Planting the Seeds of Healing
“Just knowing you don’t have the answers is a recipe for humility, openness, acceptance, forgiveness, and an eagerness to learn—and those are all good things.”
Something I've learned in my adventures with Tapping is that there is an intrinsic timing to the unwinding of old issues and traumas. While I absolutely believe that it's necessary to decide on and keep affirming your intent to heal from the effects of your past experiences, such healing can't be forced or willed into being. Some things can be healed surprisingly quickly. Others can have an astonishing number of aspects that will need attention before all the pieces can fall into new and healthier places. And the difference between these extremes cannot be predicted, because the psyche is a complex and mysterious thing.
Knowing and accepting this means that if you're serious about revamping old patterns, you'll get used to the idea that your best bet is to work on whatever feels most current for you today, and trust that the progress you are able to make is enough. Tapping, for instance, takes focus, energy, and a willingness to confront unpleasant feelings before the process has a chance to work and reduce them. Some days you can really make strides you'll feel proud of. Others, you get some relief but don't necessarily feel that you've resolved anything. This is sensitive work, and you're doing it in the context of your life's many moving parts, including all the influences of the outside world over which you have little control. The road can seem excruciatingly long and confusing. This is where what I call constructive stubbornness comes in! Sometimes we need to disregard day-to-day feedback that might suggest our efforts are not yielding fruit. When you plant an apple tree, it takes weeks for the seed to germinate and grow up out of the soil, and it may take years to produce an apple you can hold in your hand. We live in an impatient world, but some processes just take time. If you give up on them too soon, you never get your fruit at all.
The more you fight what's true for you today, the more you'll find yourself feeling drained and demoralized. The more you can learn to celebrate small wins each day, and the overall picture of how far you've come, the more your calm, open energy will welcome in the healing you're creating. The act of worrying (note that I'm not talking here about strategic thinking, but a constant mental spinning over possible negative outcomes) is toxic. Acceptance, breathing, and appreciation for what's good in your life are forces for radical positive change. By investing continually in them, you carve out supportive space for your happiness and your journey to a state of vibrant health, wherever you may be starting.
When we're frustrated, it's so tempting to try to force things we want into being, but this approach rarely yields results that are the best we can do—and in my experience, it really doesn't work at all in the healing sphere. Frustration is a normal part of longer projects, and it can be a wake-up call to periodically assess our direction and progress, but it sometimes arises because we just don't like the wait. If what we're doing is growing an apple tree, the frustration is useless, as the tree is only ever going to grow in its own timing. In this case, it's time go back to accepting and appreciating the journey as best we can yet again. We manage our emotions through Tapping or some other daily method, and keep making healthy decisions while Nature works its magic.
Even if you're not gardening, but healing, working through the trial-and-error process may take time. You have to envision a path, take a few steps, learn from external and internal feedback, seek out new information, reformulate your vision of the next few steps, and repeat, sometimes many, many times before you reach your destination. You have a right to whatever emotions come up for you along the way, but you must find ways to process and manage them if you want to maintain a clear path to tread. It is in a sacred space of self-love, compassion, and emotional release where healing processes truly thrive. This may seem counterintuitive and even impossible as a standard, but I promise you that any progress toward maintaining this kind of internal state will help you get where you want to go faster. Here's a mantra for you: Struggle less, heal more.