a note on… creating space to heal

notes on freedom

A weekly email series containing easily digestible morsels of info on relational trauma and how to find freedom from it.

THIS WEEK IT’S A NOTE ON…creating space to heal

One of the most confounding aspects of healing and transformation is that we simultaneously want to heal and do not want to heal.

There are complex, interesting reasons that part of us consciously wants to move forward and part of us unconsciously resists it. This contradiction really sums up trauma. It encapsulates what you’re dealing with: old unconscious patterns that are on repeat and keeping you stuck. 

This plays out in many ways. A common scenario is that we try to move towards healing but the pace of our life gets in the way.

We want to meditate each morning, say, but no matter how hard we try there’s never enough space or time.

We want to take more breaks at work to give our nervous system time to regulate, but the to-do list piles up so we can’t.

We want to do yoga once a week or walk every day, but it gets pushed out of the diary.

We want to journal or listen to a guided audio, but there’s no time at the weekend.

We want to do our work, see a therapist or coach, attend a group, but we don’t have time.

Before we can heal, we need to create time and space in our schedules for healing. But, often, we don’t.

Reviewing your schedule sounds boring, I know. But hidden in the scenarios I’ve just outlined are many unconscious patterns, reactions, beliefs, fears and unmet needs. But we don’t see them because they’re so habitual.

Trauma perseveres as protective patterns in our body, mind, behaviour, relationships and life. Patterns like avoiding our emotions, disconnecting from our body and our needs, resisting self-care, avoiding groups, avoiding slowing down or compulsive busyness.

We repeat these patterns because the familiar feels comfortable. That’s why change is hard: it requires us to repeat the unfamiliar and this doesn’t feel good.

Over time any of these patterns, often designed to keep us in the go-go-go energy of fight, flight, can become addictive too.

If this sounds familiar, great. It’s great because you’re conscious enough and honest enough to see one of your protective patterns. Freedom is found as you approach this pattern with curiosity, respect and self-compassion and as you gently create time and space for your own healing. It requires us learn to saying no. It requires us to learn to slow down. It requires us to learn to under-schedule rather than over-schedule. These are all challenging because they’re new, but they’re also where freedom is.