The Myth of Healing

One of the biggest myths out there is that healing - if you're doing it right - is a nice, smooth path from A to B. 

There’s an assumption that once you’ve made the choice to commit to your health and make some changes - and you do everything you’re supposed to do - you will keep feeling better and better at a steady pace until one day – tah dah! – you’re healed.

Hell, no.

Whether you’re healing from an injury or a chronic condition (physical, mental or emotional), the journey rarely - if ever - works like that.

The real experience of healing often feels like trying to navigate a maze.

You know… two steps forward, one step back, three steps forward (yay!) …then face planting into an unseen hedge, only to finally emerge on the other side - dazed and with bird’s nest hair - wondering what the f*ck just happened.

If you’ve been through any type of ongoing health challenge, I’m sure you know this feeling. And it has nothing to do with "getting it right" (or not).

And yet so often we perpetuate this myth in our minds. We cling to the unattainable idea of perfection that feels so enticing in the high moments when everything is going well, but can be soul-crippling when your symptoms flare or you’re having a bad day and feel like you’ve fallen off your path.

At those moments, the weight of expectation - that things should be getting better all the time - can throw up some pretty serious questions. Things like:

“I thought I had this fixed by now! Why am I feeling like this again?”

It can make you feel like you’re doing something wrong, that things aren’t “working”, like it will never get better.

None of this is true of course. It’s just the leap your mind makes when your body behaves differently to your expectations. 

In many ways, it’s the unrealistic expectations that cause us more pain than the symptoms themselves.

Unrealistic expectations are the dark side of healthy goals. 

One keeps you stuck, the other gives you a map to follow, no matter how long the journey or however many bumps in the road.

This is where mindset plays such an important role in health.

What you believe about your ability to heal creates your lived experience of healing.

I received a personal crash course in this a few years ago – literally – when a near fatal car accident left me with a battered body and broken pelvis, wondering whether I’d be able to walk properly again.

(You can read more about my journey from a wheelchair to ecstatic dance here.)

That experience – combined with the years of working with clients – has taught me that healing is not a linear path.

Instead of a steady ride from A to B, the healing journey is much more like climbing a spiral staircase.

Each time you round the corner, the view looks almost the same as it did when you started. So similar, in fact, that it can fool you into thinking you've not made any progress at all.

But really, with every turn, you are still moving forwards.

Each turn is a recalibration, a shift that is sometimes so subtle it’s almost imperceptible, but nonetheless very real.

As you gradually climb that staircase, one spiral at a time, the view starts to change until one day it looks totally new. You are somewhere completely different than where you started.

You are completely different from when you started.

Your body is incredibly intelligent.

So much of the healing journey happens under the surface, below our conscious awareness, that a lot of the time it can feel like nothing is progressing – or worse – like you’re going backwards.

But if we can shift our perspective and give our bodies (and ourselves) patience, compassion and the right support, before long there will be another turn on that spiral when the view opens out into something truly spectacular.

(The right support is a key piece. It allows you to stay on the path that’s meant for you with greater ease and confidence – and sidestep more of the face plants.)

So, if you resonate with any of this, give yourself the grace and permission to not be perfect. 

Let go of the myth that things should be different from how they are in this moment and just be in the messy, wild, imperfection of it all.

Take a breath and acknowledge the courage that has gotten you this far, to this place, right now.

You know that courage, deep down.

It’s the courage that nudges you to get back up again - just as you have done so many times in the past - and keep going. 

Trust it, even when you aren't feeling courageous at all. 

Especially then. 

Because who knows what the next turn of the spiral will bring.