When the struggle toward healing ends in sudden victory
“Do You Want to Be Healed?” Be Sure the Answer is, Yes.
A new state of health calls for courage and persistence.
My journey to emotional and psychological health was a marathon launched in childhood.
For decades: I coped. I survived. I lived below my intellectual and creative potentials. I wrecked opportunities for professional, creative, and romantic success. I cried often. I had panic attacks without knowing that’s what they were. I became a listener so I wouldn’t have to reveal myself. I had no dreams of a future. I lived to get through each day.
For decades my existence was defined by The Struggle Toward Healing. Over the years, massage, chiropractic, yoga, acupuncture, and exercise kept me physically well, but they could not heal the invisible wounds.
I’m sorry, but the old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now . . . Why? Oh, ’cause she’s dead. — Look What You Made Me Do (Written by Taylor Swift et al.)
Because the journey toward healing was fraught with setbacks, I never believed I would heal. I worked toward better thinking and behaviors, but I never thought a day would come when I was well. I focused on the battle in front of me, not on the ultimate outcome.
A two-year sprint
Between 2018 and 2020, the marathon became a sprint to a finish line I didn’t know was just around the bend. In those two years, wherever I turned for help, I found it: timely, high quality, compassionate, and affordable or free.
Among the recent, transformative influences were
- cognitive behavioral therapy,
- physical therapy,
- pastoral counseling,
- journaling,
- Taylor Swift’s CDs, and
- better friends.
In combination they helped me dismantle a damaging belief system and a history of denial, isolation, escapist behavior, and memories of parental abuse.
Much as I wanted victory over the longstanding effects of trauma (which, on the mild side, included negative self-talk and false assumptions), I was not prepared to live free of chronic, severe impediments.
I knew who I wanted to become, but I never saw myself as the person who received complete healing. I could not imagine freedom from emotional or psychological anguish.
I didn’t know that the process of being healed, when nearly finished, would create a new identity, so I never rehearsed one.
Clues to a new identity
One morning in June 2020, after the streams of healing unexpectedly converged (after a series of physical therapy sessions), I felt so physically and mentally light that I hardly recognized myself. Fortunately, I was at home, making tea for breakfast, when I noticed the comprehensive shift in identity:
- My thoughts concerned the present, not the past.
- Recollections of people that once crowded my mind, were gone.
- My muscles were relaxed.
- My self-perceptions matched up with external evidence.
As I registered the holistic healing, I felt afraid: Who was standing in the kitchen, free of worry and recrimination? How would she live with nothingness in her rib cage, abdomen, and mind?
No answers would come from thinking, so I noted the sensation of emptiness and enjoyed the absence of whatever was gone. I breathed deeply, grateful life was immediately easier simply because I was present to manage it.
I hardly knew how to wait at the counter for the water to boil. No longer an elixir for an anxious soul, tea with honey and lemon had become a delicious beverage for a calm woman who knew what she enjoyed.
Courage and insight
Into the midst of my new-found contentment came the thought:
No wonder staying off drugs is so hard that most people relapse: Not enough time goes into supporting them as they form and adapt to their new identities.
From 2010 through 2013, I worked in a residential program for women who wanted to learn how to live sober. Getting clean — of substances, criminal lifestyles, abusive relationships — was not their challenge. They were free of their former situations, but they had no idea what to do next. Who were they? Who could they become? Old cravings popped up when too much change happened; familiar but harmful coping strategies rushed in.
Fear was their primary emotion (after histories of abuse, trauma, and neglect). Through counselling in a faith-based environment, esteem- and skill-building activities, volunteer mentors, and accountability, most women graduated into stable lifestyles, educational programs, and employment.
To assist the women, I relied on my work experience, an optimistic outlook, patience acquired as an educator, and personal identification with their struggles. Even so, I lacked a crucial quality: insight into the identity-forming process they went through and the fear it provoked.
Now, seven years later, over a cup of tea I discovered that although I was healed of major aspects of dysfunction, I was afraid to live without them. Would the fear prompt a relapse?
I had no provision for my next step. But I knew I was healed because in that moment — not hours or years later — I knew how I felt (afraid).
I also knew I was healed because I could respond — not react — to the emotion. Confident that the trembling in my legs came from fear, I counseled myself, “You are going to need courage to live in this unfamiliar state of health.”
Courage was a tall order, so I added, “And persistence to go after new goals.”
