Can Returned Self-Heal?

[Faceless Mist-Wraith he/him]

This is a fairly simple question/theory. According to this WOB:

Quote

BRANDON SANDERSON

The Divine Breath can be hid. Essentially, you have to view yourself NOT as a god at all, using a very specific bit of mental gymnastics. As a Returned, your body changes based on how you see yourself. (This, by the way, is an indication that Lightsong was more pleased with himself than he ever let on.)

This seems to suggest that if a Returned could master the specific bit of mental gymnastics, they could achieve a sort of mind over matter and heal themselves by viewing themselves as they were before they were injured. This would likely occur some time after the injury occurred, since I doubt a Returned could achieve instantaneous healing by simply thinking/believing "I'm uninjured".

Edited December 23, 2016 by Faceless Mist-Wraith

[Spoolofwhool]

Most healing that we've seen through manifestations of investiture (examples below), use how the person views themselves cognitively in order to undo the damage to the physical and spiritual, and physical transformation is in fact an extension of that. As such, I see regeneration and healing as well within their capabilities, since they basically have a more advanced version of what healing can do. A point against it though is that Vasher didn't heal when he resumed his Returned form at the end of Warbreaker, but he is enough of a grouch that he could've just cognitively seen the wounds as part of him and somewhat intentionally kept them.

Examples

Mistborn

Spoiler

Gold feruchemy.

Stormlight Archive

Spoiler

Regeneration using stormlight. This is why Kaladin cannot heal his brands nor accept a tattoo because cognitively he still views himself as a slave. 

 

[Exalted]

I think you're on to something here--it would fit well with the other Cognitive-healing stuff, like Spoolofwool said. But then, we also get multiple instances of Returned getting injured and not healing: Vasher, Denth, Blushweaver, and even Lightsong (I think?). So maybe it's a focus thing that's not automatic (more akin to gold Feruchemy than to Stormlight auto-healing)?

[Landis963 he/him]

6 minutes ago, Exalted Dungeon Master said:

I think you're on to something here--it would fit well with the other Cognitive-healing stuff, like Spoolofwool said. But then, we also get multiple instances of Returned getting injured and not healing: Vasher, Denth, Blushweaver, and even Lightsong (I think?). So maybe it's a focus thing that's not automatic (more akin to gold Feruchemy than to Stormlight auto-healing)?

Maybe the healing happens automatically when a Returned receives a Breath, but is otherwise unconscious.  

[Spoolofwhool]

3 hours ago, Exalted Dungeon Master said:

I think you're on to something here--it would fit well with the other Cognitive-healing stuff, like Spoolofwool said. But then, we also get multiple instances of Returned getting injured and not healing: Vasher, Denth, Blushweaver, and even Lightsong (I think?). So maybe it's a focus thing that's not automatic (more akin to gold Feruchemy than to Stormlight auto-healing)?

Denth was suppressing his Divine Breath, so no surprise he never healed. Vasher I proposed a theory why. In general though, it's likely a focus thing as you say. They aren't aware they can heal so they are accepting their injuries to a degree and not tapping the power. If they heal naturally and are scarred, I wouldn't be surprised if the scars faded away over time.

[BlackYeti he/him]

13 hours ago, Landis963 said:

Maybe the healing happens automatically when a Returned receives a Breath, but is otherwise unconscious.  

If that were true, then Susebron would have needed to have his tongue cut out every week!

[Landis963 he/him]

5 minutes ago, BlackYeti said:

If that were true, then Susebron would have needed to have his tongue cut out every week!

Good point.  Unless his self-conception was that his tongue was cut out.  (But then why would Lightsong be able to heal him?) Hrm.  

[Faceless Mist-Wraith he/him]

21 hours ago, Landis963 said:

Good point.  Unless his self-conception was that his tongue was cut out.  (But then why would Lightsong be able to heal him?) Hrm.

Changing you appearance takes "a very specific bit of mental gymnastics". It is unlikely that a Returned could just stumble upon the mental trick required to change their appearance on purpose. As a result they would likely accept any damage done to them, unaware of how they could change it. As for how Lightsong was able to heal Susebron, I imaging it was similar to Soulcasting, where he forcibly overwrote Susebron's Cognitive aspect of being tongueless in order to heal him.

[Szmit]

Magical healing transforms you to the version of you that you see as "undamaged", "true". Divine breath doesnt have a purpose of healing the user. I think you would have to change how you see "current" "real" you to heal, or in other words - deny existence of your wounds, and lie to yourself until they dissapear.

SA spoilers

Spoiler

Shalan would be probably good at something like that.

 

[kenod]

My guess is that they should be able to consciously heal, but that it takes a lot of energy. I think that it would work in the same way as how Siri regrows her hair, and seeing how much energy that takes I guess that active healing would not only take some intense focus, like the hair thing, but also a lot of energy, and would give the same healing level as active investure healing, like Stormlight. Instead, they could probably speed up their healing to a much higher level than that of baseline humans, but on the level that it would still take days to heal from big wounds, and would be extremely exhausting, and would probably also require some form of trance to keep the healing going. This would explain why Vasher and Denth weren't shown healing, as it would still take way too long before you had results and it would also leave them in no fighting shape. As it requires active focus, training and knowledge it explains why other Returned didn't do it. As a natural extension of this I would also propose that people with the Royal Locks would be able to do this.

[Djarskublar he/him]

I think it requires an inherent shift in your self perception, which is not easy to do with wounds. If you just perceive yourself as really buff, your muscles will get bigger. On the other hand, wounds have those irritating little things known as pain signals that would make it very difficult to shift your self image away from having the wounds.

This brings me to the reason I am semi-necroing this thread: solipsism. If you could become a true/nearly true solipsist as a Returned, you could become extremely powerful, able to morph your reality/self at will. Of course, it wouldn't be a healthy mental state, but it could potentially allow for some fantastic transformations, including quick-self healing.

[Jondesu he/him]

12 hours ago, Djarskublar said:

I think it requires an inherent shift in your self perception, which is not easy to do with wounds. If you just perceive yourself as really buff, your muscles will get bigger. On the other hand, wounds have those irritating little things known as pain signals that would make it very difficult to shift your self image away from having the wounds.

This brings me to the reason I am semi-necroing this thread: solipsism. If you could become a true/nearly true solipsist as a Returned, you could become extremely powerful, able to morph your reality/self at will. Of course, it wouldn't be a healthy mental state, but it could potentially allow for some fantastic transformations, including quick-self healing.

I did something a little like that with an RP character. Not healing wounds, but the same technique would work for that. Edit: this post has spoilers for Stormlight and maybe other books.

 

Edited March 8, 2017 by Jondesu