"What are we healing from?" one might ask... HUMAN LIFE! I'm willing to go out on a limb and guess that the readers who stumble upon The Rabbit Hole aren't the type of people who've had an overly cruisy existence or are happy with status quo; we are seekers, ready to uncover what lay hidden inside ourselves and others, keen to understand the Universe on the deepest level. I'm also willing to bet we've all experienced trauma in some form or fashion, either through blatant victimisation, a horrifying ordeal, a denial of who we truly are, or simply worn down by the day-to-day rat race of life; this trauma can be direct, misperceived and/or self-inflicted.
For me healing is healthy development of our inner awareness so that we can own our BULLSHIT and avoid spreading that shit onto others, because trust me, that's not the type of fertiliser our World needs 💩🙅. It's ending our own contribution to the collective human pain cycle, laying aside prejudice because that's how we were conditioned to think about a different race, boring others by constantly repeating the same pain stories from our past, preventing ourselves from hating or mistrusting everyone because one person screwed us over or our parents failed to provide for us as children, liberating ourselves from suppressed emotions that drive unhealthy behaviours, smiling at a stranger instead of telling them to f*%@ off, learning to take a compliment and/or accepting love because we no longer see ourselves as a worthless piece of shit. Perhaps most critical, it's avoiding shooting random strangers (or ourselves) because of some deeply held fear, or need for power, that we couldn't recognise as dangerous until it was too late... F&*#-ing BLEAK! 😅
As I attempt to explain what, in my humble experience, does and does not constitute the healing of which I speak, please bear in mind that I DO NOT have any prescriptive answers. The lists below are what I've gleaned through my own twisted healing adventure, are decidedly biased towards my own experiences, and are in no way exhaustive. Hell, I'll discover many more weird and wonderful ways to heal I reckon. The steps along the healing path can and will look different for each of us; but I dare to assert they will not be linear for anyone brave enough to forge ahead.
What Healing Is:
What Healing Is NOT:
- The processing and release of subconscious and/or suppressed emotions
- Confronting our inner fears and shadow-selves, embracing them and learning what they have to teach us
- Activating our most useful tool, the light of our awareness, and shining it into our subconscious to gain deeper understanding our ourselves and what drives our thoughts, emotions and actions
- Withholding Judgementof ourselves and others
- Accepting the fact that we cannot control anything outside of ourselves
- Becoming grateful for all the ass-kicking gut-wrenching life lessons that hurt us, yet shaped us into who we are
- Tears, snot, boxes of tissues and/or rolls of toilet paper... sometimes while laughing at these inane emotional outbursts
- Beating pillows, yelling in our cars or closets, throwing rocks into a river... sometimes while laughing at these inane emotional outbursts
- Tough conversations with OTHERS who we've held resentments against, or with whom we need to ask forgiveness (accepting they may not give it)
- Tough conversations with OURSELVES, also to confess long-held resentments and to ask for forgiveness
- Re-wiring habitual unhealthy thinking patterns by learning to recognise self-sabotage and limiting beliefs
- Taking accountability for the part we play in perpetuating negative cycles by making the same shitty choices time and again, or failing to opt for change over status quo
- Consistent and deliberate reflection; journaling sessions, meditation and long walks spent sorting through all the rubbish going around in our minds
- Superficial spiritual Facebook memes that state WHAT to be without any indication of HOW to be it
- Constant teddy bears and warm fuzzies
- Inauthentic self-love and acceptance (i.e., it's a forced concept or flecked with residual judgments)
- Soft leather couches and therapists who focus on explaining how great they are at healing others, or only serve to repeat back things we've said (talking to a mirror will do the same thing and cost a hell of a lot less)
- Pharmaceutical band-aids that don't address the underlying issue(s)
- Seeking sympathy
- A clean, clear, straight-forward or finite process
- Remaining unwilling to take-on honest feedback (from ourselves or others)
- Feel-good hippy-dippy bullshit, toxic positivity or perpetual happiness
- A sense that we're in control
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| Yes, sounds great... how the f*$@ do I do that or know WHO my 'Divine Self' even is?! 💩😠 |
The Universe operates in IRONY, so the more lost, confused and hopeless we feel, the closer we are to gaining some traction on the healing path.
Healing requires courage and my own sordid adventure lay entrenched in the many rabbit holes linked throughout this article, but here are some discrete examples, if for nothing other than their entertainment value. 🐇💖
- My first break-up left me with a deep sense that something in my wiring wasn't quite right, and fearing I'd be left unable to cultivate healthy romantic relationships I became determined to start rooting through the baggage of my psyche by practicing mindfulness and remaining in the present... Thus Analytical Ramblings of a Scientific Mind was born, my first attempt at articulating mucking through not one, but three colourful mental illnesses (because I'm an over-achieving perfectionist in all that I do! 😝).
- Thinking I'd learned it all and 'fixed' myself as a result of the above, I was devastated to find that after a psychotic episode I was left amongst the ruin of yet another relationship and had landed yet another diagnosis! OCD, yes, given my history with obsessive and compulsive thoughts stuck on a song entitled 'self-judgment and punishment,' I could understand that one. But then a fateful session with my unconventional counsellor (whom I will be forever indebted to), hilariously set off my inner light bulb by frankly stating, while laughing, that "I didn't have OCD, I just didn't f*%#ing trust anyone or anything." In that moment I could've been knocked over with a feather, realising the obvious and confronting fact that my utter lack of trust left me dependent on an addiction to control; nothing in my mind could heal until I constructed a foundation of trust... and thus the Rabbit Hole was founded along with a deeper sense of what it meant to truly heal.
- Smaller, but no-less significant, realisations came which allowed me to tweak and refine along the way;
- Opting for Inner Peace Over Happiness: For one, chasing perpetual happiness is utterly exhausting and rather fruitless... hear me out 🐇. Happiness is at one end of an emotional continuum, seeking it constantly doesn't allow for the natural spectrum of other emotions to occur and will eventually knock us off-balance. I'll even go so far as to say it can be unhealthy, particularly if we start 'blaming ourselves' for failing to achieve happiness; thinking it's the healthiest way to be. We need the clouds to fully appreciate the sunshine, and so to do the gloomier emotions enable us to enjoy life's simple happy moments. Additionally, when/if shit turns pear-shaped (because this is life and it eventually will to some degree), we're left without a sense of resilience or capability, missing the opportunity to let tough and painful situations cultivate healthy coping strategies. I opt for peace because it is dynamic and calming; it's congruent with self-acceptance. I find peace can exist anywhere along the depressed to elated spectrum. Perceiving inner peace through our own tears is an odd yet rewarding experience.
- Forgiveness is for Good People: An interesting activity in one of the many mind-altering books I read provoked quite a powerful shift in a deeply engrained detrimental mindset, though when I reflect on this I see one part miracle, one part f*%@ing insanity, and three parts hilarity 😝. I have always been a perfectionist, driving a tendency towards perpetual self-punishment, observing misperceived failures, and leaving behind sentiments of 'Not Good Enough.' This activity had me ask, out loud, while in a meditative state, 'What had I done wrong to deserve to be treated that way?' Good-golly-miss-Molly did that jar some shit loose! Before I knew it I was literally screaming and crying at myself in a closet. The obvious had finally dawned on me... Nothing. I had done absolutely-nothing-f*$@ing-wrong to deserve the constant punishment I loved to heap onto myself. My intentions were always good, and having faith in that moral compass finally allowed me to be more accepting of my otherwise inexcusable flaws; most importantly, I found the compassion needed to forgive myself for the years of inner torture.
- Confronting the Ticking Clock: One fateful day a long-held subconscious fear bubbled up to the surface. A sensation like popping a huge infectious pustule that had been building under the surface from my mid-20's to mid-30's. The stimulus for this infection was a common little bug known as the fear of running out of time (full story described in this link, it's riveting!😅). I was getting on, all my friends were married with babies or buns in the oven... yet I was still single-Summer with only a couple of failed relationships on my bleak-as track record. Still worse, the dating pool was looking more and more desperate, and soon I'd be a tried and true spinster. It was only after bursting this infection however, that I could heal it; challenge this limiting belief that did not and would not serve me well. I say that because rushing against this clock has driven many a rash decision when it comes to choosing a life partner, and it usually doesn't turn out to be an overwhelming success... the term 'settling' comes to mind. Once I was aware of this fear, I set to treating it with kindness, understanding and patience. Miraculously, completely in line with how the Universe operates, as soon as I learned to appreciate this fear and love it, heal it, instead of running away and/or suppressing it, I met my husband. 💕💫
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| This one is a bit more helpful... It takes practice, and lots of it, but I know this is possible because I've done it and so have others. 🙏💖 |
I love a list, so here's another 😝... The benefits that healing has to offer;
- Gradual shifts in our mindsets, from survival fear-based thinking to dynamic growth-based thinking
- Grounded and balanced decision making
- Ever-increasing sense of self-worth and capability
- Genuine and humane empathy, heightened Emotional Intelligence
- Greater sense of security, which I'd argue is far more profound than confidence
- Physical connection between our heads, hearts and spirits, and overall sense of Whole-ness; realising that each piece is on the same team instead of pushing individual agendas
Be brave, dig deep, keep asking why, probe those thoughts, emotions and behaviours, laugh, remain kind and non-judgmental. Trust it can be done... 💖🙏🐇
Original Publication Date 06 June 2022, Revised TBD
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