strongly.

.:. The Systemic Nature of Modern Suffering

If most depressions, burnouts, and other mental imbalances exist because of bureaucracy, social disconnection, lack of connection to land and community, feeling the suffering of nature being destroyed for no reason, bearing hunger, and feeling sad because humans are mean, stupid, and cruel to each other...

If people are sick mainly because our global community is deeply sick, how can we expect them to take personal responsibility and ownership for their suffering?

What kind of therapist or method should they find to feel better and disconnect more efficiently from the suffering they feel throughout our entire humanity right now?

If the main cause of social unwellness is lack of meaning, human values, or basic safety in the workplace or in our collective system, what exactly should individuals do to heal themselves based on today's standards?

If the main cause of the social depression or mental health pandemic is systemic or collective in nature, there is no miracle remedy that will fix this kind of suffering for an entire population if we continue doing it in ego-centric way.

If everybody suffers from the same problem, even if we manage to heal everyone individually but do nothing about the original cause of our suffering, we will still experience the same pains over and over again, all of us.

.:. The Workplace as a Microcosm of Our Collective Suffering

Consider our workplaces—these structures where most of us spend the majority of our waking hours. They have become perfect laboratories demonstrating our misguided approach to suffering or how to deal with it.

When someone experiences burnout, the standard response is to offer them individual therapy, meditation apps, or wellness programs. We ask them to become more "resilient" while changing nothing about the systems that created their suffering in the first place.

We witness colleagues breaking under impossible workloads, meaningless tasks, or toxic environments, then we pathologize their natural response to these unnatural conditions. We tell them to practice "self-care" while maintaining the very structures that made them sick. It's like treating someone for smoke inhalation while refusing to put out the fire in their home.

This approach is not just ineffective—it's cruel. It places the burden of adaptation entirely on the individual while absolving the collective of any responsibility. It's a perfect microcosm of how we've privatized suffering while socializing the benefits of people's pain.

What would happen if, instead, we saw a person's burnout as information about the health of the entire system? What if we understood that one person's depression might be carrying important wisdom about what needs to change for everyone?

What if, rather than sending that person away to "fix themselves," we gathered around them and asked: What are you seeing that the rest of us are missing? What pain are you carrying on your heart that belongs to all of us?

.:. Beyond Individual Coping: Toward Systemic Transformation

Our current therapeutic approaches, valuable as they may be for individual coping, cannot address the root causes of our epidemic of suffering. No amount of mindfulness can compensate for meaningless work. No cognitive behavioral therapy can undo the effects of systematic disconnection from community and nature. No antidepressant can cure the existential despair of living in systems designed to extract rather than nurture life.

This isn't to dismiss the value of individual healing modalities—they are crucial bridges, helping people survive in deeply wounded systems. But we must be honest about their limitations. They can help individuals adapt to toxic conditions, but they cannot transform those conditions. They can help manage symptoms, but they cannot heal root causes of our suffering that are collective in nature.

The real healing must happen at multiple levels simultaneously inner and outer, personal and political, individual and institutional. We need approaches that honor both our need for personal sovereignty and our inescapable interdependence. We need healing practices that recognize that the boundaries between "my suffering" and "your suffering" are largely illusory constructs of a culture that has forgotten the nature of wholeness.

And most importantly, we need to stop treating the messengers of our collective pain as the problem. Those among us who cannot adapt to systems that violate basic human needs—for connection, meaning, rest, and purpose—are not broken. They are often the most sensitive among us, the ones whose suffering makes visible what many others have learned to endure in silence.

.:. From Individual Symptoms to Collective Awakening

What we label as "mental health issues" in individuals might better be understood as symptoms of relationship breakdown—between humans and nature, between people and their work, between neighbors who no longer know each other's names. The rising tide of anxiety, depression, and loneliness in our world isn't a collection of private medical conditions—it's a collective spiritual crisis, a crisis of meaning and belonging.

The most radical act of healing might not be finding better individual coping mechanisms, but rather creating communities where coping isn't required because the conditions that generate so much suffering have been transformed.

When it is safe to be vulnerable and authentic with others, we have nothing to fear or hide. The need for masks and armor—those exhausting defenses that drain our life energy—simply dissolves. In spaces of genuine acceptance, our shadows no longer threaten us because they are held with compassion rather than judgment.

Our wounds become portals to connection rather than sources of shame. This revolutionary safety to be fully human—in both our light and shadow aspects—ripples outward, transforming not just individual lives but entire systems.

This means reimagining our workplaces, our economies, our social structures, and our relationship with the living earth—not just as an idealistic dream, but as the practical prerequisite for true healing.

The question becomes not "How do I heal myself within these broken systems?" but rather "How do we heal these systems so they stop breaking people?" Not "How do I become more resilient to toxic conditions?" but "How do we create conditions conducive to life and wellbeing for all?"

This shift—from individual symptom management to collective transformation—represents our most promising path forward. It honors the reality that while suffering may be felt individually stronger by some, its roots and its remedies are inevitably collective.

.:. A New Vision for Collective Healing

The path forward lies in recognizing our profound interconnection, honoring the wisdom in our pain, and creating communities of care where healing becomes a shared journey rather than a solitary burden. Only then can we transform not just individual suffering, but the collective wounds that shape our shared experience of being human in this world.

What would our world look like if we embraced suffering as a collective teacher rather than an individual burden and ego-centered problem of the most sensitive ones in our society?

Imagine communities where the appearance of depression, anxiety, or trauma in one person signaled not their personal failure but a call for collective attention and care.

Imagine workplaces where burnout wasn't seen as weakness of specific individuals but as evidence of systemic imbalance requiring communal correction.

The revolution we need is not just in our healthcare systems or therapeutic approaches, but in our fundamental understanding of what it means to be human together.

We need a radical reimagining of community that doesn't exile the suffering but can hold it in love and care, that doesn't pathologize pain but recognizes its wisdom, that doesn't fragment our experience but honors its wholeness.

This is not naive idealism.

Indigenous and traditional communities have maintained these practices for millennia, understanding what our modern society has forgotten: that true resilience comes not from individual fortitude but from the strength, meaning and coherence of our connections with each other, with our community and with the land.

Their wisdom shows us that when we create open circles of healing rather than walls of separation and collective numbing, both individuals and communities become more whole, more vital, and more capable of facing life's inevitable challenges.

The healing of our world begins with this simple but profound shift: from seeing suffering as something to fix or overcome, to recognizing it as a sacred messenger and divine strategy guiding us toward greater wholeness.

When we stop trying to eliminate suffering and instead learn to listen to it, welcome it, and transform it together, we unlock not just individual healing but collective evolution and greater consciousness of our shared experiences.

More we heal, more fun we could have living on this planet together.

The great paradox is this: by accepting that we cannot heal alone, we discover a path to healing that is infinitely more powerful and pleasurable than any solo journey could ever be.

By surrendering the myth of self-contained and ego-centric suffering, we find liberation from suffering's deepest grip. By acknowledging our wounds as collective, we begin, at last, to make them whole, beautiful and valuable again.

Our task now is to remember what we have forgotten: that we belong to each other, that our pain and our healing are shared, and that the wisdom needed to transform our suffering already lives within our connection and our relationships.

This remembering is not just personal secret work. It is the great calling of our time, the revolution of collective consciousness that already includes us all.

The world is waiting for us to wake up from the dream of separation.

The question is: will we have the courage to remove the walls we've built around our hearts, to witness each other's authentic suffering with compassion, to accept, to forgive, to love ourselves?

Will we learn how to truly heal together our collective soul and our shared humanity?