Why You Have To Want Your Own Healing To Really Heal.
Anfos Sin
For example, if you go to therapy every week but then just go back to your regular patterns when not in therapy, how much progress are you going to make? If you take medication to fix a health issue but then eat like crap, how much are you going to improve? In both cases, maybe you would make some improvements without doing anything additional, but imagine how much more you could improve if you were an active participant in the process. If you really worked on changing your thought patterns when outside of therapy or if you started eating a healthy and balanced diet, I bet you would be further along in your healing process than if you sat on the sidelines.
Yes the mind and body are important but we are more than just these two things. I look at the mind and body as tools for us to interact in this world we know. If you want to find true healing, you have to start to look deeper than these two parts of you.
Wondering things like, If I had taken this certain step, would the outcome have changed?
Or, If I had made that specific move, would it have prevented this unwanted reality?
And, If I had spoken up about this or that, would anything be different today?
Though our disappointments may be different, I bet we would find a common ground in that we tend to put emotional Band-Aids on those unmet hopes. And the peeling off of those Band-Aids is painful to even think about.
Something happens when we press into the hard: We also find the gift of the holy. And the book of Leviticus can certainly seem hard at moments. But as we dive into what these laws mean, we will learn what the laws tell us about our God, the Lawgiver. Trade any hesitation or confusion around the laws of the Old Testament for a better understanding of holiness, a deeper respect for God and a richer love for Jesus with our next study: The Hard and the Holy: What the Book of Leviticus Means for Today. Order your study guide and join us on February 21 in the free First 5 mobile app.
These emotions of fear, shame and guilt are how your parents manipulated you throughout your childhood (and probably still in adult life) to basically control you, get you to do what they want, meet their own unmet childhood needs and prevent you from holding them accountable for their wrongdoings.
Internally, they start treating themselves the same way their parent does. This is where all your self-sabotaging patterns, self-hatred, negative self-talk, addictions and negative life patterns come from.
What you need to understand is that, as a child, you were not able to grieve and fully process your emotional wounds and childhood trauma because of a number of reasons. Firstly, you were not taught. Secondly, you were likely told and taught (consciously or unconsciously) to suppress your emotions, sometimes by being shamed for even having emotions. And much more.
All techniques and information I share are considered coaching, self-help or complementary therapies. I am not a licensed psychologist, psychiatrist or medical doctor, I have a degree in Health Sciences in Holistic & Complementary Therapies. Everything I write and talk about comes mainly from my own experience in healing myself and the tools, techniques, and resources I learned throughout my own inner journey.
I spend a lot of time and energy creating content, writing, and editing, including managing this website and all my social media accounts. If you have found the information I share helpful or supportive to your own healing in any way please consider donating:
Like so many women before me, endometriosis took over my life. Ruined it, more like. Endo stole my energy, my vitality, my successful business, my fitness, my happiness. But as challenging as all of our paths are, this story is really about hope, and how you can find a silver lining in unexpected places. For me, the silver lining was infertility issues and knee pain, issues that sent me seeking knowledge on how to nourish and move my body in new ways, all day long.
When I found myself healing from the inside out, I wanted to share this renewed hope with endo girls everywhere. When you are in such a terrible place and find an escape route, how can you possibly leave all the other prisoners behind?
With every gift to the Endometriosis Foundation of America YOU help support our mission of increasing disease recognition, providing advocacy, facilitating expert surgical training, and funding landmark endometriosis research.
For that matter, what is "healed" anyway? What does it mean? What does it actually look like? I will explore this further in a future blog, as this question has perplexed and frustrated me since I learned of my husband's infidelity. More to come on that.
In the meantime, the process of healing is hard to measure. You can't take out a yardstick or step on the scale to track the progress. It's subtle and murky. Healing is slow and often undetectable day by day. It takes some intentional scrutiny to see it, and it looks different for every person. I can only tell you my own experience but maybe it can offer some insight in your situation too.
I think it's easy to dismiss progress when we still feel pain. Pain can be deafening against the quiet of progress. But sometimes we need to really take a closer look to get an accurate measurement. For example, if you think back to the days you first discovered your spouse's betrayal, you were probably knocked off your feet by the overwhelming pain and disorientation. Your world as you knew it was no longer the same, no longer safe, and everything was turned upside down. The pain was blinding and completely enveloping everything around you. If some time has passed since then, and you are still in pain, you may think that means you aren't healing at all. But take a closer look. Even if you are still depressed, or feel pain and disappointment, you might be able to notice a shift. Did you eat today? Did you sleep last night - at all? Did you get out of bed this morning? Those may be improvements, and while four hours of sleep versus two is not wonderful, it is progress. It can be the small, incremental things that feel like nothing, but are actually tiny steps toward forward momentum. If you are reading this blog then you are actively seeking healing and that is progress, too. Even if you don't feel it today.
One of the things about healing is that it can be so frustrating and painful that it doesn't feel like healing at all. At times, it is like seeing Bigfoot. Even if you did see it, you're pretty sure you didn't, and you think it must have been a figment of your imagination. Nonetheless, even if you did see Bigfoot you know you're not likely to see him again. That's what healing feels like at times. A fleeting feeling, just for a moment, and then it's gone. It's so frustrating to almost catch a shift in perspective, a tiny nudge toward understanding, and then it's gone. Poof! Like you never felt it, and now you can't even really remember what it felt like, but you thought you had it for a moment. I have found over time these "glimmers" arrive in more frequency and stick around a little longer. They still come and go, and when I lose them it is so disheartening and sometimes I still get really depressed. But I am finding the glimmers are appearing more often and lasting longer each time, so I feel a little less anxious about them disappearing as I have increasing confidence they'll be back.
Healing is often messy, and might not feel like healing at all. Last year, we finally decided to put new carpeting in our bedroom. The carpet was not new even when we moved in over 20 years ago so it was pretty old. (Don't judge me.) For years, we focused on updating all the other rooms in the house: the kids' bedrooms, the living areas, the kitchen and bathrooms, and just kept putting off our bedroom. Anyway, even last year I was still hesitant to get new carpet when my husband suggested it. Why? The closet. We have terrible closets with deep, impractical, unreachable recesses on both ends that hold stuff we put there all those years ago that had mostly never been touched. To put in new carpeting, we had to pull it all out and actually go through it. I've "organized" the closet over the years, neatening things up and buying organizers or nice storage totes, but it was superficial, and I never really took everything down to the bare floor waaaay back in the hidden and very hard-to-reach corners. The only way to really clean it was to take everything out, spread it all out, and take a good look at it. Only then could we make some hard decisions on what to throw away and what to keep. Before we could have a nice clean closet, we had to make a mess - there was no other way. Anything else would have just been surface organizing and wouldn't have addressed the hidden junk in the back. Even if we avoided it for a while, sooner or later we're going to move and we would have to go through the hidden junk anyway. Looking back, I was definitely not looking forward to doing this work, nor did I enjoy it while it was happening. But now, I fully appreciate knowing there is no disorganized, non-functional, outdated stuff in there and l have a closet that is organized and feels much better than it did before. Despite my initial reservations, I am glad we took the effort.
That's how I think healing works. Sometimes it feels like it gets worse before it gets better. Digging out all the junk we have ignored, suppressed, or didn't even realize was there, is uncomfortable, even downright painful. "Surface organizing" (by one or both of us) has kept the peace at times, but has glossed over the pile of junk that really needed attention but was too hard, or just too much to deal with. The only way to really clean it out is to dump it all out all over the place, see what we have, and start picking through it. What a mess. It's uncomfortable and way too vulnerable to have that stuff hanging out all over. I just want to put it away quickly, close the door, and make things look nice and neat, but that is not how this works.
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