The Predator

I think this predator comes in two fashions: the conscious predator who knows exactly what they are doing and the unconscious predator, someone who perhaps has always used the healing environment as fertile ground for finding someone to dominate.

The ongoing exploration of the insidious toxic healer.

The predatory healer. 

The wounded soul, who is just looking for a companion. The one who said it’s all about love. But really, they’re looking for an easy target. Find a person who can’t say no. Who doesn’t know their boundaries. After a profound, spiritual moment of healing with breathwork, meditation, medicine ceremony or just a sharing and being ‘vulnerable’. The victim falls easy prey. They are in their clutches. They can be controlled and manipulated with ease. The predator sinks their fangs in and feeds.

I think the predator comes in two fashions: the conscious predator who knows exactly what he is doing and the unconscious predator, someone who perhaps has always used the healing environment as fertile ground for finding someone to dominate. I’m not sure which is worse. We all want to find someone that shares our interests, purpose, passion. So we fall into a healing environment of healthy living and we find a partner. Perhaps we join a running club because we like to run and we find a partner who also likes to run and then we run together, and we are in love. Or chess club. Or a book club. You get the idea. But how easy is it to target a wounded soul. Someone who is easily manipulated, who is learning who they are, or is not yet at that stage, they don’t know who they are at all. The predator sweeps in and tells them exactly who they are. That must feel good for the victim to have someone take over that difficult role for them. They get to outsource their healing to someone else. This outsourcing goes both ways in a codependent relationship. This codependency is the unconscious predator, they aren’t intentionally hurting anyone. But they do, in the end, once all the energy is drained, the codependent relationship collapses. The wounded are a little more broken and the predator wanders off to another feed.

The extreme end of the intentional predatory healer is The Cult Leader. The one who is guiding others becomes the guru the spiritual leader creates cults in abusive situations. The cult leader is at the extreme end of this category. Sadly, there are too many examples to begin listing them here. Back in a younger day I would hear men talk about how they would manipulate women to get their way. There are books written on this rapey behavior like it’s a good thing. While there have been many beautiful love stories emerge within our community, I have also witnessed people, men and women, come into our community specifically looking to prey on something weak.

I am so thankful for the strong and mature masculine and the fierce divine feminine  in our community that generates a boundary of safety for us all to heal within.