Anyone else out there who falls into the urge to be “good at” healing?

I get frustrated when I find myself a bit stuck or perhaps even regressing in my healing journey. I don’t like the sensation that I’m failing or I’m not good at something. How ironic, to worry about somehow not doing healing right.

When I find myself in this trapped space, my most crucial work is actually to relax. To let go of all the work. To remind myself that though healing is hard, pushing it in the same way I would anything else defeats the purpose. It is not the pause or slight backwards motion of the healing process that is the true problem – it’s the fear-based reaction, the sneaking worry that I can’t actually maintain the progress I’ve made, that brings me back into old mindsets and habits.

If you are feeling this way as well, ask yourself if you can release and let go of the lingering expectations you have of yourself when it comes to forward motion. Can you come at healing in a different manner than you have come at everything else in the past? You see, it’s not the subject matter but the approach that shifts your mentality.

I’m discovering all of this firsthand, so I want to share these new insights with you in case you’re dealing with something similar.

This is my personal example – I got very excited about my healing, especially when I had the time and space to really devote energy to it. I dove in headfirst, trying anything and everything to figure out what works for me. I spent hours every day working on myself, digging in, getting to know myself again. Sometimes it felt wonderful, sometimes it felt terrible, but as long as it felt like progress I was fine.

Then I hit a bit of a roadblock and my momentum slowed. My “normal” life picked back up, and as predicted, I lost the ample time I had to devote to my journey. I began feeling stuck and frustrated again, and my shadow self rose up to confront me. This led to self-doubt, self-blame, and the re-emergence of my critical inner voice. Instead of judging me for not doing other things correctly, now it’s judging me for not doing healing correctly.

In short, I’m falling back into my old patterns and habits. It’s not about whether I’m judging myself for not making progress in my career, my fitness, or my healing. It’s about the fact that I’m judging myself at all. And if I perpetuate the same toxic and self-defeating patterns in regards to this new journey, I’m going nowhere fast.

I refuse to do this to myself. I refuse to sabotage my healing the way I’ve done so many other things. I see the pattern, I acknowledge it, and now it’s time to let it go.

Are you with me? Do you notice yourself doing the same thing? What are the patterns that come up over and over again in your life, regardless of the subject, and how would you like to shift them?

Awareness is the first step. While healing is hard, it doesn’t always have to be work. If you feel that you are constantly pushing and straining to achieve some new level of awakening, consider the idea that it’s not about effort at all. Maybe it’s about relaxing, releasing, and letting go – especially if that’s something you have quite the tough time doing.

Often it’s most difficult to truly and fully relax, trusting that everything will be okay. Release the concept of control. There is so little in this world that we have any power over, and you can let go of most of the weight you carry, if you decide to do it.

Yeah, it’s much easier for me to tell you this than for either of us to implement it! Take a deep breath with me. Remember, it’s the shift in perspective that matters most. It’s not what we are focused on, it’s how we go about dealing with it. We want to change our deeply ingrained habits. If we approach healing in the same way we approached our previous goals, we run the risk of falling back into the same self-defeating patterns that have never served us.

Deep breaths. I’m sending you hugs. Be so very gentle with yourself. Learning to love yourself is the hardest thing you will ever do, but you’re powerful. You got this.