So why do we hang onto the idea that healing takes time, requiring focus and energy and this long drawn-out process?
I believe that it’s more than simply being trained to believe that everything worth having takes time and effort, that recovering from deep pain and hardship takes a long time.
I’m beginning to believe that even the strongest among us get comfortable in the role of the victim who is in the process of being healed. In the process – there’s our safe zone.
I started thinking about that a while back in my life – examining the stories I was telling myself and others, paying attention to how I saw myself. Here’s what I found…
I was used to living in the role of the victim. I talked about the horrors and the pain, the betrayals and the disappointments. I became those negative experiences; I identified myself with them. I expected it to take a long time for me to heal. I expected it to be tough and painful.
But it went even deeper than that. As long as I was a victim in the process, I had a margin of safety. After all, I only know this world from the stance of a victim in the process of healing.
What if being healed means being, well, healed, completely? Happy, healthy and capable of moving on into a full and magical life.
I learned that the thought of being happy, healthy, having my dreams come true — and, most of all, being free of drama — was a pretty scary place. In fact, it was a lot scarier than I wanted to admit. Certainly scarier than being in the process of healing.
Wow – how sad is that? How limiting? How downright silly? Yet it was true. I was so used to being the victim, to being in the process rather than beyond the process. Beyond the process was – well – life. And that was scary. So I stayed in the process, in my safety zone.
It was shock to learn I was keeping myself in victimhood.
But I stepped up and I chose to change my thinking about healing. I chose to say “I am healed, done, finished” instead of telling my victim story again and again. I consciously began to talk about the great things in front of me – and forbade myself from thinking or talking about the things behind me, at least as they related to holding me in my victim state. I decided that I didn’t want to spend any more of my life working on it or exploring it or releasing it…. I decided to cross the finish line. (In my next post I’ll dive into this healing a bit more.)
Within a week of that decision major things changed in my life. I began to feel better, I became more positive, and doors began to open toward my future. But most of all, I changed the way I thought about myself.
I wasn’t a victim of abuse, an adult who found out about horrors at the age of 50, a betrayed woman, a mess.
I was whole, capable, healthy and ready to move into the life of my dreams. And that’s exactly where I’m going, right now. How about you?
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[…] my last post, I talked about Crossing The Finish Line when it comes to my own healing. Part of stepping out of being in the process of healing, into […]