Most of us only decide to heal when our life becomes too unbearable as is. Most of us have coped and protected ourselves so fiercely against pain that the price of these mechanisms have become too high for us.
Upon starting to heal and getting acquainted with healing techniques, we put a time-frame on how long, how fast we are going to see results.
This is understandable because emotional pain is not fun. The pain that comes from confronting your emotional wounds and traumas that starts flooding us are something that we instinctively want to run away and escape from. It's only natural. And so we knowingly or unknowingly set a date on our goal being achieved. I see this with my clients. Every day that doesn’t feel perfectly good, every day that they feel less inspired, less productive, less than how high they set the bar for themselves to be, any little setback is magnified by an intense and potent sensation of inner collapse, of total failure and self-disappointment.
People have these inhumane and totally out of reality expectations of themselves from day one of their healing journey, thinking that from that moment on there is a straight line that will only lead them forward and they will only progress. Well, I am going to tell you today that this is not doable. Not only is it not doable, it’s borderline self abusive. You cannot expect yourself to know everything you’re supposed to do from the get go, you can’t expect yourself to have it all figured out all the time, you can’t expect yourself to not make mistakes, fall into old patterns, be overcome with same old emotional pain. On your healing journey you are going to fall short of your own expectations of yourself.
But the key to mastering your emotional and spiritual journey is to understand that this is also part of the journey. All these falling behind, relapsing etc, they are not signs that you’re doing poorly, they are signs that you are a human that’s having a human experience and coming back to the same pain points over and over again is what it takes to learn inherent lessons and that your protective mechanisms are active. It can be frustrating a lot of the times, I can testify to that, it can get really annoying to revisit the same wound and trauma over and over again. When there are still things to be integrated, still things to be seen and acknowledged, this is necessary. It may feel like you’re doing something wrong, but that’s not the case. You can’t fail at your spiritual or healing practices, it’s only about `What am I going to learn this time? `.
And besides that, there is such a thing as your own pace.
Going slower than you assumed you’d go is still you going. But depending on the depth of your trauma, like I said, taking your time, doing this at your own pace is the best thing you can do for yourself. Give yourself some slack. You are always doing the best you can with what you have available in the moment. Your own pace doesn’t have to make sense to anyone else other than you. You don’t have to justify, explain or make excuses for why you are where you are on your path back to yourself. This coming home to your true self is the literal hero’s journey.
So I’m here to tell you to anticipate and plan for any glitches, delays, re-experiencing of the pain. You need to allow yourself to surrender to each stage of your integration & healing process. Show yourself love and compassion – this is a new road, a new way of life, a re-birthing of you. It cannot be easy. But one thing I can tell you for sure – if you are committed to your process and still fumble in the dark, the answer to your questions will always come at the right time. Honouring the pace of how soon or how late it does is the secret.
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