Are You a Wounded Healer or Empath? 10 Signs Your Childhood Pain Became Your Greatest Superpower

Summary

Podcast Summary:

Podcast: Mayim Bialik's Breakdown
Episode: Are You a Wounded Healer or Empath? 10 Signs Your Childhood Pain Became Your Greatest Superpower
Hosts: Mayim Bialik & Jonathan Cohen
Date: March 6, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode examines the archetype of the "wounded healer"—someone whose childhood pain or adversity becomes the foundation of their intuition, empathy, and capacity to help others. Mayim and Jonathan explore how formative wounds can be transformed into superpowers, the risks of unexamined over-giving, and practical ways to recognize, balance, and honor these patterns. The conversation weaves neuroscience, spirituality, and lived experience.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Defining the Wounded Healer Archetype

• Origin Story: The term originates from the myth of Chiron, the centaur who could not heal his own wound but was wise and helped others.
  • [02:38] Mayim: “The term wounded healer actually comes from the myth of Chiron… he suffered a wound from which he couldn’t heal, but he also couldn’t die.”
• Core Idea: Your ability to help others often comes from your own places of hurt.
  • [03:25] Jonathan: “What if those wounds are the very thing we need to help us get to where we’re going in life, to fulfill our life’s purpose?”

2. Signs You Might Be a Wounded Healer

• Common Characteristics:
  • Feeling older than your age as a child; being called an “old soul” [05:43–05:53]
  • Acting as the fixer/counselor in your family
  • Often the “black sheep” or “scapegoat” [06:00–06:06]
  • Hyper-attuned to other’s emotional states
  • Feeling responsible for others' wellbeing, especially at your own expense
  • Attracting people who need fixing
• Connection to Dysfunctional Contexts: Many of these signals overlap with children of parents facing addiction, mental illness, or chronic stress. [06:34–07:36]
  • Mayim: “You might be looking at this list and saying, these could also be things that happen if you grow up in alcoholism, in a home where someone has a mental illness...”
• Codependency: Having a compulsion to help or a belief that things will not be okay unless you intervene.

3. Personal Anecdotes & Reflection

• Being an Old Soul:
  • Jonathan shares always relating more to older kids after his brother’s accident, feeling out of sync with peers. [08:06–09:20]
• Parenting as Healing:
  • Parenting can repeat or heal childhood wounds for both parent and child.
  • Mayim: “Maybe instead of saying I’m the parent of two children, I should say I’m the wounded healer of two children.” [11:24]
  • Jonathan: “You are reparenting yourself through your children.” [11:33]

4. Neuroscience of the Wounded Healer

• Unpredictable Childhoods Breed Hypervigilance:
  • Brains become pattern-recognizers, constantly scanning for threats, leading to hypervigilance and blurred safety boundaries. [13:52–14:56]
  • Mayim: “When you introduce chaos… many things will happen to compensate. One is hypervigilance. One is also a blurring of safety boundaries.”
• Mirroring & Brain Chemistry:
  • Codependent brains can begin to “entrain” to others, adopting their patterns and emotional states.
  • Mayim: “The notion of a chemical basis… would be: I am adapting my environment of my nervous system to feel more like yours.” [22:20]

5. Quiz: Are You a Wounded Healer?

[26:29–29:16]

• 10-Question Quiz—sample questions:
  • Were you the emotional support system in your family?
  • Do you sense what people feel before they say anything?
  • Do you attract people who need fixing?
  • Do you feel calmer giving care than receiving it?
  • Does others' pain feel like your personal responsibility?
  • Do you deliberately pick relationships or careers where you are needed?
• Scoring:
  • 1–4 ‘Yes’: Sensitive
  • 5–7: “Pattern is hovering”
  • 8–10: Classic wounded healer archetype
• Self-awareness: Many healers improve boundaries over time; your score may change with healing.

6. The Superpower—and Its Dangers

• Impact as Healer/Caregiver:
  • The blend of intuition, empathy, and pattern recognition makes for extraordinary helping ability—when managed. [23:57–25:37]
• Risks:
  • Burnout and chronic energy drain if boundaries aren’t in place.
  • Over-involvement in others’ pain can blur self/other and exhaust the healer. [34:04–35:24]
  • Regularly attracting “takers” or those who want to be fixed can lead to imbalance.
  • Mayim: “Your system is holding so much… you can burn out.”
• Boundary Tools:
  • Jonathan recommends visualizing and creating an “energy bubble” to keep others’ emotional charges at bay. [31:36]
    • Jonathan: “If you’re someone who has that experience… we’re going to do a whole live about how to create an energy bubble around yourself to push people’s energy out.”

7. Reclaiming and Redirecting the Archetype

• Balance Giving & Receiving:
  • Learn to accept support, monitor internal cues for boundaries, and avoid measuring self-worth solely in service to others. [41:05–41:47]
    • Mayim: “Just because you are useful to others… doesn’t mean there’s not still things in you that need tending to.”
    • Jonathan: “My worth isn’t measured in my usefulness. I can help without being absorbed. I can care without carrying.” [42:43]
• Importance of Self-regulation:
  • Healing this archetype means integrating your wounds—not just acting from them.
  • Mayim: “You want to be able to regulate your own nervous system...maintaining healthy emotional boundaries...” [40:09]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Mayim, on transformation:
  • “We're trying to encourage people to see wounds as possible openings. One’s ability to help others often comes from places that you yourself were hurt.” [00:31]
• Jonathan, on life’s purpose:
  • “What if those wounds are the very thing we need to fulfill our life's purpose?” [00:25]
• On the cost of unbalanced healing:
  • Mayim: “This superpower can make you almost unbelievably good at your job. But there is a risk. Energy drain, burnout. You may even have a significant life crash if you do not know how to harness the abilities...” [02:31]
• Jonathan, on energetic boundaries:
  • “If we are not actively building a space for ourselves, we can get overtaken. It can be as simple as, I’m really, really aware that someone is in need...and those people who are exceptionally empathic may have a wounded healer component to them. They may feel that person’s need on a physical level.” [31:36]
• Mayim, for those healing from being “needed before loved”:
  • “For those of you out there who may have learned that you were needed before you felt that you were loved—this is a call to action for you to remember that just because you are useful to others, it doesn’t mean that there’s not still things in you that need tending to.” [41:28]
• Jonathan, succinctly reframing worth:
  • “My worth isn’t measured in my usefulness. I can help without being absorbed. I can care without carrying.” [42:43]

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Essential Timestamps

• [02:31] — Introduction of the wounded healer and the Chiron myth
• [05:43–06:06] — List of traits/signs of a wounded healer
• [13:52–14:56] — Neuroscientific explanation: unpredictability, hypervigilance, and codependency roots
• [22:20] — Mirror systems and brain chemistry of codependence
• [26:29–29:16] — 10-question wounded healer quiz and discussion
• [31:36] — Tools for boundary-setting, energetic self-protection
• [34:04–35:24] — Burnout, the cost for therapists and caregivers
• [41:05–42:43] — Guidance for self-regulation, balancing giving/receiving, and self-worth

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Closing Thoughts

Mayim and Jonathan leave listeners with practical challenges and prompts—acknowledge both your capacity to help and your need for healing, take honest inventory, and seek balance through boundaries and reciprocal relationships rather than self-sacrifice.
For those recognizing themselves in this archetype, the episode affirms that wounds can become openings—that compassionate self-awareness is the path from breakdown to breakthrough.

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Further Exploration:
Reach out on Substack for exercises on boundaries and energy protection, and share your wounded healer experiences for future community conversations.

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“If you felt useful before you felt loved… the rewrite is: my worth isn’t measured in my usefulness. I can help without being absorbed. I can care without carrying.”—Jonathan Cohen [42:43]

Transcript

[A]

Do you attract people who need fixing? Do you sense what people feel before they say anything? Do people confide in you without being invited? Oh, my gosh, yes.

[B]

How do we know if we are a wounded healer?

[A]

As a child, did you feel that you were older than your age?

[B]

Were you also the black sheep?

[A]

We're talking about people who have a particular wound who then also want to transform that into helping others.

[B]

What if those wounds are the very thing we need to fulfill our life's purpose?

[A]

We're trying to encourage people to see wounds as possible openings. One's ability to help others often comes from places that you yourself were hurt. For those of you who may have learned that you were needed before you felt that you were loved, this is a call to action.

[B]

Hey, Sal. Hank.

[A]

What's going on?

[B]

We haven't worked a case in years. I just bought my car at Carvana and it was so easy. Too easy.

[A]

Think something's up?

[B]

You tell me. They got thousands of options, found a great car at a great price, and

[A]

it got delivered the next day.

[B]

It sounds like Carvana just makes it easy to buy your car, Hank. Yeah, you're right. Case closed.

[A]

Buy your car today on Carvana. Delivery fees may apply. This episode is brought to you by Peloton Break through the busiest time of year with the brand new Peloton Cross Training Tread Plus. Powered by Peloton iq. With real time guidance and endless ways to move, you can personalize your workouts and train with confidence, helping you reach your goals in less time. Let yourself run, lift, sculpt, push, and go explore the new peloton cross training tread [e-mail] hi, I'm Mayim Bialik.

[B]

And I'm Jonathan Cohen.

[A]

And welcome to our breakdown. Are you a person who is very helpful to other people? Are you a person who senses things that other people need even before they know that they need them? Are you a person who's experienced a tremendously complicated and interesting journey on your way to helping others with their complicated, intense journeys? If so, you might be a wounded healer. Maybe you're a person who's always felt like you have strong intuitive ability, but you weren't sure where to channel it? You may have a superpower that has the ability to change not only your own nervous system, but that of those around you.

[B]

This superpower can make you almost unbelievably good at your job. But there is a risk.

[A]

Energy drain, burnout. You may even have a significant life crash if you do not know how to harness the Abilities to that you may have been programmed to have. The term wounded healer actually comes from the myth of Chiron. That's C H I R O N. He was a centaur who was the original wounded healer. So Chiron was referred to by Homer in the Iliad as the wisest and justest of all the centaurs. And he was known for his wisdom. However, he suffered a wound from which he couldn't heal, but he also couldn't die. And so he became this wise centaur who himself could not heal. So that is sort of the framing of the notion of a wounded healer.

[B]

And the idea of wounded carries a certain connotation, right? Like it can say, oh, I was wounded. I'm defective in some way. There's shame associated with it. But what if those wounds are the very thing we need to help us get to where we're going in life to fulfill our life's purpose? You know the term, you can only spot it if you've got it, which is a term you love, right? It's like we have to go through some of these very difficult, challenging experiences in order to be able to show up in life and to be able to be effective.

[A]

I often wonder, you know, when you meet people who are therapists, I wonder what led them to that path. And in many cases, I think, oh, it's just like a magnanimous desire to, like, learn a specific kind of thing and then share it with other people. But in many cases, it's people who have been on their own personal journey and have found that even the learning to become a therapist, the studying that they do and all the practicing, it actually gives them a window into their own life as well.

[B]

How many people are out there studying psychology, trying to become a therapist so they can better understand themselves?

[A]

It reminds me of Lori Gottlieb's book, you should really talk to someone. And while she was, you know, kind of becoming a therapist, she learned more about herself, really, in the process than she had even anticipated.

[B]

So how do we decide? How do we know if we are someone who would be considered a wounded healer? And what does it mean for you to know that information? How does it change your life? How does it change what you're motivated by? Sometimes the desire to help other people may be an overcompensation.

[A]

Young described this notion that one's ability to help others often comes from places that you yourself were hurt. Maybe you were overlooked, you were overwhelmed, left to figure things out on your own. And all of those places then become the jumping off point. For you being able to help others.

[B]

If someone is like, wait a second, how do I start to know if I am one of these people? Here are some characteristics that you may relate to.

[A]

Okay. As a child, did you feel that you were older than your age?

[B]

You've often said you were a very old soul. People talk about that being an old soul.

[A]

Let's just turn it into. Have you been referred to as an old soul? Were you the counselor, fixer, mediator in the family?

[B]

I'll add one thing there. Were you also the black sheep sometimes?

[A]

Oh, interesting.

[B]

The scapegoat of the family.

[A]

Did you feel responsible for other people's emotions? Were you hyper attuned to subtle emotional shifts in the room? Did you feel compelled to help or heal, even at your own expense? Now, you might be looking at this list and saying, these could be also the things that happen if you grow up in alcoholism, if you grow up in a home where someone has a mental illness, if you grow up in a home even where someone has a chronic illness, and you become the person that's sort of doing all these things,

[B]

you have to remove your needs because someone else in the house has a more urgent need.

[A]

Correct? So the idea wouldn't be that these are the things that make you wounded, but the idea would be that you may have a circumstance that created in you both a desire and early imprinting into not just how you do these things, but the impact that it has on other people. And this is the part where codependency enters the conversation. Did you feel that you had a power to heal other people and that if you did not act, things wouldn't go well? The house couldn't run, they wouldn't get back together. Did it feel like you were given this power that early training can often look like someone who again, has had this priming experience that later in life may really be a jumping off point for being a wonderful helper in ways that are appropriate and don't harm you.

[B]

Similarly, you may be scanning, waiting to see how the emotions in the room change, how someone may start to get angry or have an emotional reaction. And that scanning can also be both detrimental because it keeps you stuck, but also can be very helpful to attune you.

[A]

I was instantly thinking about what about people who are on the spectrum? What about people who don't pick up emotional cues? What about people who are not necessarily in tune with how the room shifts?

[B]

I would argue that what they lack in potential processing cognitively what's going on, they may be very aware of and react to somatically, internally. One thing I wanted to also touch on, feeling older than your age as a child or being told you have an old soul is such a double edged sword, right? Because it's an acknowledgment that you carry with you some kind of wisdom experience. It's code that may translate beyond your years. For example, I always had older friends. I always thought my brother's friend should be mine. I connected with an older group of friends, especially after my brother's accident. I had a very, very hard time relating to kids my own age. And I would often find myself in a much older crowd. And you've described this. That can actually be, I don't want to say dangerous, but it can be dangerous. It can be dangerous because it places you outside of the normal trajectory of what someone that age should be experiencing. And while you may have ways of connecting, you may be mature, you may have insight that other people don't have. Your age, you don't have all the experiences.

[A]

I wonder if sometimes that is an indication that you have lived lives that have given you. I'm just gonna say it, a sense of wisdom, some sort of historical knowledge. I mean, I've had like healers and stuff say like, you've lived many lives and, and there seems to be something about certain personalities and people always assume like, oh, were you an indigo child? I was like, no, I was a very obedient, not indigo child kind of kid. But I do wonder if there's something energetic that other people are picking up on.

[B]

Would you like to know how many past lives you've lived?

[A]

Sure.

[B]

If you're just listening to the audio, you didn't see the eye roll that happened there.

[A]

Yeah. How many past lives have I lived?

[B]

Over a thousand.

[A]

Has everyone lived over a thousand?

[B]

No. Some people are brand new here.

[A]

How do you know that?

[B]

How do you not know it?

[A]

Okay, we've talked about therapy, but there's also many other professions where this kind of wisdom and insight can be helpful. Caregiving. When we spoke with death doula Martha Jo Atkins, she described that for many, the caregiving process is one that heals not only the person you're giving attention to, but yourself as well. Nursing, teaching, obviously spiritual or energetic work, and even activism could be forms of, let me fix something. I know what's broken because I feel it. Let me go out and fix it.

[B]

Also, parenting has a similar quality to giving back the things that you didn't get. You know, one of the phrases I love most about parenting is you can't handle emotions in your child that you yourself can't handle. If you were told all the time you should be seen, not heard, or you know, you know your place, or you know, you were expected to operate a certain way as a child, even when you want to change that and give your child something that you did not yourself get, it can bring up a lot of emotions for you.

[A]

I mean, this is the reason I'm. I'm laughing as you're talking about this is maybe instead of saying I'm the parent of two children, I should say I'm the wounded healer of two children.

[B]

I mean, I like that. Also, you are reparenting yourself through your children.

[A]

Absolutely. I work obviously with women in lactation scenarios where they are having newborns, and for the first time, moms in particular that I speak to, there comes this moment of like, oh, my gosh, I thought I could control everything. And you're experiencing the lack of control that we often experienced as children when you see it in this helpless infant. And as adults, we wanna say, I fixed it, I did it, I got it all together. But if you come from a complicated home or from complexity, that's all gonna get kicked up when you are in a parenting situation. Absolutely.

[B]

Let's talk about why wounded healers happen. We spoke a little bit about some of the ways that someone can grow up and the scenarios. There are parallels here to highly sensitive people, to being an empath, to other MB and JC episodes that we were exploring. But talk about how you grow up and what it creates.

[A]

We've touched already on some of the environments that can lead to wounds, let's say, or lead to not only a wound, but a wound with the belief that you can transform it. Right. Because there's a lot of people who have wounds from childhood who don't become healers. And there's a lot of people who are healers who. Who may not have wounds. But we're talking about this intersection between people who have a particular wound or need that wasn't met, who then also want to transform that into helping others. So a parent in distress, if you grew up in a home with a parent in distress, alcoholism, very common cause of this. A parent with mental illness, as we said, a chronic condition. If someone has something like multiple sclerosis, if they have a cancer diagnosis that

[B]

they're managing, if they have chronic pain,

[A]

autoimmune conditions, these kinds of things, there's a constant need for someone to sort of fill that. And it's often it can be a child also.

[B]

If there's a high level of financial distress.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

Because all of the things that you mentioned have one thing in common and it's a lack of emotional predictability. Talk to us about what that does and why we need that.

[A]

This is one of the areas where in neuroscience we have some information about sort of what's going on. And what happens when there's unpredictability is there's a state of hypervigilance that we respond with. So, you know, obviously the brain is a pattern recognizer and we love when there's, when there's some sense of predictability. And we know this from many animal studies in particular. When you introduce chaos, when you introduce unpredictability, many things will happen to compensate. So one is hypervigilance. One is also a blurring of safety boundaries, meaning anything sort of is okay if it tries to maintain or establish some form of control or a belief that you are in control. So what you have is you have this brain that's constantly scanning and more prone to being distracted and also more prone to finding places where you can fill that hole.

[B]

What is it? Maybe Alex. Breakdown is supported by array.

[A]

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[B]

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[A]

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[B]

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[A]

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[B]

I mean, to fill that hole.

[A]

One of the things that makes us feel better when there's unpredictability is finding places where we matter. And when I think of this in terms of relationships, right? Like why would someone who's raised like this, let's say pick someone who needs a lot of maintenance in a relationship, right? It's because it gives you a purpose, it gives you something to do. It gives you this false sense of like, oh well, They're a mess. I'm going to clean it up for them. Um, you often hear this. I feel like Valerie's going to nod her head. When you hear women who are with men who need a lot of upkeep, they need a lot of, like, monitoring, and they, like, need you. They're always like, do this for me, do that for me. I can't take care of this myself. And there's often a partner who wants to fill all those, like, oh, I'll do that, I'll do that. I'll take care of this for him. I'll make his doctor's appointment. I'll encourage him to eat right. I'll do this. That kind of relationship, which we would define as one that has codependency, involves a lot of these components, too. Hyper vigilance, always being available for that person. And this can happen, obviously, in any kind of relationship, not just man and woman.

[B]

And what's important about these characteristics to recognize is that you can give, you can support, you can be an amazing partner, you can be amazing therapist or a healer, a nurse. But if it's coming from a place of this open wound, you may be putting yourself at risk to overgive, to not have it feel reciprocal. The importance of knowing the wounds that we have are so that we can address and tend to them internally and ourselves, and then operate in the world as a more integrated person. Right. Like when we're operating from a place where we're trying to fix ourselves through external action, it can be a recipe for setting us up for failure.

[A]

We know that the amygdala, which is typically fear processing, but also is involved in any emotion that has kind of fear or threat component. We know that the amygdala can be overreactive in these kinds of situations. There's also some really interesting research about how the brains of people in codependent relationships will kind of entrain to seem more like the person that they are taking care of. You know, we have a mirror system in our brain that mirrors what other people are experiencing and doing. And the notion of a chemical basis for this kind of wound would be, I am adapting my environment of my nervous system to feel more like yours. So I am more attuned to you. I know what your needs are, and they almost feel like they're mine. Right. That would feel like a compulsive need and an obligation to be helpful in this situation.

[B]

That is one of the most interesting explanations of a phenomenon that we have actually talked about before. The idea that I'm going to change my brain pattern so that my entire system is aware of your needs. It's like, on one hand, if I can do that in a way that has boundaries and responsibility, imagine the superpower, right? I can track you. I'm able to anticipate you. I'm able to show up, and probably you feel so seen by me, right, that you feel no one understands me except for this person at a level that is so deep. So.

[A]

Because this conversation, though, is not about codependency, because you could see how that could obviously get really complicated in a relationship. So let's talk about what it means if your caregiver has these superpowers. Let's talk about what it means if your therapist has these superpowers. Let's talk about what it means if people in professional, you know, positions are, I don't know, really, really sensitive to reading micro signals that you're giving. So if you're telling your story to a therapist, to a counselor, to a social worker, and they are picking up on things, they may be able to help you in ways that you don't even know that you need to be helped. What if they are feeling into something that you're not yet aware of in a relationship? You'd say, don't tell me how to feel. But if it's a therapist, you're having someone who says, is it possible that. And they're opening something up to you that you may not have access to. Why? Because we're in denial. We want to protect this. We want to stay the way we are because it's comfortable. That would be a really, really incredible, incredible superpower to have in a therapist who is a wounded healer. Also, what if your therapist or healer or caregiver had strong intuitive abilities? That would be exactly the kind of thing that we would want. Not that they would tell you what they think is going on before you can confirm it, but the notion that they may have an intuition, oh, something's not right. I can't tell you how many times I've said things to my therapist where I was like, I realized this. And she was like, mm, been waiting for you to get there. And they also can't force you to get there, but they at least have a framework that they're then protecting you in for when you have the revelations that they possibly already intuited.

[B]

If you are a wounded healer, you need to know more about it. Because if you are automatically intuiting and you are using these abilities without a conscious understanding of them, you may be pushing People beyond what they realize. Because you think it's obvious.

[A]

Well, I mean, nobody wants to go to the friend who's like, I know everything about what's going on and you don't. If you've ever tried to convince someone to leave a relationship, they should leave. They're not gonna leave until they're ready. And then you just become the friend who's like, well, I don't wanna talk about it anymore because I know how this is gonna go down. Not that I have any experience with this. Is it time for a quiz?

[B]

One of the favorite things to do to really understand if you meet some of the criteria for the things that we talk about in these solo episodes, this feels like really a quiz moment. So take out your pens, Take out your pens, take out your paper.

[A]

We have a 10 point quiz and the quiz is. Could you possibly be a wounded healer? 10 questions. This is yes or no. Were you the emotional support system in your family? I was. Oh, sorry, I don't need to answer out loud. Okay. No, you were not the emotional support system in your family.

[B]

I was not.

[A]

Although you were the cause for people meeting emotional support.

[B]

I was not. That was my brother. But I was the comedic relief, which could sort of be its own thing. So I'll take a half a point for that one.

[A]

Do you sense what people feel before they say anything?

[B]

I already knew you were going to say that.

[A]

Do people confide in you without being invited? Oh, my gosh, yes. Sorry. Do you feel guilty when you can't help someone? Did you grow up feeling responsible for someone's well being? I was responsible for someone's well being. Does chaos, conflict or unpredictability activate your body? So what this question is asking is if you go somewhere and you're like, at like a huge, like, loud train station and everything's going a million ways, do you feel out of sorts? Do you feel like, oh, I can't. Like, I used to describe this when, when my younger son was little, if there was too much visual stimulation, his leg stopped working. He would. Like, we went to Disneyland, he would just stop. So does too much basically information on the outside cause you to feel agitated, out of sorts, or like something's not right?

[B]

I'm going to take that one step further and say, if you're in an environment, it could not be at a train station. It could be like in a work environment and there's a lot of uncertainty.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

How do you respond? Do you need a high level of predictability in social dynamics in order to feel Safe.

[A]

Right. Okay, so that was question six. Does chaos, conflict, or unpredictability activate your body? Do you attract people who need fixing? Like, as a rule, if you don't need fixing, we shouldn't be friends. That's how I decide. Do you feel calmer when caretaking than when receiving care? Ooh, great question. So do you. I would also interpret this. Do you find it hard to receive care or love or presence or kindness, but you feel okay when giving it to someone else? That's a great question. Does someone else's pain feel like your personal responsibility? I just thought that's the way we're programmed. Oh, you're hurting. We're all hurting. That's what it feels like. Do you choose careers or relationships where you're needed? If you scored between one and four yeses, you are sensitive. Congratulations. But not necessarily a wounded healer. If you scored between five and seven yeses, you've got the pattern. It's hovering. And between eight and 10. That's right, you and me, we are the classic wounded healer archetype.

[B]

I got a six, but.

[A]

I'm sorry, what?

[B]

Here's why I got a six. There are many of these things that if you had asked me years ago, I would have said yes. And now I'll say no.

[A]

You're just a regular healer, not the wounded kind.

[B]

So the one that says, does chaos, conflict, and unpredictability activate your body? I would have said yes previously, but

[A]

now I don't know who you are.

[B]

I like a little chaos.

[A]

No. Okay.

[B]

You don't think so?

[A]

I think yeah, you do like chaos. You're very comfortable with it. But I also know that if we go somewhere where you, like, don't feel good energy from people, places or things, your body gets activated.

[B]

Well, I don't like going to Disneyland. I'll just be honest.

[A]

Yeah, I think that that would be a chaotic. That would be a chaotic situation. You don't love conflicts?

[B]

No, I don't like conflicts.

[A]

Yeah. Okay, so I think it activates your body. I'm just saying so.

[B]

I did have a yes to that. Do you attract people who need fixing? That's why we're here. Do you feel calmer when caretaking? Yes, because most people don't caretake properly.

[A]

You're not. You don't really care. Take.

[B]

That's not true.

[A]

You like being taken care of.

[B]

No, because most people do it wrong.

[A]

I think we're in a different quiz right now. This is the. Are you impossible?

[B]

Do you feel someone else's pain, like your personal Responsibility. I would have said yes previously.

[A]

I agree.

[B]

And that is something that I've actively seen.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Begun to work on and recognize when it happens, I pull back, I push their energy away. I'd be like, you can exist without it impacting. Like, that's a whole process.

[A]

Let's revisit what this quiz is. Do you have the components of a wounded healer? If at any point you have felt that other people's pain interferes with yours, that's an indication to me that you have healer qualities that probably come from that kind of place. So the question is not so much, can you manage it? Everyone thinks you're great at managing it. The fact that you're able to perceive other people's needs as feeling like, ooh, is this something that's mine? That indicates. I think that would be a yes.

[B]

In fact, yes. And I had to. I did that so much that I had to figure out and focus on a practice to help me understand what was mine and what was other people's. And if you're someone who has that experience, message me on substack. We're going to do a whole live about how to create an energy bubble around yourself to push people's energy out. More and more on the podcast, we've talked about the physics of the fact that we are energy beings. We have energy, we transmit energy, we have energy around us. Right. And if we are not actively building a space for ourselves, we can get overtaken. It can be as simple as, I'm really, really aware that someone is in need of some kind. And those people who are exceptionally empathic may have a wounded healer component to them. They may feel that person's need on a physical level.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

How do you recognize that? Take it away from your physical level and push it so that it's further away from you. It's not that you're changing that person, meaning that you can't stop them being in need, but you can change how you experience it.

[A]

It's the difference between feeling sad and feeling someone else's sad.

[B]

You may feel someone else in need, and you may have an ache in your heart, and that may be a signal to you. Right. That's a powerful skill set, is to echo and mirror in your own body because it's. It's communication. You're getting a high level of intuitive or even, I would say, a version of psychic communication. However, if it's not in balance and you're not aware of how to interact with it, it can overtake what you are actually experiencing. So by removing it and learning how to acknowledge it and move it out, you can regain what your experience of your physical body.

[A]

I take issue with the word psychic, but that's for another time.

[B]

That's for another time.

[A]

Let's talk about some of the pitfalls of being a wounded healer. And these are different than the pitfalls of being a person who has wounds. Right. Because we're talking about a very specific kind of like, subset here.

[B]

When you're in a healing profession, these get amplified.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So you're putting yourself in an environment where the wound can be activated and then lead you to a place where you could be injured or have more damage done to you.

[A]

When we spoke to Elizabeth Crone, who was struck by lightning and came back from a near death experience with uncanny abilities to see into different realms of time, she described this when she started seeing clients because someone was like, if you can see everything, do readings. And she said she felt a tremendous burden, she felt an emotional burden of carrying all of this kind of information. So that's one of the things. It is a cause for burnout for many people. If you are in a healing or caregiving profession, you can burn out. Your system is holding so much. In addition, the. The notion of, in one's personal life in particular, attracting people who need rescuing, this is a really hard one. I always wonder, what are therapists like when they go home? You know, how do you not psychoanalyze everyone that you interact with? How do you be a person who's dating if you're a therapist and you have intuitive abilities like how do you make those distinctions? And it can blur the line. And in many cases, I do know people who, you know are therapists, but kind of in their off time, they also do a lot of caregiving because you do, you have wisdom, you have this to give. And there's a need for really strong boundaries there so that you don't, you know, burn out or over give.

[B]

Another way of explaining that would be how do you ensure that the people in your life are giving you the same support that you are giving to others when you're used to being in the support environment, especially if you're trained to see those patterns deeply and also

[A]

can you just turn that off?

[B]

How do you make sure you're not just collecting people who you would otherwise be seeing in therapy as your friends?

[A]

Oh, that's hard. Especially in L. A.

[B]

No. But I think the more we're aware of that, especially the more we're aware of is someone draining us. Do I feel really empty after interacting with this person, or is there a high degree of like, oh, I feel like I have to get back to them versus they're going to understand me. There's not the same level of miscommunication that I'm going to have to make sure is interpreted correctly. When you're being met at a level where there's spaciousness, reciprocity, that will be much more empowering and energetically uplifting.

[A]

I want to touch on also, again, some of these superpowers and how it can be a real strength to be a person who both has experienced some wounds and who then has the capacity to transform that into healing others and seeing things in others that they may not see. So we already talked a little bit about the ability to manage the acknowledgement of micro signals, to be able to have intuitive ability, pattern recognition. You know, people who are wounded healers are often deeply empathetic and spiritually open in many cases. You know, a lot of people who have experienced challenges do set themselves up for, or the universe sets themselves up for extrasensory abilities or extra sensitivity, these kind of other, you know, psi phenomenon, more abilities that Jonathan's talking about. There's an ability to, at a very high level, be able to feel into what people need and be able to provide it in a way that people who may not have experienced those wounds simply can't provide.

[B]

If you've never experienced someone who has these capabilities, or if you may be doing them automatically and not realizing just how impactful they can be on someone's life, you know, I've run four companies. The largest team we had was 100 people, but most of the teams average between 15 and 20 people. And the amount of miscommunication that happens even amongst awesome, talented people, just to clarify what the goal is, is so much. And it actually can derail and add sand in the wheels. And. And that is true with all of life. Like, when you know exactly what I'm trying to say, that doesn't take away my responsibility to communicate. But sometimes people are like, oh, I have kind of an idea. And when someone meets you at a place where they just get you, the person's nervous system feels more relaxed because you're not on edge of being misinterpreted. When a friend just like you, you express something and they can say back to you, I hear that. And also I hear that maybe there's this other thing happening for you not to take away your agency, but to flesh out all the unsaid things that are communicated all the Time, we feel so much more connected to people, and we can then even feel more connected to ourselves because instead of trying to get the sand out of the gears of connection, you're actually felt. Seeing your heart opens you relaxed, and you're like, well, what else might there be to talk about? And you've experienced this. You and I have even practiced saying, you know, holding off any type of misunderstanding and saying, what else?

[A]

In any environment where you are experiencing the possibility of connection, meaning being able to connect, being able to help, whether it's in a professional capacity or even in a personal capacity. We're trying to encourage people to see wounds as possible openings and places where they have the ability and the power to create these kinds of connections that really can diffuse a situation, give people a sense of belonging, and help things move smoothly. So it's not just in that interpersonal realm. It also echoes out into these larger

[B]

situations when we are witnessed. You know, it's the SLIT experiment. From a spiritual standpoint. If you extrapolate that when someone is witnessing us, we do change. You know, when we're operating by ourselves, we can love being by ourself. But when someone sees us at that level, I do think it has a mode of healing, which is why so many people who have this ability move into these professions.

[A]

Absolutely. And that is, again, kind of the superpower that we're. That we're trying to reframe this as also we've talked in many other episodes about. If you are someone who is wounded and feel like you want to be a healer, there are definitely things you want to look into. You want to be able to regulate your own nervous system. You want to be able to not feel disrupted or disturbed by interacting with other people. And that's something that people learn, especially when they're new to healing. Maintaining healthy emotional boundaries is important, incredibly important, especially in your personal relationships, so that you feel clear when you are interacting with others. And it's also important to learn to receive support and not just be the giver of information, healing and help, but also to learn to balance those needs so that you also can complete the healing that you need.

[B]

Because a lot of people will attract takers or attract people who need that saving. And it can feel good at first to play that role because you're applying all the skills and abilities that you naturally have. But you have to be careful. Is it ultimately draining you? Are you being matched with someone who is going to be uplifting, be energetically supportive?

[A]

For those of you out there who may have learned that you were needed before you felt that you were loved. This is a call to action for you to remember that just because you are useful to others, just because you are helpful to others, it doesn't mean that there's not still things in you that need tending to.

[B]

We're giving a bit of an overview here in this episode. Identifying when boundaries are not working is an intellectual and a physiological process. You know, monitoring your physiological cues, what your body is telling you, trying to pick up on signals that feel like they're pulling you astray and maybe draining you. You said if you felt useful before you felt loved. That's just. I just felt that when you said it. I think a lot of people can relate. And the rewrite is my worth isn't measured in my usefulness. I can help without being absorbed. I can care without carrying. Right. And if we start to use those reframes, how does that feel in our body? Yeah, we are deserving of love even if we are not being helpful.

[A]

We're very curious for the wounded healers out there, what your experience has been with your journey. Were there moments when it was hard and didn't seem like it was possible? And what was that breakthrough like when you realized you could manage it all, including your own needs?

[B]

If there are any other of the exercises that we talked about or ways to identify and work with, setting boundaries or clearing your space or knowing when you're getting pulled in, let us know. Find us on substack and we'll do a deep dive on substack.

[A]

And from our breakdown to the one we hope you never have. We'll see you next time.

[B]

It's Maya Bialix. Breakdown.

[A]

She's gonna break it down for you.

[B]

She's got a neuroscience PhD or two and now she's gonna break down so break down she's gonna break it down.

[A]

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