When we first begin on a path to healing, we don’t reckon it will be easy. At least, not most of us. As we start moving down the road, we start to learn tools and perspectives that help us and bring us comfort when we are down. But as with anything, progress isn’t always linear.
This isn’t an article about how to keep yourself from relapsing, or even what you should do when you happen to relapse (which I have written an article about, called Back to Basics). Actually, what I want to tell you today is something completely different.
So we all know that when it comes to healing addictions and traumas and such, relapsing is “bad”, or not what we want. But relapsing is a very necessary part of healing and getting better.
Why do we relapse?
No, healing cannot always be a straight line. There are people out there who will tell you that relapsing is very important because if you didn’t face challenges, you wouldn’t really appreciate your healing when you do get it. And I think that’s just silly. Because lack of relapsing doesn’t show lack of struggle in the first place. It just means that for whatever reason you were able to overcome that struggle without turning over to your self destructive habit(s) of choice (be they anger, food restriction, risky behavior, whatever).
So what does a relapse really mean anyway? Well, it means that you still have a place where you are not healed from your wounds enough to cope with a challenge in a healthy way that you would be proud of.
Forcing relapse away
Now I don’t want to pose a relapse as a moment of weakness. That being said, there is a way to just muscle through and by sheer willpower not give in to your urges. And that’s great if you’re able to do this, however, I would still venture to say you relapsed “in your mind”. It’s fine, there’s no reason to be embarrassed or ashamed, we’re not talking about thought crimes here. All I’m saying, is that what I’m trying to tell you will still apply to you as well.
So whether you have relapsed, thought about it in your mind, or are getting worried about your thoughts turning to relapse in general, I’ve got a thought for you. These moments are not moments of weakness. They are actually conveying very important information to you.
Healing your wounds (onions and circles)
Recovering is not about just learning to control your urges and acting the way people think you should be. Recovering is about learning what emotional wounds you have, and healing them, so that you don’t feel inclined to behave the same way anymore. When you relapse (or start heading that way with your thoughts), you are learning a new part of yourself that is not healed yet.
Learning there is a new part to heal can be exhausting, especially if you feel as though you have been trying to heal forever. Yet healing is like an onion. There are so many layers to peel, and you’re going to do a lot of crying.
When you learn there is a new layer, don’t feel hopeless. Because healing isn’t the only thing that has a strange sequence. While healing is like an onion, learning is circular. So when you heal one layer of an emotional wound, your learning moves on to different subjects, and you start to amass different perspectives on different things, all while living in the relative comfort that your last realization had showed you. Eventually though, the learning comes back around full circle, and you come to another, new realization about an old trauma. When it does, you have new information, and new tools to deal with another layer of healing.
The inner work you’ve done matters
If you feel like you’ve been on the healing road for a long time, it can definitely get tedious when an old subject comes up again, and starts to eat away at you inside. You might think to yourself, “I thought I was over this already! Didn’t all the inner work I did count for anything?” I promise you, it did.
It’s important to take messages from your inner self. When it’s time for you to start paying more attention to something again, it will come up. It doesn’t mean that what you’ve done in the past wasn’t enough or that you didn’t actually heal when you thought you did. All it means is that you’re due for another new realization about yourself, your past, or the world around you with regards to this old situation.
It’s important to stop making ourselves wrong for acknowledging our pasts. There is a time to look back and reflect, just as there is a time to bask in the comfort of the present, and hope for the future. It’s easy to spend too much time in one directional plane–the past, present or future, but a balanced life includes all three.
The past
Everyone knows someone who lives their life too much in the past. They focus on the way things used to be, they hate having to accept changes, and most of all they agonize over past choices for immense swaths of time.
Yet, looking at the past and reflecting is very important. We need to acknowledge who we used to be sometimes, and identifying how we made positive changes in the past can help prepare us for changes in the future, as well as cope with conflicts and setbacks in the present. Looking at the past and gleaning all we can from it is one of the biggest ways we’re able to learn our life lessons in many cases, and it should not be discounted.
When looking back, remember that you cannot change the past. Remember that even if you could, you wouldn’t want to, because your past shaped who you are today and all the lessons you have learned came from that past, even if it was awful to go through at the time. Maybe someone betrayed you so you learned loyalty, or someone committed an atrocity and you learned forgiveness. Remember to give your past the respect it deserves, even if you’ve decided you are going to be free of it and take your life in a different direction.
(If you find it difficult to look back on your past because you don’t like who you used to be, I suggest reading this article about it.)
The future
The biggest thing to remember about the future is that it is not solid. Any thoughts that you project onto the future are just that, thoughts. Particularly your individual future is not set in stone.
When we are feeling hopeless, we tend to project that feeling into our futures and create a sort of doomsday fantasy in our heads. And when we feel good, and confident, we think the future will actually be pretty great. And you know what? We’re never wrong. Yet we’re never quite right either.
This is why living in the future so much is pointless. It’s great to prepare for who you think you might be, or to anticipate future needs. But to live your whole life projecting your hypothesis is exhausting, and you never get to have the full experience of simply being.
As humans, our pattern-recognition abilities are a great tool that has kept us alive all through eons of setbacks, but it can also be used against us. When we feel ourselves spiraling into a relapse, our perspectives on our futures selves may be warped, but if you can remember that in this state, it’s a very helpful tool. If in a state of panic or shame you can remember that the future isn’t solid, you will have a perspective that you may be able to leverage to not believe every single one of your hellish predictive thoughts.
The present
The present is where the future and the past meet each other. Funny enough, we have two very opposing viewpoints on the present. Neuroscience suggests that the present doesn’t really exist. That even when you are responding to the “present moment”, you are either reacting to a moment a couple (milli)seconds in the past, or predicting one a couple (milli)seconds into the future. And then you have much of new age spirituality claiming that the present moment is all that truly exists.
Many people try to be mindful, live more in the present. This is admirable, because lots of us live too much in the past and/or future. But even too much of this can be an overload. While it’s considered by many more “rationally sound” or “holy” to live in the present, there are still drawbacks.
The fact is that you can’t live in the present moment all the time. It’s important to use the past and future as a way of navigating life. We need a sense of time, or progression of events, to be able to see change and growth. If we didn’t have the tools of past and future, we truly would not be able to exist as a human being within the structure of society, or on a larger scale, life. So it’s not wrong to use the perspectives of past and future, it’s just necessary to keep them in check and recognize them for what they are.
Time and healing
So it’s okay to want to move on with your life from past pain and emotional scars. You have that right. But it’s not helpful to shame yourself for looking back on the past to help you understand the present and figure out the future. In fact, it’s a necessary tool. It doesn’t mean you’re not moving on, it only means that you want to take in all the information available to you so that you make an informed decision.
Let yourself take on another layer of healing if it’s coming up. And don’t try to heal by blocking a bunch of information that’s yours to keep. You earned your past, you lived it and created the history textbook that is you. Remember that on the other side waiting for you is a new level of baseline comfort when you heal and integrate whatever new realizations that are coming your way.
