What Do You Mean We Need Others To Heal???
From the quiet cave of inner work to the wild medicine of being seen
Hello beautiful human,
Here is a piece I've been meaning to write about for a while. I share because I see so many people struggle in relationship no matter how much inner work they have done. For years I was in that place, too. Wondering: why with all the experineces I had, do relationships still feel so messy at times?
Here are some insights that might be helpful. Enjoy and let me know what you think!
Love,
Kasia
Last year,
while preparing for a workshop, I wrote a little spiel that said: we need others to heal.
My co-organiser and friend read it and strongly disagreed.
“What do you mean we need others to heal?” she asked.
In her work, the whole point was to empower self-healing—to help people step out of co-dependency and recognize that all the answers they seek are already within.
They don’t need others to behave a certain way in order to heal!
That’s the problem to begin with, isn’t it?
Well, I see it slightly differently.
My Story
When I first started on my ‘healing’ journey—the journey of unraveling all the knots of my youth and cultural conditioning—I did it all myself.
Well, not entirely, because of course I had helpers along the way. But overall, it was a solo journey.
I did the inner work. I went to therapy.
I sat alone for hours in silence at Vipassana retreats.
I did Ayahuasca journeys. I breathed myself free of trauma in breathwork sessions.
All of those spaces were held by beautiful people, without whom I wouldn’t have been able to go as deep as I did.
But still… it was an overall solitary experience.
Sure, I shared some insights and processes with others. But healing—or wholing as I like to call it—was something I did apart from my daily life and relationships.
It was private. Something I did in order to return to the world as a better-functioning, more loving version of myself.
All of that changed when I attended my first HeartIQ retreat.
Discovering the field
HeartIQ is part of an emerging field of personal development we might place under the umbrella of circle work.
It’s a gathering of tribe—without a leader, therapist, or shaman—designed to explore what’s alive in the amplified field.
When people come together with the shared intentions of:
Presence. Authenticity. Connection. Heart-directedness. Purpose.
(As coined by Tej Steiner: Waking Up With All Around Us)
…something powerful happens.
The energetic field in which we sit amplifies everything present.
It serves as a magnifying glass to all the subtle energetic currents that are running underneath the surface and that most of us are so used to ignoring in our daily lives.
Now, in this intentional container of safety, those hidden layers suddenly have space to rise up—to be seen, felt, expressed. Without judgment.
You might sit in a circle thinking,
“I’m good. Nothing to share or process.”
And then—out of nowhere—you’re crying. Or you feel an urge to step into the center and express something. And when you follow that impulse, it’s the most beautiful relief imaginable.
If it’s true and real—meaning it doesn’t come from the mind or ego—everyone in the circle will feel uplifted.
There’s a tangible shift. It’s as if the entire field just dropped into a deeper level of coherence.
That kind of expression tends to give others permission to explore their unnamed, unprocessed emotions.
And in doing so, we begin to metabolize the shame we’ve been holding around them—which is often why they were shoved into the basement of our psyche to begin with.
A Big Aha
When I first experienced this, I was blown away.
Wow. I had no idea.
No idea how much I needed others.
How much I needed a safe field of humans to bear witness to my inner world—with all its beauty and shadows, its shame, pain, and confusion.
I’d thought I’d come a long way (and I had).
But I was not prepared for the test of embodying that healing in relationship. In tribe.
In hindsight, all that solo inner work was just preparation.
Preparation for this next chapter:
For showing up in connection.
For letting myself be fully seen by others, warts and all.
It was a revelation.
A massive aha moment.
“Ah. I get it. Solo inner work can only take you so far. The next step is doing this in relationship.”
And it makes sense, doesn’t it?
Most of our wounds come from relationship. So of course we need relationship to re-pattern our nervous systems.
To experience new imprints.
To know—deeply—that safety with others is possible.
Healing in the Presence of Others
We need other people—
people who have cultivated inner safety, regulated their nervous systems, and expanded their emotional range.
People who can hold frequencies that feel challenging to us, and show us that it’s safe to bring more of ourselves into the world.
None of my other ‘inner’ work was able to give me that. To truly imprint me with the experience of ‘inner safety’ with others.
Ayahuasca couldn’t.
Vipassana couldn’t.
Breathwork couldn’t.
If those modalities are like surgery—deep dives into the psyche—then Circlework is the rehab.
It’s learning to walk again with your heart open.
Learning the language of listening, of speaking with authenticity, of attunement and presence…simply put: learning the language of the heart.
Not the Only Way—But an Essential One
Now, I’m not saying Circlework is the thing.
I’m saying that Circlework—or as Tej Steiner puts it, relational spirituality—is an essential part of the human journey toward wholeness and maturity.
It doesn’t have to come through a modality like HeartIQ (though that can be a powerful fast track).
But relationship—and the entire field of relating—is a non-negotiable part of our development and healing.
We cannot overlook or skip it.
So... Do We Need Others to Heal?
I believe we need two legs to walk.
One leg is our own inner work.
The other is how we show up in relationship—when we’re triggered, touched, rejected, seen, accepted, loved, abandoned… the whole juicy shabang.
That’s how we do it.
Together.
Because really—why do we do all this inner work in the first place?
If not for the benefit of all our relations?
What has your experience been with healing in connection? What are your challenges in relationships? I want to hear from you.
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Curious to explore this in real life?
I create spaces—online and in-person—for people to reconnect with themselves, each other, and the deeper intelligence of the body. If you're longing for more than solo self-help… if you're ready to feel seen, safe, and alive in connection… this might be your kind of medicine.
Check out my website for my workshop on Inner Safety, www.kasiapatzelt.com. Or book a free 1-1 discovery call with me.