Sorry 😳😭 there is no enlightenment of healing

+ therapy "true or false" - read to the end!

"Is this what just living is?! Nothing is ever done but you learn to roll with and predict your feelings better?"

A client sent me that message as we were deciding together if they had completed their time in therapy. The answer I said to them was YES. And they had.

Therapy, and inner work more generally, is often misconstrued to be this peak experience, an enlightenment of healing, if you will. And there are these golden moments of discovery and integration where you will never be the same again.

But also. Healing is gloriously mundane.

It includes going to the grocery store without a panic attack in the peanut butter aisle. It includes making a fool of yourself without descending into a shame spiral. It includes sharing how you're feeling, without apologizing or bottling it up. It includes being able to sit in the bath and be with yourself as you are. It includes the gentle necessity of self-boundaries - knowing when to put work away and go to bed. It includes being able to not be good at trying something new and instead, practicing playfulness in the everyday. Dancing in the kitchen. Putting your phone down.

Healing is doing what feels good for you and knowing when to set a boundary with yourself.

There is no enlightenment of healing because life still happens. Deadlines are still due. Bills pile up. Holidays with the family still might happen - or at the very least, the expectation lives on. People we love can leave us. People we love can die. No amount of inner work can protect us from life happening.

But you do grow your capacity to respond. You learn to experience life without abandoning yourself.

Just like the enlightenment of healing, here are a few other misconceptions that can get in the way:

1. Processing an experience means I won't be bothered by it in the future.

   1. Nope! Processing isn't a "one-and-done" - it can take multiple times over our lifetime to process an experience. And even when we feel "healed", we can still experience pain from it. Healing doesn't mean we don't feel the pain - conversely, it means we are PRESENT with the pain and attend to it with compassion.

2. If I want to heal from something, I need to share what happened in step-by-step detail.

   1. Also nope! I've worked with clients for years without knowing details of their trauma. I don't need to - I can see their trauma, we can feel it together. If it's helpful for you to tell your story, please do! But therapy is about attending to the IMPACT of our past on our present. I don't need to know the details because I can see the impact on you today.

3. People need to know everything about me in order to accept me - I feel like I'm hiding something if I don't tell them my whole story.

   1. Again, if this is *important to you, then by all means, don't censor yourself. But also know that not everyone deserves your vulnerability. Your story is sacred, your pain is sacred and not everyone has the capacity or willingness to listen. We're often searching for the validation of our pain we never received and can be retraumatizing ourselves by exposing (rather than sharing) our story. So don’t censor yourself but do protect yourself. The motivation here matters.

I would love to hear from you  - what are your gloriously mundane healing moments?