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A Return to Wholeness: Healing Community

Writer's picture: Nikki StaleyNikki Staley

As a holistic counsellor and psychotherapist and someone who deeply cares about the healing of both individuals and communities, I want to share some thoughts about how we can come together to heal our collective wounds. Our Surf Coast community , like each one of us, carries stories—stories of joy, resilience, but also stories of pain, trauma, and division. Healing isn’t just about putting a bandage on a wound; it’s about digging deep, feeling what needs to be felt, and creating a space where we can transform together.


When we think about healing a community, it’s not much different from healing an individual. It begins with awareness—an awareness of what’s happening within us and around us. This process of community healing is beautifully supported by a framework I am studying and practice in my clinic - Process Oriented Psychology or Process Work, developed by Arnold Mindell, and its group approach, Worldwork. These approaches invite us to look closely at the roles we play, the power dynamics that exist, and the parts of ourselves and our community that are often unseen or marginalised.





Seeing the Community as a Living, Breathing Field


Imagine for a moment that our community is like a living, breathing field—a place where all of our experiences, emotions, histories, and interactions come together to create a shared atmosphere. This field is shaped by everything we bring into it—our joys, our triumphs, contributions and our connections, but also, our fears, our conflicts and our traumas.


When a community or an individual goes through trauma, whether it’s due to conflict, injustice, or any other hurtful experience, this field becomes disturbed. Just like a lake that gets rippled by a thrown stone, the field of a community feels the impact of these experiences, and these ripples can continue to affect us for a long time.


Field theory in Worldwork teaches us to see these disturbances not as something to be ignored or fixed quickly, but as invitations to dive deeper so we can move toward individuation and greater wholeness. To truly heal, we need to be willing to look at the whole field—what’s visible on the surface, but also what’s hidden underneath. It means asking ourselves, “What’s really going on here? What are we not saying? What pain or need is trying to be heard?”


The Power of Awareness and Noticing What’s Hidden


Healing starts with awareness. When I talk about awareness, I’m speaking about being truly present with what’s happening inside of us but also, around us. It’s about noticing the obvious things—like the words people are saying—but also the subtle, sometimes uncomfortable, things that are both said but also not said. It’s about paying attention to what’s being left out, who isn’t being heard, and what emotions are lingering in the room.


Often, in communities, just like in our personal lives, there are parts of ourselves that we push away or hide because they’re painful, messy, or because we’ve been taught they aren’t acceptable. These are what we call the marginalised aspects of ourselves—the parts that feel too angry, too sad, too weak, or too different to bring into the light. I call them the icky parts. These marginalised aspects aren’t just in individuals; they’re also in the community. Maybe it’s the voices that are constantly ignored, the people who don’t feel safe enough to speak up, or the stories that have been buried for years.


When we work on healing a community, we have to become aware of these hidden parts. We have to ask, “Whose voice is missing here?” or “What’s the emotion that everyone’s avoiding?” Sometimes it’s uncomfortable because it requires us to face things we’d rather not see—like our biases, our fears, or the ways we might unintentionally contribute to someone else’s pain. But this discomfort is where the real healing begins. And its within these marginalised aspects of our communities that mirror hidden aspects we often have in our selves. Healing individually is healing the community, and healing our community is healing us individually.


We aren't seperate; the field is always part of us and even if we think we are hiding our biggest, deepest, darkest secrets, the field remains aware and will play these out like a movie on repeat, until we are willing to integrate these aspects into our awareness.


This practice of awareness reminds me of the Buddhist teachings of mindfulness and equanimity—the ability to remain present and balanced with all aspects of experience, whether joy, pain, or conflict, without being swayed by reactivity or judgment. This awareness invites us to embrace the fullness of our experience, honouring both light and shadow without attachment or aversion. By cultivating equanimity and holding space for all voices, roles, and unspoken tensions within a community, we create a collective presence that fosters deeper understanding, compassion, and genuine transformation, allowing healing to emerge from simply being present with what is.


Roles and Ranks: Understanding Power and Perspective


In every community, just like in every relationship, there are roles we play and ranks we hold. Roles according to Mindell, can shift depending on the situation—one moment, someone might be seen as a leader; another moment, as a caregiver, a challenger, or even an outsider. Ranks are different. They’re about the power, privilege, and influence that we carry—sometimes due to our position, our history, or our social status.

Why do roles and ranks matter in healing? Because they often dictate who gets heard and who doesn’t, who feels safe and who doesn’t, who carries the burden of pain and who might be overlooking it. If we don’t bring awareness to these dynamics, we risk reinforcing the very wounds we’re trying to heal.


Part of our work in healing is to become very conscious of these roles and ranks and see how they play out. Maybe there are some of us who always end up in the same roles—always giving, always leading, or always being sidelined. Maybe some of us are carrying ranks that give us more say in what happens, while others are left feeling powerless. True healing asks us to notice these dynamics, to be more conscious of them and begin to shift them, creating a more balanced and inclusive field where everyone’s voice, especially those who have been marginalised, is truly valued.


Mindell also delves into the idea that rank is not just a fixed social position or privilege, but something more fluid and dynamic that can transform. He suggests that true resolution of rank issues doesn’t come from simply redistributing power or privilege but from becoming aware of the underlying energies and subtle signals that influence our interactions. Mindell, drawing from his background in quantum physics, explains that just like in the quantum world, where particles exist in multiple states and are influenced by unseen forces, our ranks are also influenced by the unseen dynamics of awareness and intention. When we recognise that rank is not a static structure but a fluid interplay of consciousness and presence, we open up new possibilities for shifting the dynamics of power.


This quantum perspective invites us to explore deeper levels of awareness, where power becomes less about position and more about our capacity to stay present, compassionate, and connected in the moment, thus transforming the field and healing the community from within.


Practical Steps Towards Community Healing


So, how do we actually go about healing our community? It’s not a one-size-fits-all process, but there are some steps we can take together:


  1. Creating Safe, Open Spaces for Sharing: The first step is creating spaces where people feel safe to share their stories and experiences. This might be in the form of community dialogues, healing circles, or workshops. What’s important is that these spaces are truly inclusive—everyone, especially those who feel marginalised or unheard, needs to know their voice matters here.

  2. Building Awareness of What’s Unseen: In these spaces, we can start to explore what’s going on beneath the surface. What emotions are we holding back? What stories have we not been telling? What’s the unspoken tension in the room? What’s unloved in our community? Awareness exercises, reflective practices, and guided facilitation can help us bring these hidden dynamics into the light.

  3. Exploring Roles and Ranks with Compassion: Let’s have honest conversations about the roles and ranks within our community. Who has power? Who feels powerless? What roles are we stuck in, and how can we shift them? We can use role-playing exercises or reflective dialogues to help us see things from different perspectives and develop empathy for each other’s experiences.

  4. Honouring Every Experience: Healing isn’t about agreeing on everything or erasing our differences. It’s about finding a way to honour every voice, even the ones that seem difficult or conflicting. It’s about practicing what Mindell calls “deep democracy,” where every perspective (even the seemingly unlovable) is seen as valuable and necessary for the whole.

  5. Exploring the Dreaming: In Mindell’s view, awareness and empathy are powerful starting points, but true healing requires a deeper engagement with the community's "dreaming process"—the underlying, often unconscious forces that shape our interactions and choices. Instead of focusing solely on creating new structures or policies, we should listen to the subtle signals, dreams, and intuitive insights that arise within the community. By tapping into Indigenous wisdom, which honours the land, ancestors, and collective spirit, we can connect more deeply with these hidden dynamics. This approach invites us to slow down, pay attention to the unseen and unspoken, and allow new pathways for healing to emerge naturally. In this way, transformation is not something imposed from the outside but a process that arises organically from the community's collective wisdom and unfolding experience.


Moving Forward Together


Healing a community is a journey. It’s not easy, and it doesn’t happen overnight. But if we’re willing to show up with awareness, openness, and a genuine desire to connect, we can begin to transform our pain into something powerful—something that brings us closer, that helps us understand one another more deeply, and that creates a space where everyone feels they belong.

Let’s walk this path together, with courage and compassion, knowing that every step we take toward healing ourselves is a step toward healing our community.


How can you help? Try this inner work exercise…


Ask yourself what parts of yourself do you deny or avoid or do you find unlovable? Now think about what parts of the community you find “unlovable”?  Take a moment now to imagine that you are that unlovable part, and see how it feels. Try it on and really feel into it.  Now, let it speak through you for a moment and let it use your voice or your body to express itself.  As the energy of that unlovable aspect, is there perhaps a small piece of wisdom that you could use in your daily life?  How can you try to integrate that shadow into your life more to give it more light?


If you would like to experience Process Work to explore your own challenges, relationships or emotions, please reach out to Nicole who is a Holistic Counsellor and Psychotherapist on www.NicoleDickmann.com.au

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