Could we stop telling women that to heal it has to be hard? Like for some insane reason they have to be strong to heal. Or that if they can’t handle the intensity of the healing journey then nothing will get better? Seriously. This is just another way to keep people living in shame when they don’t know how to solve their major mental health issues by themselves.
Now, many people may be a bit confused by what I mean by this. And, no, there are not buckets of people out there straight up asking women if they have the balls to heal. But let me paint a picture using a bit of my own journey.
Often, particularly in the coaching community, I have seen many people presenting the services they provide to potential clients by telling them how difficult it will be to complete their program but that they will be there to support them. This has always bothered me from when I first began hiring coaches to now when I am one myself. Here’s why. I was in an abusive relationship, like a really super abusive relationship for many years. And that caused a ton of trauma that I had to fight through to even leave let alone heal from. And, if I am being 100% transparent, I am still healing from even now years and years later. But when I first realized that I was struggling with all of the PTSD from my relationship coming up and poisoning my life there was an actual time when I didn’t want to hire anyone to help me because all I could hear in everything that I saw was that it was going to be such a challenge to heal.
That makes no sense, why they heck would I want to take on something under the pretense of knowing that it is going to be super hard? Hadn’t I already been through enough hard? And I was going through something hard that was already making life difficult to navigate. Why the hell would I want to add more hard?
Don’t get me wrong, all the coaches I was looking at didn’t say it was going to be a ‘difficult journey’ right up front. But when they were really ‘pitching’ me, when they wanted to make sure I had commitment they started talking about how I needed to stick with it. That it was going to be messy but I would make it through.
Um, no.
And its not just coaches, not even close. Its your mom when you start to open up and you express your fear that healing sounds hard and she agrees. Or your best friend who just accomplished some healing herself and is telling you how hard it is. These people are not trying to stop your healing, in fact quite the opposite, they are just trying to support you. But they are enforcing the negative belief that healing is hard because they have adopted it, not because healing is actually difficult.
Healing will be hard if you believe it has to be. So stop believing that.
You want to know what is hard? Staying in the same patterns that have been ruining your life. Re-living the pain of your past over and over again. Letting your anxiety keep you from living the life you want or having the relationship you want. Living in constant fear that you aren’t good enough.
All that is freaking hard! It is hard to be trapped in your mind. And want to know what is even harder than that? Believing that you have to solve all these problems by, your, self. Heck no!
The feeling of alone-ness you feel when you think that you have to heal all the troubles that you are facing without asking for help, sucks. Especially when staying stuck in all those old patterns and fears sucks too.
Every time someone acts like the act of healing is so hard or requires you to overcome so much do not believe them. The only thing you need to do to start your healing process is accept that it is possible.
When what I was going through with my anxiety and relationship was more painful and difficult than I imagined healing could be was when I finally started hiring coaches. And then when those coaches’ processes didn’t fully fit what I needed (i.e they tried to make it way too damn hard when it didn’t need to be) I created my own process. A fun process. Because healing can and should be fun.
So stop listening when people tell you how hard it is to heal. It by no means has to be. Do not let the fact that someone else decided it must be dictate what you believe. It hurts so much worse to remain in your pain than it will to heal that pain and move on with the life that you deserve to be living.