THE WOUNDED HEALER
Training, mentoring, and soul work for
therapists and healing practitioners
You guide people through their darkest moments. You hold them as they face their deepest fears. But underneath, there is a truth you rarely speak aloud:
You became a healer to heal yourself.
Not as a conscious choice.
More like a strategy you learned early:
“I save myself by saving other people.”
And it works…for a while.
You build a practice. You get good at this.
But the wound that called you to the work becomes something you hide.
(“They really need me to be okay.”)
So you give endlessly, because stopping feels dangerous.
You hold everyone else, because being held feels impossible.
You perform ‘healed’, because showing your cracks feels like the whole charade might collapse.
And now you’re depleted, isolated, and wondering:
How long can I keep this up?
“Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.”
– Leonard Cohen
The Wounded Healer Pattern
In ancient traditions, the wound was not a failure: it was a calling. The place you were pierced became the source of your medicine.
But when healing others becomes the way you hold yourself together,
when you need this role just to feel okay,
the medicine can turn to poison.
Nodding in the right places, whilst running on empty.
The heart not quite in the room.
“It is his own hurt that gives the measure of his power to heal. This, and nothing else, is the meaning of the Greek myth of the wounded physician.”
– Carl Jung
My Story
I know this pattern because I’ve lived it.
For over 25 years, I worked with teenagers with complex trauma, families in grief, people in their darkest moments. I founded therapeutic organisations, trained practitioners, built programmes that helped many.
From the outside: a success.
From the inside: I was running from my own wound.
I built entire organisations on the childhood belief:
“If I’m needed enough, maybe I won’t be abandoned.”
The work of healing had become my defence mechanism.
I gave everything. Until I couldn’t any more.
What I discovered is this: the wound is never the problem; hiding it is.
This work exists because I needed it. And because so many healers do too.
Ways We Can Work Together
The Wounded Healer: Full-Day Training
A full-day training for practitioners who want to look honestly at what’s driving their work, and what it’s costing.
We explore:
The childhood wounds that shaped your call to heal
How these appear in practice: fixing, rescuing, overholding
The shadow: burnout, codependency, inauthenticity
How your wound, fully faced, can become your most potent medicine
This is experiential work: movement, meditation, dyads, drawing, ritual.
We work with what shows up in the room.
For: therapists, coaches, healers, bodyworkers, anyone whose vocation was born from pain.
If this speaks to you, sign up to my Substack for updates.
“Louis is a regular trainer on our MA programme and delivered a full-day Wounded Healer workshop for qualified psychotherapists—rich, insightful, and excellently received.”
— Maria Storey Walker, Programme Director, MA Transpersonal Child & Family Therapy
1:1 Mentoring
For when you’ve hit the edge of your own medicine.
Part supervision, part mentoring: a space to bring both your clients and yourself.
We work on:
The childhood patterns replaying in your therapeutic relationships
What you’re really trying to heal through your clients
Creating a practice that sustains rather than drains you
Your evolving identity as a healer; what needs to end, what’s seeking to emerge.
This is bespoke, relational work. Not therapy-by-another-name. It’s a place to bring what you can’t bring anywhere else, where you can finally drop the performance and breathe.
Structure: minimum 12 sessions, typically fortnightly
Investment: £130 per session
If this is resonating, email me and tell me a little about where you are and what’s calling you.
“A rare mentor that reaches both heart and intellect. Louis weaves insight, creativity, and real honesty. I left seeing my work, and myself, with new eyes.”
— Samanta, Child & Adolescent Psychotherapist (BACP)
“Don’t turn your head.
Keep looking at the bandaged place.
That’s where the light enters you.”
– RUMI
If you’re ready to book the training, you can email me. If you’d like to explore mentoring, email me to start a conversation. And if you want to stay connected to this work, join the Substack.