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“To make free from injury or disease; to make sound or whole; to patch up or correct; to restore to original purity or integrity. “
People can get very defensive about the idea of choosing to heal, or of choosing to be happy after having suffered from trauma or adversity or chronic illness (which is traumatic in itself)
Because these things are choices when we have food, shelter, and safety, whether you want to believe it or not. There is deep personal influence day to day in how we show up. No, you did not have a choice when you were a child. No one chooses to be abused, neglected, have challenge, have overwhelming things happen within families or communities. This deserves tremendous compassion, support, time and patience to heal
But once we become an adult, then we definitely have choice about how we are going to live life. I have worked with hundreds of people with very profound adversity in their background. They overcome their past and go on to live full lives. Scarred? Yes. More beautiful and whole with those scars? Also yes. Because they chose to head towards what they wanted more of, they kept choosing day by day. This takes a depth of radical responsibility that is not talked about in fluffy social media therapy, as it is not appealing to some people. But it is an absolute essential ingredient to make changes in our lives.
We can stay replaying how unfair it was, how angry we are that life now is hard, we can be bitter and resentful of everyone who had it and has it easier than us, keep telling our special brokenness story that means we cannot heal. We can doubt the healing process. We are often terrified to step out of a desolate place of misery. No one wants to face this one as it is a cold walk down honesty street, but the reality is that often we’ve held on tightly to the suffering, pain and anger because it’s familiar.
It gives our lives definition and meaning to identify with the events of our past. In other words, we’re comfortable in the discomfort. It’s a story that’s familiar, and to our nervous system, the familiar feels safe, even if it is no longer adaptive and causes us to suffer. We can also be scared to recover, thinking ‘when we heal from this, then what? What’s next? Who am I? Can I handle this next chapter of adulting?’
We are often consumed by fear over “what if’s” and all the reasons why we can’t. And we will believe those stories and stay stuck until we learn to watch them, befriend the fear that underlies them, and choose to meet the fear with courage. We are allowed to feel both, that is being human.
We can claim the right to be angry and petulant. We can point out the faults in all the systems of dominance, the wellness industry, doctors, therapists, and choose to do nothing. No one can really blame us for feeling that way after adversity. It makes sense to feel powerless sometimes especially if this was a theme in childhood.
But each one of those choices when we continue to make them on autopilot, locks us into a victimised state where we have no power or agency. We are then at the mercy of circumstances, things outside our control, small things are massive stressors as we are not in the driving seat of our lives, as we claim to have no agency at all. The tough but compassionate truth is that one heals from this place. We stay on a tightrope of stress after stress because things happen ‘to us’ instead of us meeting life with a growing tool box of skills and a growing connection to our own inbuilt resilience.
Sometimes in my illness I just wanted to stay in that anger and disempowered ‘why me’. I want to rage at everyone. I didn’t want to do the actual work of healing because it was hard. If someone called me to account I would be bratty and did not want to take that responsibility to acknowledge this was in my hands as the adult in my life now. I would think it was unfair that I had to do it at all and when it wasn’t my fault I got sick (and underneath that also a fear and shame that maybe it was my fault).
And so the cycle of avoidance and sickness and suffering continued. For years and years. The cycle of helplessness, anger and hurting also continued. And I didn’t get any better.
But then one day the pain of staying the same grew bigger than the pain of change. I wondered “what if I chose healing for myself, just for me. Then it would not be about anyone else, what they are doing or whether they have it better or worse than me. I’m choosing wholeness because I want to be whole. I’m choosing healing in my life because I want to be healthy. I want to have healthy relationships. I want to break the cycles in my life for me and future generations. If not me, who?”
In a journey with magic mushrooms about 9 years ago, I was told by that wise teacher plant “don’t like the bitter pill you’ve been chewing on all these years Nadia? Then spit it out and try something sweeter.” It was a confronting and very compassionate way to show me the role I played in my suffering and the choices I was refusing to make to make small choices a moment at a time that built more of the experience I wanted.
I couldn’t go back and get the childhood I missed, but I sure as hell could been to relate to it in new ways and start to find what I needed, who I really was, and build a new life out of the ashes of my old one. I didn’t choose what happened to me. It wasn’t my fault, and there’s nothing I could have done that would have made the situation any different as a kid. But my past cannot be changed; it can only be accepted. I can choose to either continue to be a victim of that past, or I can choose to create something good out of it; I can choose who I become.
During that time, I realized that I had a choice. Resent my life or take back what little power I had and choose my attitude. Could I be ill and kind? Ill and of service? Disabled and deeply valuable just as I am? Accept my body had limitations - but that I had a choice in whether I obsessed about these, or put energy and attention into what I COULD do. I began to put me first, and not compromise on building more of what I wanted.
I befriended the victimised child part of me and let her kick and scream and grieve. This was crucial, to unshame her and let her have voice in writing, in movement, in sound. But then I needed to take the wheel from her little hands and begin to drive my life with my adult resources, ability to learn new things. I needed to learn a lot of new skills as many with CPTSD do due to having traumatised parents that were not equipped teach or show me safety, skills or self-regulation.
I began to grow myself up in ways I missed out on as a child. Was it easy? No. It was the hardest thing I have ever done. Was it worth it, unquestionably. My body healed as a side effect of coming home to myself and getting in integrity with who I really am. Making choices consistently to do uncomfortable things. Spotting where I slipped into passivity, excuses, blame, and getting into an active position again. Loving all parts of me, especially the ones that carried shame, and practicing over and over and over what I wanted more of and who I wanted to BE. Healing became a state of BEING not a destination or an achievement.
So for you, Is it going to be worth it? That’s up to you to decide; as long as you’re still alive, have relative safety, shelter and food, you have choices to make about what kind of life you are going to experience.
For those of us lucky enough to be in a country not torn by war, poverty or political instability, we have blessings to expand and pass on that others will never get, just through the circumstance of where they were born. Cultivating genuine gratitude for what we have is a good way to wake up to what we have, in a society that makes great consumers out of us all by imprinting separation, lack and defectiveness as a default mode way of existing.
I’ve been in settings where the entire conversation has focused on what so and so did to them. Of how bad the past was so there is no point trying for the future. Of how bad things are. And there is certainly a place to share those stories. But not when we are stuck inside them, locked into the reliving of them in ways that leave us powerless; this is when talking about our symptoms, our condition, why we cannot heal - becomes a trap that we often do not realise has an open door that we can walk out of any time we choose.
If we choose not to heal that is also ok. But with either choice it helps us to become aware that we contribute to our stuckness and suffering way more than most of us realise. That there are so many choices daily in how we show up.
We do this through being mindful to notice:
All the people I have seen heal made a deep choice to show up for themselves and go for it. With no time limits or pressures, as we help them begin to actually live and dance in the rain whilst they are healing. Symptoms tend to fade, the less we are hyper focused on them and the more we are working with our self-relationship, harmonising our mind body connection, what is under our influence day by day.
Committed action from our heart, is always worth it.
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