How do we know we’re healing?

How do we know we’re healing? How do we know growth is happening? Healing is a process. It’s not a linear, one and done type of experience… though don’t we all wish!! These are common questions, and often we as humans would like to see a quick fix, something that takes the pain away and makes everything better…. We want to avoid the yucky stuff. And I get it!! No judgement here!! It’s yucky!

So often there are times I wish I did have a magic wand or a three step ‘fix it’, and though there are definite practises that we can utilize as humans that help us to live our best life (sleep, get outside, move our body, sunshine, nutrition, nurturing and safe social connection, joy, rest, glimmers/gratitude, mindfulness, self-compassion and kindness with ourselves… to name a few), the actual healing from our adaptive strategies, our triggers, our parts of us trying to keep us safe, unfolds on its own beautiful timeline. (Cue frustration, I know! ;))

The process of actual healing is one that sometimes takes us by surprise. It can materialize slowly, showing up as a quiet and profound realization in moments where the experience would have been different before. The moments where we would have been transported to a time/ place that was harmful or dangerous, where our body reacts in a way that prepares us for what it once had to endure, where our mind and our thoughts race and spiral into those familiar narratives that again, are trying to protect, but are so difficult. It’s in those moments that we notice a small shift, a small change in our experience, our reaction, our thoughts, our emotions, our physical responses, or that the pain has faded just slightly.

Healing and growth happen when we are ready to sit with it, not live in the muck of it, but ready to just notice it, put on our rubber boots and just look at it, maybe dip a toe in and then come back…. In and out, safety rubber boots on, regulation/coping strategies, and a safe, regulated nervous system beside us or in our mind. This is our therapeutic PPE!

Noticing our reactions, our narratives, and allowing ourselves to process what happened and what didn’t happen, allowing grief or whatever emotions are present to be in the room. When we allow all parts of us to be heard and seen…..and allow the expression, the external release (in whatever form) of our humanity… this is part of the work.

The shifts happen imperceptibly at times. It’s a noticing that we aren’t as anxious, unsettled, terrified when we show up or even think about certain places, experiences, people. It’s in simply noticing the small shifts, noticing that these feelings and somatic responses are happening within us. It’s the realization that there is an unearthed quiet calm and strength within us. It’s when we make decisions based on what we truly want, not out of fear or safety seeking. It’s when we are able to take a breath and respond, rather than an uncontrollable and immediate reaction. It’s when we breathe through an emotion. It’s when we notice our inner self talk, it’s when we choose kindness and self-compassion. It’s when the narratives begin to expand, and the rigidity of our thoughts and meaning making begin to soften around the edges and open up. The inner narratives begin to shift from self blaming/ self-berating concepts into ones that separate our inherent worth from the experience of life that happened to us…. or didn’t happen to us. 

It can feel like  a calm that settles, a peace that gently sweeps over us, a quiet exhale.

It’s not a finish line. It’s a process of back and forth, of slow progress and one step forward and feeling like it’s three steps back. ALL of this is progress; it is the becoming! It’s the Japanese process of Kintsugi, where broken items are gently repaired with gold. It is the same, but different… it has been harmed, AND is a shifted, more beautiful version of itself.

So, the next time you’re feeling discouraged, frustrated, terrified that this is who you are now, that this will be your life….. please remember…. You are in the process, the journey of healing. It IS happening, you are shifting, it’s a back and forth dance and you are in the middle of it.