How do I know if I am healing?
Something I notice often when folks are talking to me for the first time, is they'll ask some version: “When am I going to be healed? How long does it take to be healed?”
Or I had a client recently who was feeling really frustrated on their journey and said, “How do I even know if I'm healing?”
I want to point out that there's a difference between healed and healing, and you will very rarely hear me use the word ‘healed.’ Because my belief is not that you work through things and suddenly they go away. You're learning skills to be able to manage triggers and certain feelings and behaviors in your life for the long term.
Let's get into exactly what that means:
First off, if you're in one of my coaching containers, we're constantly going to be talking about the healing journey. It starts now, but will continue for a very long time. What we're doing on this journey is figuring out what things are not working for you - maybe certain triggers, feelings, or behaviors come up for you often, whether personally or in the workspace (because usually, if there's something that's happening internally, it's not only from nine to five).
What we're looking at is, when you start to notice that certain behaviors or feelings are showing up for you often, that means there is something there that doesn't feel safe. A trigger is a behavior or feeling that rises to the surface, that may not feel comfortable for you, because you're wanting to work through it.
But there's also something there that is protecting you, because our bodies are built to protect us. When you're having a response, there's something in that interaction or that environment that does not feel safe. What we want to understand is, what doesn't feel safe? Because it could actually not be related to the incident or the situation that's in front of you - it could be something else trapped from another situation that happened to you in the past.
I'll give an example of myself. Certain things were triggers for me when I was a K-12 leader that I would notice I would go into fight mode very quickly. When I was able to step away and really look at what kept making that happen, there were certain things in the environment that didn't feel safe for me, because of past experiences I've had or things that made me feel like I don't belong or I couldn’t help my people.
Once I removed myself from that space, did my sabbatical, and did a lot of work on understanding why I showed up the way I did. I ended up learning a lot about my nervous system and past experiences that were triggering me, and now have skills and strategies I can use to move myself out of fight mode and into more of like a calm state, to be conscious about the environment and the relationships that I place myself in.
However, the pandemic happened. And I will say for me, initially, I was able to just kind of keep functioning all was good. But there came a point where things came to a head. I thought at that point I was good and healed, but then quickly realized that I was on a healing journey. Because the things that were now dormant were brought back up to the surface when another chaotic experience like the pandemic happened.
All that to say, when I'm working with clients and we're trying to figure out exactly what the feelings and behaviors are that just don't feel right that they want to work through - we want to identify where it comes from, how it's impacting you today, and then help come up with individualized strategies and exercises you can use to help those feelings become more dormant and not be regularly brought to the forefront.
But that doesn't mean that you are now healed, or those feelings are never going to come back again.
Over time, there's a possibility it could come back, so we want to make sure that we're constantly staying on this journey of taking care of ourselves in ways that help our nervous system to feel calm and help us to feel safe. You're ultimately creating safety in your body and in your mind.
When folks want to chat about coaching, and they say, “Well, how long is it going to take me to be healed?” My response is: My goal here is not for you to be healed, but for us to get clear on why you're having these behaviors and these feelings, what's triggering them in work or personal environments, and how do we create a set of specific strategies, skills and exercises that you can go to in moments when you need them.
This could be something that happens super quickly in 30 days, or it could be something that slowly over time starts to reduce because maybe there are other things at play, like your environment or certain relationships that just can't end that you'll need to navigate in various ways.
But over time, I'm going to regularly ask you to think: are you noticing that it's happening less frequently? Are you noticing that when it happens, it's not for as long? Are you noticing that the intensity is not as much as what it used to be?
For example, say you notice that every day you get to work, there's an interaction that happens that sets you off and takes you off your game for your whole morning. You're not focused, it’s clouding your vision and your ability to relate to your work.
After trying out various strategies, maybe changing up the environment, or your schedule, or other things that can help you to kind of either remove or reduce that interaction that keeps doing that — you will begin to notice that maybe it's only happening once a week. And maybe now it kind of throws you off for like 15 minutes, you do an exercise for about a minute or so, and then you're back to where you need it to be. That would mean that you are showing progress on your healing journey. There's less frequency, there's less duration, and there's less intensity.
When we're working together, that's your marker, your gauge that you are healing. We're not perfect, we are not meant to be perfect, and you shouldn't have a goal of being perfect. Ultimately, what you're trying to do is have a clear vision for your life and future, and create the conditions for that to come to life.
The goal here is not for you to have the perfect environment or relationships, but to know how to navigate them when things are off. When you have the skills to be able to navigate them, when you have a plan for when things are going wrong, you need to know what to do to kind of ground yourself and get clear again on what you are trying to do. I promise you that there will be less frequency, less duration, less intensity, and that is your healing journey.
Some of the triggers that are getting in the way now can become dormant, and maybe they don't come back. But I promise you, they're still under the surface because it's just part of your journey. That's nothing to be ashamed of. But we want to be very intentional and conscious about making sure that it does not continue to take precedence in your journey moving forward.
Let me give you one more example before I wrap this up — that example is kind of more fight mode, but what about freeze mode?
I have another client who wants to write, they talk about it all the time. They feel like they have this book inside of them. But they can't bring themselves to write a single word. This is also still a response where it doesn't feel safe to put your voice out in the world, it doesn't feel safe to try something new.
That in itself is a trigger, but it just happens to be a freeze response. So maybe we work on what it looks like for you to step out and try it and see what the response is. Do you start to get more inspired? Does creativity start to flow more? Does what started as five minutes become two hours, then in that case, your frequency increases, because you're moving out of freeze mode? Because you feel safe, you feel calm and you can engage in creativity for longer.
Those are still the same markers we would use, even if the response wasn't to be lashing out or upset. It still can translate if what you're having as a response is “I shut down, I can't engage, and I'm not able to take steps towards the things that are important to me in my life.”
So frequency, duration, and intensity are the three things I would say to constantly be checking in and asking yourself, “What is my progress with this one particular area of my life that I've been working on? What's my progress with these particular triggers that happen to me regularly that I'm working on to reduce, to find more stability and calm in my nervous system?” That is part of the healing journey.
The goal here is not to be healed, but to have all of the strategies, the skills, and the capability to have healing become a natural part of your life moving forward, because there will always be something that comes up that has us triggered again. But at least you will know how to navigate it differently now in your present self than you were back in that younger self who experienced it for the first time.
If you have any questions, you want to chat about what it looks like to be on a healing journey, I am super happy to chat with you about one-on-one coaching where I tailor all of this to your specific needs. Book a discovery call with me and let’s go really deep and figure out what it means for you to be on a healing journey.
Coaching is a great space for you to figure that out and get accountability while doing so, making sure that the direction that you're moving in is the one that's meant for you. I hope to hear more from you soon!
