Climate Coaching and the Wounded Healer Archetype
Article from October 2020 Association of Coaches UK Coaching Perspectives Journal
“Speaking to coaches in four different countries, US-based coach Peter Tavernise explores how embracing the concept of the Wounded Healer archetype might support climate coaching."
Recently, I conducted interviews with ten climate coaches from across Canada, Mexico, the USA and the UK. Climate coaches seek to empower their clients to overcome grief, anger, helplessness and despair surrounding the global climate catastrophe, in order to facilitate effective action. The question I sought to explore was whether and how the Wounded Healer archetype [see italicized outtake below] may be operating within the nascent field of climate coaching. To be fully aware of climate disruption and its implications for all life is to be wounded. How might some coaches use this realisation as motivation to be of service to the world?
The coaches provided a spectrum of answers: three interviewees objected to the idea of their woundedness (in relation to climate or otherwise) and to the concept that coaches heal others; six interviewees resonated in varying degrees with the archetype as representing their experience, with tangible contributions to their coaching.
Those interviewees who initially objected to the vocabulary of both woundedness and healing each later described climate disruption as an issue of moral and ethical distress (i), and the ways that healing takes place as part of the coaching process. Taken together, their objections are 1) they do not see themselves as specifically wounded in ways that might be termed sacred or empowering, and 2) they assert that coaches should not see themselves as healing others, only holding space so that others may heal. This is in line with the distinction Dr Rachel Naomi Remen makes between helping, fixing and serving.(ii) They also felt strongly that coaching should keep the emphasis on the positive (mindset, growth, joy) rather than on wounds or the need for healing, or at least keep the two perspectives balanced. As one interviewee said: ‘I’m not seeking out your wounds; I'm helping you find your magnificence.’
THE WOUNDED HEALER
The Wounded Healer archetype is based on the idea that someone is compelled to treat or ‘heal’ others because of personal pain or suffering. It is rooted in Carl Jung’s concept of archetypes, in turn borrowed from Plato’s Republic.(iii) In the context of coaching, it specifically draws on the Greek myth of Chiron’s wounded leg and his subsequent study of herbal healing, applied to the realm of therapeutic counselling. The concept was later adopted by other theorists and practitioners, including Joseph Campbell. This archetype has been considered useful in the coaching arena by authors such as Dr Janet Steinwedel and Dr Jocelyn Lowinger.(iv)
Those coaches who were drawn to the Wounded Healer archetype described their experience of wounding and healing in ways that were surprisingly common, including that their wounds enabled sensitivity, awareness, empathy and (most commonly) ‘attunement’ with their clients. These coaches’ wounds included acute or prolonged medical crises, severe bereavements and childhood traumas. These coaches also cited climate disruption as a continuous wound, and stated they consciously transmute this as fuel for their work. This is not to say one must be wounded to be an effective coach, but it does appear to offer a useful perspective.
For these coaches, drawing on the Wounded Healer archetype means that their pain around climate disruption does not need to be resolved in order to help others. As Remen states, ‘wounding and healing are not opposites. They are part of the same thing. It is our wounds that enable us to be compassionate with the wounds of others.’
The ‘gift of a sacred wound’ was described diversely as a portal, an activation, an initiation, an empowerment, an invitation and an avenue through which to recognise the reality of human oneness, our connection to everyone else who suffers or who has ever suffered. Through this recognition, the fundamental error and original wound of our perceived separation from the universe, our lived environment and each other is healed.
These coaches do not just understand human oneness as a cognitive awareness; they embody it. Stated as an insight that may be universally available: our body is given a visceral understanding through our openness to our own suffering, unlocking deepest compassion for how all others also suffer and arousing a simultaneous desire to be of service to those others. This service is a means to heal ourselves; the more aware of our oneness we are, the more capacity we have to heal ourselves and our relationship with our ecology.
Based on this recognition and empowerment, these coaches can then nurture such awareness and related healing in others. They do so without an agenda and without needing to know what their clients may need specifically. Simply being present and open to pain is enough, doing so compassionately, attentively and with curiosity about its source and sensations. These coaches report that such presence is often enough to bring clients greater ease and capacity.
As mentioned by one interviewee: ‘we each manifest all the archetypes at all times, and whichever one is in the forefront is simply circumstantial.’ Therefore, should this archetype resonate with you, please see it as an invitation to discover the broad palate of colours available via your inner Wounded Healer, and utilise it as an empowerment to facilitate a compassionate coaching space where others can heal themselves.
i. Halifax, Joan. 2018. Standing at the Edge: Finding Freedom where Fear and Courage Meet. Flatiron Books.
ii. Remen, Dr. Rachel Naomi. lionsroar.com/helping-fixing-or-serving
iii. Daneault, Serge. Can Fam Physician. 2008 Sep; 54(9): 1218–1219. The wounded healer: Can this idea be of use to family physicians? And Smink, Edward M. Ph.D., BCC: The Heroic Journey of Chaplaincy: Discovering the Wounded Healer Within
iv. Lowinger, Dr. Jocelyn. Blog Post: coachgp.com.au/2018/01/11/being-a-wounded-healer ‘Being a wounded healer,’ posted on January 11, 2018 by Coach GP. And Steinwedel, Janet S. 2017. Authenticity as an Executive Coach: Waking up the Wounded Healer Archetype. Chiron Publications.
This article is both a set of observations and an invitation. The author recognises this is an initial survey and welcomes additional dialogue and research by colleagues who may find this topic of interest. If this article has struck a chord for you, please contact me on the contact form on this page.