How Did I Heal?

Sometimes we have no clue what to do to get out of the situation we are in, but sometimes that is where we need to be.  I know, I know, this may not sound like normal advice, but it has been true for me so many times in my past.  The more I fought the situation, the more I struggled to get out of it.

I didn't get anywhere in my healing by staying where I was and while it is easy to write these words now, it was anything but easy in that moment.  When I faced that moment of never walking again or functioning again from the paralysis brought on by a Conversion Disorder, I thought all was lost.

When I started dealing with the sexual abuse and nightmares, I thought all was lost.  In the early days of my own healing, there wasn't an internet full of support groups.  There were no readily available groups to be a part of or shows to watch.  I was pretty much on my own.

None of my healing was easy to come through.  No step was clear before I took it.  There was no way I understood my path forward or even that a path forward existed.  It felt like a fog of despair full of loneliness, depression and anxiety.  Actually in those days, I didn't even realize how depressed I was or how much anxiety I had.

The only thing that truly got me from point "A" to point "B" was that I kept trying to take a step.  I didn't know where to put my foot in taking the step, but I just lifted it up and set it down.  Often I could not even see where it would land, but as I set it down on the ground, everything became a little more clear.

Parts showed promise and parts wasted my time...

I worked at learning all I could and trying to identify everything around me that I could.  I saw something that looked like it might help and so I checked it out to see what it could do for me.  Some things worked and some didn't.  Parts of some of those things showed promise while others just wasted my time.

Most of the time I could not even see what was working and what was not.  I just went with how I felt and if there was even a momentary benefit to it.  If there was, I would see if I could repeat that and what it did for my mind and my body.   Sometimes I could isolate a part that was helping and then I would discard the parts that didn't help.

Sometimes we get hung up on needing to know the answers before we move forward that we ignore what is right before us.  It is too easy to shun that which is helpful because we are looking for that which fits into our view of what works or does not work.  As humans we tend to want to know everything before learning what we need to learn.  It is like a dog chasing his tail.

I always keep in my mind that if what I was doing up to the point of the paralysis of Conversion Disorder did not work, why should I continue to use that as a frame of reference for healing my life.  Often I needed to throw out all I knew so I could discover what it was that I didn't know.  Once I threw out what I thought I knew, it was then that I found the piece of my healing I so badly needed.

Healing isn't about repeating the steps of the past hoping for a different outcome.  It is more about throwing the past out with the weekly trash and stepping through with courage into the unknown.  It is in surrendering into the unknown that we will truly find the healing before us.  It is a process that we will most likely repeat and learn over and over again.

No, it isn't an easy process.  It takes a lot of work and often that work sucks big time!  There's no other way to state it.  To sit where you are and expect someone else to heal you will only keep you where you are.  There are many that can walk beside you and help steady you on your path, but it is up to you to step out with courage and surrender into the unknown of healing.

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Blog Post And Images (c) 2016 by Don Shetterly

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