Latest / Thinking Out Loud | Kimberly / Why Do We Rush Healing? | Thinking Out Loud
Transcript
- Kimberly: Why do we rush healing? Lately I've been feeling resentful, not at anyone else, at myself. I've been thinking about how little balance I have right now. I tend to live in the extremes, all or nothing. If I'm healing, I want to heal faster. If I'm creating, I want it to matter now. If I'm building something, I want proof. That I'm building it correctly. I want validation. It's almost like I'm trying to rush healing just to prove I made the right choice by choosing safety. Then that proof doesn't come. Old voices get louder. Not even my own. The voices in my head. In my head. Yeah. Zombie. Zombie. sorry. Anyways. Maybe they were right. Maybe this podcast is stupid. Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. And it's painful when the voice in your head isn't your own. I was reminded of that recently when I thought about learning to crochet. I remember offering to make someone a blanket only to be met with are you even good at it? It wasn't curiosity, it was dismissal. It was a reminder that I had to learn the right to believe in myself yet. Ironically, after I got better, the same person asked me to make them a blanket, amongst other things. By that time, something had changed. It wasn't only that life had gotten busier. Somewhere along the way, creating had become tangled with proving myself. once I finally proven I was good enough to myself, I realized I no longer wanted to create for someone who made it feel like I had to earn the right to be taken seriously in the first place. I've been wondering if I'm doing something similar with healing. Am I trying to grow or am I trying to prove that I deserve to? Welcome back to Thinking Out Loud. Hi, it's me Kimberly. Before we go any further, a quick note. This podcast is for reflection and conversation. Not professional advice, take what resonates and leave the rest. Here we slow down and we explore life's grey areas, especially in relationships and behavior patterns we can observe and reflect on. I am not here to tell you what to think. I'm here to offer frameworks that help you understand your relationships, strengthen your thinking, and hold space for complexity. Let's get to thinking out loud. I think I'm ready to untangle. Honestly, that's what I think I've been doing so far with season one for my podcast. I am finally in a place in my life I can untangle things. Untangling what is true in my reality away from what people wanted, needed, or projected onto me that I should believe in. I was told, be the better person. You deserve this. You need to go back to church, Kimberly. You've really changed. At the same time, I was reflecting on abusive behaviors that never seemed to get addressed. Behaviors that didn't change. Pain that somehow became my problem when I talked about it. I could talk about what hurt me and suddenly I was ungrateful. I could question what happened and suddenly I was the problem. The more authority someone had in my life, the easier it became for me to assume they must know something about me that I didn't know about myself, right? People in leadership positions. people who were developmentally significantly further along than I was. People who had been given authority, whether through age, family structures, religion, or other systems, when you're younger or simply in a position where you have been taught to defer to someone's else's judgment, it can be incredibly difficult to distinguish authority from truth. Someone can be older than you and still be wrong about you. Someone can be your parent and still misunderstand you. Heck, they might not even know who you are. someone can be a religious leader and still project their own beliefs onto you. Someone can love you and still participate in harmful behaviors. Someone can tell you who you are for years. And eventually you might start confusing their description of you with your actual identity. That's where I think I have to start untangling. Who am I? I wasn't only trying to figure out what happened. I was trying to figure out who was I allowed to be. After this all happened? Who am I supposed to become? Who did everyone else need me to be? Perhaps the most uncomfortable question. Who benefited from me believing that version of myself? When I started looking back, I couldn't find much benefit in continuing the role I played. That someone else had assigned for me. It may have made other people more comfortable. It may have preserved the relationship. It may have maintained the appearance of peace, comforting everyone else, is not the same thing as healing. Truthfully, you can play a role outside the theater for so long that you forget you're even acting. You forget that you ever had a choice. You forget that that character was assigned to you, not even who you are. Eventually, untangling yourself means asking. Wait. Is this actually me? Or is this who I learned I needed to be? I don't think healing is about becoming a better version of the person everyone else wanted you to be. That's too vague. Too subjective. Sometimes healing is discovering that the person was never you to begin with. I was looking at my garden recently. It is a mess. There were weeds everywhere. My tomato plants were growing all over the place, falling over. I kept looking at certain plants thinking, what the hell was I growing over there? Only to realize it was a long lost radish seed that I had planted and completely forgotten about. It was chaotic, overgrown. My cabbages. Not particularly neat or tidy, unfortunately. For a moment I wanted to do what I had always wanted to do when something feels overwhelming. All or nothing, purge it. It's the purge Pull everything out, start over, make it neat, make it tidy, make it clean. Make it look like I have my shit together. Unfortunately, I'm all out of manure. When I remember what I had learned about soil, soil isn't simply dirt that plants sit in. I know, we can simplify it, but there is an entire ecosystem underneath us. microorganisms, fungi, bacteria, nutrients, decompositions, root systems. Interactions happening that we can't even see. They have their own story. Maybe the goal isn't about to make the garden look clean. Maybe the goal is to keep the soil healthy. Sometimes the worst thing you can do to soil is take everything out. The purge. Sometimes you need to cut a plant back and leave the roots because those roots are still contributing to the soil. Sometimes you really do need to put something out completely. Sometimes you need to pull something out, root and stem, because there's disease or damaging the surrounding ecosystem. And sometimes you shouldn't disturb the soil at all. No touchy. Especially if you don't have anything ready to replace what you're removing. When you strip something bare, you can create an opportunity for something else to take over. The health of the soil can matter more than the plants growing in it. I think healing works a lot like that. Sometimes we look at ourselves and we see the weeds. The behaviors we don't like, the coping mechanisms we're embarrassed about. The parts of ourselves we're ashamed of. We think, get it out! Stop doing that. Fix yourself. Be better. Be healed. What's wrong with you? We go all our nothing, baby. We weed everything we can find, and then we feel proud of ourselves when the garden looks empty. We haven't necessarily asked what is going to grow here now. You can't truly interrupt a pattern by simply removing it. Eventually something has to take its place. Maybe binge eating becomes going for a walk. Maybe doom scrolling becomes watching a movie with your family. Maybe isolating yourself becomes texting someone you trust. Maybe constantly criticizing yourself becomes learning to speak to yourself with curiosity instead. Maybe spending hours trying to problem solve in your head becomes writing down what you know and what you don't know. Maybe constantly saying yes becomes learning how to say, let me think about it. Maybe anger becomes movement, maybe avoidance becomes taking one tiny step towards the thing you've been avoiding. The point is not every coping mechanism can be swapped out a cute little healthy habit. I'm still going to Taco Bell when I'm on my period. Thank you. Life is more complicated than that. something has been serving a function. If you remove the behavior without understanding the function, you're not necessarily healing. We may be creating an empty space. Your nervous system is going back to something to put there. Because yes, your body matters, your mind matters, your nervous system matters. And apparently. So do all the tiny little bacteria living inside and around us. They have communities. They have relationships. They have jobs. probably have the drama, the tea. no no no. I'll write that love story of the bacteria later, Kimberly. Anyways, the point is that we are an ecosystem too. We are not simply a collection of behaviors that need to be weeded out. Which brings me to the dandelions. I think we've been a little too unfair to dandelions, at least here in America. We call them weeds, we spray them, we pull them out. Don't even use them when we pull them out. Rude. You look at a perfect little lawn and you see that yellow flower and think, get this out Dandelions aren't useless. They're edible. Literally every part. The root, the stem, the leaves, the flowers. You can make honey with the flowers. You can make a salad with the leaves. They contain nutrients. Their roots can be useful. And you can make teas. The flowers provide food for the pollinators, too. They can grow in places where other plants struggle. They're not inherently bad. They're not always wanted where they happen to be growing. Like between concrete. I think that's an important distinction. Sometimes. Something we hate about ourselves isn't actually bad. Sometimes it's a signal, a warning. It's sometimes it's a coping mechanism that once helped us survive something. Maybe it's a trait that became difficult only in certain environments. Maybe it just needed some redirection rather than being destroyed. Sometimes the things we keep calling a weed is actually communicating something. The dandelion Isn't sitting there thinking, how can I ruin these people's lawn today? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha It's growing and it's just vibing. Maybe it's even communicating, Springs here, baby! Come start planting your seeds. It's showtime. Maybe something we learn to hate about ourselves is doing something similar. Maybe it's telling us Something is happening here. Pay attention. That doesn't mean every behavior should stay. Some things absolutely need to be weeded out. Root and stem. Sometimes slowly, sometimes carefully, and sometimes again completely root and stem. Maybe healing isn't about creating a garden where nothing unwanted ever grows. Maybe healing is learning how to tend to the garden. Pull what needs to be pulled. Prune what needs to be pruned. Leave what needs to remain. Plant something here where something old used to grow. Feed the soil. Protect the ecosystem. Save the planet. understand that no matter how careful you garden. There are seeds sitting underneath the surface waiting for the right conditions to sprout. You can pull the root and stem out of the weed and still see it come back months later. That doesn't mean you failed. It means that there were seeds you couldn't see, millions of them. That's life. Sometimes an old pattern comes back, sometimes you're stressed, sometimes you're exhausted, sometimes you're grieving. You might be overwhelmed and the conditions may have changed. Suddenly, Hello, it's me, the weed you think is haunting you. Ha ha. That isn't proof that you haven't healed. It's information. You can pull it again. You can ask why it grew. You can change the conditions and you can plant something else. You can bring in new plants and you can keep tending that soil. eventually you can look around and realize I like my garden. Not because it's perfect. Not because there are no weeds. Not because everything grows exactly the way I intended to. It's mine. Welcome to my own Jurassic Park. I know how to care for it. And maybe that's what healing is. not because I'm weed free. Not becoming perfect. Not because I'm becoming someone who never struggles with an old pattern again. Becoming someone who knows how to tend to themselves when something unexpected starts to grow. Maybe, just maybe we do need more dandelions. Because sometimes the things we were taught to pull out of ourselves weren't the problem. Maybe we never learned what it was trying to tell us. The biggest lesson I've learned about healing is this. you cannot rush your body out of freeze mode. you have to metaphorically give yourself time to melt. I think sometimes we try to melt ourselves too quickly. we realize something isn't working, we recognize a pattern, we finally understand where something came from, and then our brain goes, Okay, we figured it out, let's go. Three, two, one, go! It's not like Mario Kart, okay? Calm down. Kimberly. Meanwhile, our body is sitting there in the corner. All how about no? Maybe that's because our bodies don't necessarily experience healing as quickly as our brains understand it. you can logically understand that you're safe before your body believes you are. you can know that something is over while your nervous system is still responding as though it's happening or finally able to take a breath. Maybe a gasping breath. You can know you don't have to do something anymore and still feel the urge to do it. I think we put an enormous amount of shame on ourselves when this happens, especially when we're talking about learned helplessness. I can relate. I think about Daenerys Stormborn. From House Targaryen from Game of Thrones. Because let's be honest, girl, if I had a dragon from the beginning, I would be thinking, Are you kidding me? I could have taken over this city years ago. There's something almost comical about watching her realize the power she had and was thinking, Wait, I could have done this the entire time? I didn't have to lose everybody? Here's where I have to separate understanding from approval. Because no, I am not willing to burn children alive and then go, oopsies. I mean, if Circe would simply give me my crown, maybe all of this wouldn't have had to happen. Because I don't want to become that person. I want to have a different conversation. That's also not who I am and or what I want to be. I think that's important when we're talking about healing too. Understanding why we developed a coping mechanism doesn't mean we have to keep it. Understanding why we became helpless doesn't mean we have to remain helpless. Understanding why someone behaved a certain way doesn't mean we have to excuse the behavior. Understanding is not endorsement. I'm finding that sometimes my brain is ready before my body is. Other times my body is ready and my brain hasn't caught up yet. I see this in the way I cope. I'll drink a diet soda and my brain is hell yeah, thank you. No calories, no guilt. I didn't harm my body. I got my dopamine hit. My brain is satisfied while my body is screaming This is not what I asked for So I go and walk. Now my body is happy. My body is getting movement. However, if I had skipped that soda, my brain would be pissed. Give me my treat, damn you. I wanna feel alive. Sometimes I think healing gets complicated because we're trying to satisfy one part of ourselves While completely ignoring another. One coping strategy might help your mind. Another might help your body, and sometimes we do need both. Feeling safe isn't only a cognitive experience. Your brain matters, your body matters, your nervous system matters. Sometimes the reason a coping mechanism is difficult to let go is because it's doing something for you that you haven't replaced yet. That's why I keep coming back to the garden. I don't want to just rip out every weed and congratulate myself on an empty soil. You have to think about what happens next because sometimes a weed is protecting the soil. Sometimes the roots are holding things together. Sometimes removing it too quickly exposes the soil to erosion or creates space for something else to take over that might be more dangerous for that soil. You remove what needs to go. At the same time, you also have to plant something else. Slowly, steadily, one seed at a time. Or one plant at the time. I think our minds work the same way. Maybe the goal isn't how quickly can I stop doing this? Maybe the better question is What does this behavior do for me and what can I build that does the same job without hurting me? If I take away the only thing that helps me regulate and then shame myself when I reach for it again, what exactly have I healed? I've made myself feel unsafe for having a freaking nervous system. I don't want to do that anymore. Heck no. No no nay nay I say. I don't want healing to become another performance, another test I can fail, another identity I have to prove, another way to tell myself you should be further along by now. Maybe my body needs more time. Maybe my brain needs more information. Maybe I need to practice something a hundred times before I become familiar with it. Like growing zucchini. I know, some people are really good at zucchini. That is not my forte. Anyways, maybe an old coping mechanism will show up again. maybe I'll catch it, maybe I won't. Maybe sometimes I'll choose the walk. Choose a diet soda. Eat the damn treat. Maybe none of these choices tell the entire story of who I am. Healing isn't a straight line. It's not even always forward. Sometimes you move forward and sometimes you move sideways and circle back because you dropped your phone. Damn it. Or your keys. And you realize you've been standing in the same place for six months and then suddenly notice, I'm not actually where I used to be. The biggest difference might not be that the old pattern disappear. It might be that I understand it now. I can recognize it. I can question it and I can choose something different. When I can't, I can try again. That doesn't mean I'm broken. It means I'm learning. And maybe that's the part of healing we don't talk about enough. You are allowed to heal at the speed your whole system can tolerate. not the speed your brain can explain, not the speed other people demand, not the speed that makes for a satisfying before and after story. Your body gets a say, your mind gets a say, your nervous system gets a say. Sometimes healing means letting yourself melt enough that you don't have to become someone else just to prove you're better. Maybe the goal was never to become someone who doesn't have weeds. Dandelands are pretty cool though. Maybe the goal was to become someone who knows what to do when they grow. Maybe that's why we need to stop rushing healing. Because sometimes there's things we call resistance is our body asking us, can we please do this at a speed that feels safe? the question. Why do we rush healing? I think sometimes we rush healing because we want proof. Proof that leaving was worth it. Proof that choosing ourselves was the right decision. Proof that we're getting better. Proof that all the pain meant something. Proof that we aren't who someone else told us we were. And sometimes I think we rush because we're still treating healing like a destination. As if one day We're going to wake up and everything will finally make sense. The weeds will be gone. The soil will be perfect. Our nervous system will finally get the memo. We'll be able to look back and say, see, I healed. I don't think that's how this works. Maybe healing isn't proving that we made the right choice. Maybe healing is learning how to live with the choices we've made. Learning what belongs to us, learning what doesn't. Learning which parts of ourselves need to be protected. Which parts need to be challenged, which parts need to be redirected, which parts we've been calling weeds simply because someone taught us they were ugly. Maybe healing isn't about becoming someone who never falls back into the old pattern. Maybe becoming someone who can recognize the old pattern when it returns. Maybe it's noticing the conditions that allowed it to grow. Maybe it's having enough compassion to ask, what happened here? Instead of immediately asking, what's wrong with me? Maybe that's why I don't want to rush anymore. I don't want to rip everything out because my garden doesn't look the way I thought it should. I don't want to force my body to move at the speed my brain demands, and I don't want to replace one form of self-abandonment with another and call it healing. I want to learn how to tend to myself slowly, honestly, without needing to perform the transformation for someone else. instead of asking Why aren't I healed yet? Maybe ask, what is my body trying to tell me? What am I trying to remove that might? need to be understood. What am I planting in the space I'm creating? Perhaps most importantly, Can I give myself time the same way I would give something else the time to grow? A garden doesn't fail because a dandelion comes back. It doesn't fail because something grows crooked. It doesn't fail because you discovered a plant you forgot you planted. Sorry, radish. I don't think we fail because an old pattern comes back either. We're growing, we're learning the soil, we're learning ourselves, and sometimes we weed, sometimes we plant, sometimes we leave things alone. Sometimes we realize the things we wanted to get rid of was actually helping us survive. Sometimes we realize it doesn't need to survive anymore, and that's okay too. you don't have to figure it all out today. You don't have to prove you've healed. You don't have to become a completely different person to prove that you've changed. You can take your time. You can let yourself melt. You can plant something new and try again. If the weeds come back, well, hello, it's me. The weeds you thought you got rid of. Pull up a chair, staring at you. Judging. Mocking. Ha ha ha. That's what those dandelions do. Just kidding. Pull out a chair and let's figure out what you're trying to tell me this time. Whether you leave a comment, send me a message, or simply sit with this question yourself. I hope this conversation stays with you. Thank you for slowing down and thinking out loud with me. Until next time, take care of yourself. And remember, healing isn't a race to become someone new. Sometimes it's the slow process of becoming safe enough to finally become yourself. I'll see you in the next episode.