Much like the seasons of the year, healing can be characterized by distinct patterns of releasing what no longer serves you to prepare yourself for growth and change. You might’ve heard the phrase, “healing isn’t linear,” before, meaning that it isn’t necessarily a straightforward path.
Everyone’s healing journey holds its own unique complexities, with undulating ups and downs that require constant self-work, unlearning and readjusting. While this can sound daunting, the long term effects of allowing yourself to heal will open you up to the abundance of things you deserve.
Maya Angelou once said, “I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.” Even though healing can still feel heavy and hard at times, it will help you to grow and learn and move forward with grace. It doesn’t have to reduce you.
Healing will help you build better relationships with others, yourself, and your world.
When you feel you’ve been buried or shoved down, think of yourself as a seed that’s being planted and preparing to take root. The next step is to grow, and then to bloom.
Healing Isn’t About Feeling Good All The Time
In today’s world of doomscrolling through social media posts and comparing ourselves to the highlight reels of other people’s lives, it’s hard to face the truth that healing isn’t pretty. It’s hard to accept that it isn’t quick—there’s no bandaid you can put across trauma or discomfort to ease feelings of anxiety or distress.
Healing means sitting with your discomfort and confronting your struggles head on. Give yourself space to ruminate in your feelings, letting them come and go like you’re the shoreline and your feelings are the tide. They might be gentle at times, or they might crash against you.
Frame your discomfort as a springboard for recognizing and understanding your struggles and grief. Feeling discomfort is a good thing, because you’ll identify the feelings that cause discomfort as things you need to grow from. Think about why you have the feelings you do, what caused them, how they make you feel, and take mental note of it and allow yourself to feel without restraint. Confronting your feelings will help to lessen the anxiety surrounding them, but continuing to avoid your feelings will cause them to build.
When you’re faced with circumstances or situations that trigger unhealed emotions within you, be conscious of what patterns in the past have led you to feel this way.
Healing isn’t about perfection, it’s about realizing that every bad experience or negative mindset that led you to feel uncomfortable is actually a protection mechanism meant to spur you into action to make sure you learn how to handle life lessons in a way that allows you to grow and change for the better. Discomfort is the first step in wanting to evolve and grow and create the life that you deserve—a life where you feel safe to exist, create and connect with your body and mind.
Healing itself isn’t happiness, but it has the capacity to help you create the happiness you deserve. Don’t let your subconscious rule you! Be willing to welcome the abundance of discomfort so you are better equipped to handle the things that trigger you and break the cycles or patterns that have hurt you in the past.
Ditch Codependency for Interdependency
The healing process can often feel very isolating. It’s dependent upon your unique experiences, traumas and triggers, so it’s important to embrace the idea of collective consciousness and support system. This is the idea that sharing what’s happening to you with others and relying on outside support can help you find release and community.
There’s a special vulnerability in coming together with others to find release and community in knowing you’re not struggling alone. Humans are inherently pack animals, and we need community in order to survive while feeling fulfilled, protected and validated.
In modern society, there’s been a rise of the concept of an independent woman—a woman who is socially and economically liberated, who breaks barriers and stereotypes, who makes her own decisions on her own terms. There’s a wonderful sense of freedom in being an independent woman who isn’t codependent or dependent on others for safety, security and stability.
However, this can be misconstrued for doing everything alone and thus become isolating, especially in times of healing.
Having a support system shouldn’t be about your codependence on others, but rather, your interdependence with them. When the state of your mood becomes dependent on others, this creates codependency and unhealthy cycles of attachment can begin.
Remember to embrace opportunities of being alone, and not to be scared of it. Think of it as time to focus on your own passions, needs, and goals. It’s absolutely important not to lose yourself in relationships, friendships or business dynamics and remember that you’re your own person who loves and appreciates her own company.
You should practice showing yourself that it’s safe to focus on yourself and your own mind, body, spirit or soul. Your emotions don’t need to rely on the actions of others. You are the leader of your own life, and you can control how you react and move forward knowing that someone else’s perception of you is their own personal choice.
When you do reach out to others for support, to share your story or seek validation, think of yourself as being interdependent instead—you can remain independent, but still move together with others in a similar ecosystem.
Remember the seed analogy from earlier? You might have been planted alone, and growth might happen because of you and on your own terms, but others can still be growing around you, too. Think of healing as a forest where you’re a tree going through your own seasons, but there are other trees and shrubbery and various plants around you that are also digging roots and growing as well. You share the same ecosystem despite having your own path toward and timeline for growth.
We champion the idea that community brings power at GoBundance women, and have microgroups or GoPods that bring meaningful collaboration and supportive accountability with women that share similar goals or interests. When you become a member with GoBundance, you gain access to this support and other benefits, like Wisdom Circles that offer connection and introspection to help guide you through any issues you might need help with.
Collective consciousness is the idea of being surrounded by people who share similar beliefs and morals, which can be very helpful during the healing process. Whether you’re confiding in a therapist, joining support groups, or opening up to family or close friends, feeling like you have a shared identity around your healing process and building a better life will help the process feel less isolating.
Learn to cultivate collective consciousness with others who are likeminded as you heal by maintaining your autonomy as a person and still being connected with those around you. This type of healthy support and mutual reliance on others will help the healing process seem less daunting.
Set Realistic Expectations
Give others and yourself grace as you’re navigating the complexities and nuances of growing and learning. Healing is an ongoing process with many steps forward, sometimes a few steps back, or maybe to the side. There’s beauty in the journey still, because you can control how you show up.
It’s okay to struggle with reactivity and still know that you can treat others the way you want to be treated. It’s okay to take things slow and to be learning and growing in new relationship dynamics. You don’t need to keep an “all or nothing” mindset—it’s everyone’s first time at life, including yours.
Acknowledge how others make you feel and move forward doing what’s best for you. Make sure that whoever you open to is someone you feel safe with, and replace judgement with active listening and constructive criticism. Practice showing up messy even when you’re triggered so you can begin to heal those emotional triggers, and be vulnerable even when it’s scary.
Notice your triggers and have the awareness to actually do something about it. You can give things all the time in the world, but if you don’t put in the work, the healing won’t happen. Time itself doesn’t have the power to mend, but you do.
Move from a place of knowing what you desire, and then show up for others because you want to, not because you feel obligated to.
You likely won’t experience massive changes overnight, but addressing how you can show up better will help you not to repeat the cycles that have hurt you in the past. Hold time and space for practice, and don’t demand from or blame others as you’re reflecting and addressing how you can show up better to have the kind of relationships you want.
There’s no handbook for healing, so if you find yourself feeling like you’ve backtracked, don’t let it bring you down too much. You’re only human. Healing isn’t about perfection, but being open and honest with yourself, meeting yourself without judgement and discovering helpful tools like a GoBundance membership so you can do better for yourself in the future.
Start your GoBundance membership today to find powerful, game-changing connections and support that allows you to embrace your seasons of healing by empowering you to step into your own abundance.
You’re inherently worthy as you are! Healing starts with self-awareness and recognizing the things that make you uncomfortable so you can move through them and find the comfort you deserve and desire.
