There is one thing which I have learned, and that is, as far as I have worked, and as people have told me, and as my own silent experience has shown me, that almost no healing follows a straight line. We are brought up believing that we should continue to get better with time as we start the healing process. We see the journey as a staircase: each stage will be higher than the previous one, and each day will be better than the previous one. Emotional recovery has never been like that. Healing is rarely neat. It does not have milestones that are foreseeable. It is a breathing, living process that flows in waves, in spirals, dips, and in greater or lesser surprises.
The myth of linear healing is based on our perception of progress in other spheres of life. We observe academic development in grades, career development in promotions, physical development in before and after photographs--and we naturally expect emotional development to increase in the same manner. When we feel good temporarily, we anticipate it will continue. And when one of those hard days comes, when we become sad or anxious or are reminded of past experiences, we think that we have regressed. We think we have all unravelled our achievements. But nothing has been wrong. A bad day is not a relapse; it is a natural process of healing, always non-linear.
The fact that you have one painful day does not mean that healing disappears. Recurrent pain does not imply eradication of progress. It is just that another level is demanding to be observed.
The healing process is a zigzag since we are not linear as human beings. We have layers of our emotional wounds, memories, beliefs, and coping patterns. We are not immediately cured of an event; we are cured step by step, as we become stronger and more conscious. Sometimes we can gaze at our suffering. Sometimes we just require being soft, distracted, or resting. There are times when our hearts will be open and other times when they will be closed to save us.
It is not the lack of consistency in this movement, opening and closing, rising and retreating. It is intelligence. It is your mind and body together deciding on what you are prepared to encounter. You are in a good mood one week, and the next day you are depressed, it does not mean you have relapsed. It is a higher plane coming out as you are now emotionally able to cope with.
The process of healing is not linear but rather spiral. You can come back to the same feelings, but never in the same place. You come with every communication more knowledgeable, stronger, more conscious, and kinder. The zigzag does not mean to fail. It is itself an indicator of growth in you.
Psychologically, healing is surprising as it seems that numerous various systems within you are healing at the same time, and each of them is moving at its own pace. Your mind may be fully aware of something, but your body and nervous system may be keeping you scared.
It is not that the brain rewires itself, but rather, it rewires itself through repetition. You may be able to reason why you act in a particular manner, but the emotional patterns that are related to your actions have been repeated over the years. Insight generates awareness, and change is brought about by repeated safe experiences.
The mind attempts to get over something, and the body holds onto it. Sensations of trauma, tightness, restlessness, fatigue, and abrupt anxiety can be experienced even when you are in a good state of mind. The reason is that the body works out old pain gradually, carefully, only at the time when it feels that you are safe enough at last.
The nervous system fluctuates between growth and shrinkage.
Your system relaxes, and the process of healing is sped up when you feel secure.
When caught off guard, your system shrinks, drawing you in to keep itself safe.
This is a dance of risk and protection which is one of the healing rhythms. You are not to blame--it is the way your system does not allow you to be emotionally overloaded.
These beliefs are ingrained in the subconscious mind, such as, I am not enough, I must be perfect or people will leave. These beliefs are not changed easily since they were shaped out of repetition and feelings rather than logic. Even then, when you are consciously saying no to them, emotionally, they might recur. This is no regression; it is emotional residue that is being swept away in layers.
Having all these systems, the brain, body, subconscious, as well as the nervous system, moving at various speeds, it is natural that the healing is uneven. There are days when you think everything is in order, and there are days when you feel like you are torn in many directions. This is not anarchy. It is the profound, gradual process of assimilating new forms and dropping the old ones.
Reoccurrence of old emotional habits is one of the most baffling and frustrating aspects of the healing process. You will lapse into some behaviours that you believed that you had outgrown, such as overthinking, shutting down, withdrawing, people-pleasing, snapping at no challenges, not wanting to talk, or not wanting to leave old fears. It may even be betrayal from the inside. You had worked so much to get out of these habits, and now why are they reappearing?
The reality is both too psychological and too human:
Old habits occur since they were previously your survival tactics.
They were made by your mind because you needed them in a time when you had no superior means. They were not bad habits; they were safety mechanisms. And the mind will not lose its hold on safety soon.
The old patterns do not disappear; even in your brain, when you learn new styles of coping, you still have the old ones. They do not become extinct in a short time. They are eroded over time, with correctional experiences. When life is overwhelming, stressful, or unsure, the automatic response is that the brain will turn to what it already knows in a pattern that is not necessarily healthy.
Imagine an old road in the woods. You have made a new way--stouter, safer, more healthy--yet there is still the old way--you can see it, and it is easy to walk upon when you are tired. Which is why sometimes your mind will be walking on it, not because you are drawing a blank, but because it is easier to use old patterns due to exhaustion.
The reappearance of the old patterns is an indication that your mind is working at a deeper level. It is re-exploring the same space of hurt, though a more conscious one of you. You are not riding back--you are riding up, as in a spiral. Growth is realizing that you are behaving like you used to behave. The first indicator of the weakening of a pattern is awareness.
The process of healing does not imply that you will not revert to old ways. Healing implies that every time you are back, you spend a shorter time there, go through it more mindfully, and leave it sooner. Even when the process of that shortening seems to be a mess, it is progress.
Punish not yourself when some old version of you appears.
Meet it with, "I know the reason why you came here.
Such a soft recognition is what puts that habitual admission to pieces, as you are finally confronting it with empathy and not embarrassment.
The process of healing is not only emotional but also neurological, mental, and physical. And heart-threatening labour consumes immeasurable power. This is why emotional fatigue is one of the most obvious indicators that the healing process occurs under the surface.
We usually do not realize how tiresome inner work can be. You need to process your pain, face unpleasant realities, re-experience childhood trauma, face fears, place boundaries, or even just permit yourself to feel; all of this takes effort on the part of the brain and the body. Feeling this amount of internal labour, it is natural to be fatigued. It is what the body tells you. I must have time to take in and assimilate what has just happened.
This fatigue is good to be regarded as integration time instead of one seeing it as a setback. Emotional or even physical, just like physical muscle, requires rest after a workout to get stronger; emotional muscles require rest after working with deep feelings.
A significant role is also played by the nervous system. The system temporarily enters a heightened state when emotional breakthrough takes place. Subsequently, it requires a down-regulation phase, a cooling down phase, to re-equilibrize. At this stage, you can be exhausted, uninspired, or sensitive. Not regression, but recalibration.
The tiredness is also an indicator that you have been thinking about something, which might not be in your immediate consciousness. Healing tends to take place in the background. You are not doing nothing, your brain is rearranging old memories, deactivating old feelings, rearranging thinking patterns, but you are not conscious of it. There is an invisible work that consumes energy.
It is emotional fatigue that calls on benevolence.
It is telling you to slow down, take a rest, withdraw slowly into yourself, and give your system time to recuperate.
It is not a rest in the healing--it is a healing.
Most individuals attempt to overcome emotional exhaustion by thinking that the harder one works, the sooner he/she will recover. But the truth is the opposite. When you tune in to your body, the healing process will be fast. When you sleep, you become integrated. Your consciousness intensifies when you take a break. As you relax, your inner world rearranges.
You do not have to worry that you are losing out, because of emotional tiredness.
You know you are going through something significant
Once you observe the myth of the linear healing, the zig-zag character of the emotional recovery, and the psychology of it, one thing can be understood:
Healing should not be a smooth affair. It is supposed to feel honest.
It grows as you grow. It pauses when you need rest. It gets sluggish at times of need. When you feel you are at ease, it speeds up. It sinks in the face of some other truth that wants to be mentioned. It is elevated as your inner world is opened. No inconsistency--humanity.
Healing is not an upward line.
Healing is not perfection.
It is not a linear process of healing.
Healing is a process of relationship with oneself, which gets stronger, layer by layer, through brave moments.
The zigzag is not merely a component of the healing.
The zigzag is the he
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