Healing Isn’t Linear
Found this picture, literally perfect for this entry lol
Today I want to talk about something a little different so this isn’t actually a tip nor a trick; it is a reminder.
We often hear “healing isn’t linear” but I of course would like to break this down and operationalize it. What I notice is when we think of healing we tend to think of it as a test of some sort — like you hit a few right answers then you get to graduate to healed status. This way of thinking is very black and white as well as unrealistic. Another terminology we hear (especially in spirituality) is going through “cycles” and “patterns”. Which is where phrases like “break the pattern” or “stuck in the same cycle” start to become laced with our healing journey’s.
While in the midst of our journey there is an expectation we battle with, which is to suddenly have things come '“easier” to us. We are almost never expecting a relapse to happen. Healing is a dance not a steady progression, 2 steps forward 1 step back. Similar to how even if you fuel your car before a road trip, that doesn’t mean you’ll never get to your destination because you needed to stop for a snack or for gas. When we are facing the tension or temptation embedded into our healing journey I’ve noticed the mental or emotion expectations we place on ourselves are stifling. “I should be better at this, I’ve been at this for so long why am I still struggling, Others don’t seem to be having a hard time with XYZ”. Especially when you have started to make changes and find yourself in a familiar situation or experiencing familiar feelings as to what you have “grown” from or left behind. This tends to be where people lose confidence in their capability due to the expectation that everything has to be, feel, and look so different from what we’re moving on from.
Circles are when we do the same exact actions that bring us to the same exact results. In your journey you will experience things that are reminiscent of the past. In those moments when you can feel the nostalgia creeping in remind yourself as long as you do not chose the same actions or thoughts from the past you won’t create the circle. Even with temptation if you chose something different (we can worry about right or wrong afterwards) then you instead create a spiral. Your Spiral is your olive branch to level up even though it seems similar to your circle when looked at in 1D there is still progress being made through elevation. Cut yourself some slack, tension is just as embedded into growth as attention and movement. When we are faced with this in our pursuit of healing remind yourself this phase is also progressive and to make progress is not exclusive to feeling no strain or solely moving “forward”. Okay! I’m leaving it here for this week! As always comments are encouraged in Thee Gathering!
