I want to lift a discussion from another thread on the forum that I find interesting. It´s about the differences in the way that men and women heal our wounds. Let me start by saying that we will have to talk in generalities. But as a general rule, Ernst states: Female are more influenced by the Moon, men by the Sun. We both have a masculine and feminine side.
In the discussion we used David Goggins as an example. Ernst speaks extensively about him in a video, but I don´t remember which one it was, probably in the Cards´section. A person who developed an extreme capacity for to endure physical effort and pain, that way, and through achieving external goals, healing to a great extent - at least according to me - a traumatic upbringing.
The woman I discussed with said that she found his example interesting, but that she found that he was "never ever working on the psychological side". I wondered what that meant, and still don´t understand it. I think his whole path, working through the emotional pain through physical pain and achieving difficult goals, is a valid healing path. What does "not work through the psychological side" even mean, I wondered, and still wonder.
I think it might be an expression of the different healing path of each gender. I now wonder about everyone´s thoughts and personal experience in this field.
Healing through physical challenges and pain, and achieving external goals, is a common path that has existed in every culture I believe, and has often been the main healing path, at least for men. I´m a Sundancer myself. I´ve never been an Eagle dancer though, I dance in a more relaxed form (as expected in my age); the Eagle dancers dance four days under the Sun, tied to a tree. Strings are attached to a piercing in their skin, and the string should never slack. It´s hard, it´s painful and it´s liberating. Healing.
In modern society, there is a huge preference for therapy, or am I wrong? But does it work? Therapy is infamous for it´s incapacity to help people to end an addiction, for example. That´s why the AA and similar organizations gather so many people; focusing on their actions and life path is what helps them to break the pattern. Combined with talking about their emotions, for sure. There is a focus both on the male and the female side of the psyche.
We tend to frown on the more masculine healing path that focus on physical pain and the achieving of external goals. It´s seen as "extreme" - that was the word that the woman involved in the discussion I refered to used - and cruel. But around us millions and millions of people are dying out of depression, bad eating habits, use of pain killer, alcohol, drugs and you name it. Isn´t that cruel?
And psychatry mainly uses drugs as a helping tool - drugs physically damages and even kills it´s patients, apart from cutting them of from their emotions and oftentimes lead them into a zombie state.
Can we really say that the less harsh, more "understanding" and "empathic" healing methods in general are any less cruel, if they lead to devestating results?
I would like to use myself as an example, since my chart is rather extreme in this sense. I have a good Moon in the forth house in Virgo. Same placement in the D9. It makes me having a good intellectual understanding of psychology and emotional factors, also my own psyche. My Mercury is in Mula nakshatra in the 7th house, which makes me extremely receptive to other people´s needs and emotions. And even if it helps me to understand what´s going on, emotionally in my life, I can´t say that it has been crucial for healing. Just the other week a childhood memory reached me and I started to ponder upon it, believing that it was a good healing strategy to do so. Therapeutical in a way. But a helping spiritual guide corrected me: "Don´t focus on your emotions but on the moment and on your behaviour!"
I think that maybe it works differently for women. As Ernst teaches us: Women must focus on their emotional wellbeing first, and on their action secondarily. A woman can´t heal emotionally through her action; even saving the world wouldn´t help her to feel any better about herself. But that is not how the male psyche works. On the contrary: only through good action can we heal.
I think that women tend to put a false expectation on men, and that female professionals in this fields tend to give bad advice to men, believing that what heals a woman also heals a man. And still, when a man actually opens up about his emotions in front of a woman, the immediate answer is in most cases rejection. So women KNOW, out of instinct I guess, that it´s not how men heal. (Unless if the reason for his tears is grief, of course, then it´s legit for man to cry and show vulnerability.)
Unfortunately I think that many young men are unaware about this too, from having been raised by female or "simping" fathers, and believe that the "soft" way is going to help them. Which it doesn´t.. Again: I don´t want to paint a black and white picture here, I´m not saying that men are supposed to keep everything within themselves. But when men, "real" men if I dare to use that expression, open up in front of each other, we often do it in a more indirect way, for example joking about it. We have our own ways.
I saw a reaction video the other day on the movie Whiplash, in which many young men in the thread bluntly rejected the very tough teacher´s way as a unacceptable. But I believe that they missed the point: Whiplash raise the question and put it on it´s very edge, and offers no clear answers. For to heal, at least as a man, sometimes you have to face real hardships; maybe Fletcher in the movie takes it too far, but on the other hand - what does the very mediocre father has to offer? Military service, for example, may be really hard, and working in a traditional masculine workplace might be tough. But getting through it alive, growing in the tough environment, is also healing for a man.
With that said, my wife had a very tough father, he was the "comendante" of border control in two Mexican states. He also had a very caring side. He passed away two years ago and is in very dear memory to both her and her four siblings of both genders. She says that "i´m happy I grew up in another time, because today he would have been seen as a bully".
Staffan