Why I Stopped Calling Myself a 'Healer'

I think the word 'healer' was quietly doing something for me that I wasn't ready to see at the time. It gave me a role that felt meaningful. It signalled that I cared. It suggested a kind of authority I didn't have to spell out. And it allowed me to imagine myself as someone who made broken things whole, which was, I now realise, partly a way of reassuring myself that I was good enough to be doing this work at all.

None of that was bad exactly. Most people who come into therapeutic work have some version of this - a quiet need to feel useful, to matter, to be the person who helps. The word gave that need somewhere to rest. But it was resting somewhere that wasn't quite true.

The more sessions I ran, the less I felt like the one doing the healing. What I actually did in sessions was hold a space, ask open questions, and stay out of the way. The client did the work. Their subconscious led. Whatever softened or shifted came from them, not from me.

Calling myself a healer suggested otherwise. It implied that I was the source of the change, that my presence was doing something the client couldn't have done in a different context. That's not really what was happening. And every time I used the word, I could feel a small mismatch between what I was claiming and what I was actually experiencing.

I don't have a perfect replacement. I usually just say 'I run regression hypnotherapy sessions'. It's more boring than 'healer' but it's more accurate. It describes what I actually do - I create a setting, I hold a specific kind of conversation, I help the client's subconscious lead. It puts the work where it belongs: in them, not in me.

When people want a more evocative word I sometimes say 'witness', or 'companion', or 'the one who holds the space'. Those feel closer to the truth. They don't claim too much, and they don't reduce the work to something mechanical either. They sit between the two.

If you're looking for a practitioner, I'd quietly suggest paying attention to the words they use about themselves. Practitioners who describe themselves in grander terms - healers, masters, guides, sages - aren't necessarily bad, but the language is sometimes doing the same quiet work that 'healer' was doing for me. It's worth asking whether they claim to do the healing themselves or whether they describe their role as holding space for yours.

The work is yours. A good practitioner just creates the conditions for it. That's not a lesser role - it's actually the real one. These sessions are a complementary wellness practice, not medical or psychological treatment. A free consultation is a good place to get a feel for how someone holds their work before you book.