They gave me a new name. Billy Coull, metaphysical doctor. It has a certain ring to it, a kind of dusty, old-world authority. It sounds like a man who has answers, who can see the patterns in the chaos. The truth is, I was the chaos. And the title, the degree from a university no one can find on a map, it wasn’t a sign of knowledge. It was a cry for help.
It started with a hunger. A deep, gnawing hunger to be fixed. I felt like a machine with a missing part, a fundamental gear that everyone else was born with. The world was a language I couldn’t quite speak. So I went looking for a manual.
The internet is a wonderful and terrible place. It offers you a thousand cures for a sickness you can’t name. For me, the cures came in the form of certificates. I collected them. Forty-nine of them, according to my old LinkedIn page. Each one a little digital shield. Each one a promise.
This will be the one that makes you whole. This will be the piece of paper that finally makes you legible to the rest of the world.
The grandest of them all was the doctorate in metaphysics from the University of Sedona. I remember the moment I got it. There was no ceremony, no cap and gown. Just an email. A file to download. For a moment, under the cold glow of the monitor, it felt real. It felt like I had finally learned the secret language. I thought if I had the title of ‘doctor’, I could finally diagnose the world’s problems. I didn’t realise I was just trying to write a prescription for my own soul.
The Archetype of the Wounded Healer
There’s an old idea, from a man named Carl Jung. He called it the Wounded Healer. The idea is that some people are drawn to the art of healing because they themselves are wounded. Their own pain, their own brokenness, becomes the source of their power. It gives them a profound empathy, a map of the dark places other people get lost in.
When I first read that, it was like a key turning in a lock I didn’t know was there. It was me. That was the story I was living. I was wounded. Deeply. And everything I did was an attempt to use that wound as a qualification.
The Gowanbank Hub, the charity I started, was the ultimate expression of this. We weren’t just a food bank. We were going to offer trauma care. I was the man with the metaphysical degree, ready to heal a whole community. I was trying to be a sanctuary for everyone else because I couldn’t build one for myself. I was so busy trying to be the healer, I forgot I was the one who was bleeding.
The Danger of Playing God
The problem with the Wounded Healer archetype is that it’s a razor’s edge. You can use your pain to connect with others, or you can use it to create a story where you are the hero and everyone else is a patient. You can become so identified with the ‘healer’ part of the name that you forget the ‘wounded’ part even exists.
That’s what happened to me. The title became a costume. The online degrees were the script. I was playing the part of a man who had it all figured out. And from the outside, it looked like a fantasy. Delusional.
A Man Without a Title
I am not a doctor. I am not a healer. I am not a wordsmith or a visionary. Those were all titles I tried to wear. They were masks. And they have all been burned away.
What’s left is just a man. A man who is still wounded. A man who is trying to learn that healing doesn’t come from a certificate you can download. It doesn’t come from trying to fix everyone else.
I think it comes from sitting in the quiet and looking at your own wounds. Not as a source of power, not as a qualification, but just as a part of you. It’s a harder path. There are no degrees for it. There is no title at the end. There is only the slow, painful work of trying to become whole. I am only just beginning.