Hello Beautiful Souls,

If you’ve done a lot of work around something, like anger, have you healed it if you keep feeling angry?
Isn’t it supposed to go away if you’ve healed it?
Isn’t that the POINT of healing something? So that you don’t have to deal with it anymore?
Didn’t you heal it to make it go away?

For me, when it comes back, I think, “Oh my god, I thought I healed my anger, but I’m mad at my husband again! Where did this come from?! I still haven’t healed this!? Will it ever end?!”
Right?!

How many times have you had that happen: you heal something and it comes back?!
And then you doubt that you’ll ever heal it.

What if there is a better way to look at this?
Let’s look at what happens in healing, and then a way to look at it that allows us to heal in degrees, over time, vs getting disappointed that our magic wand is clearly broken!

What happens when we heal:

As we move through life, we swim through a lot of (internal and external) stimuli that we’ve conditioned ourselves to respond to in specific ways.

For instance, some situations, when I interact with them, I feel really angry. Like, when I carefully explain something to my husband, and he doesn’t understand a word I’ve said… I feel really, really angry.
That’s an awful feeling.
I don’t want to feel that anymore.

So, I do a bunch of healing work to release my charge around anger, and my charge around those situations.
And, I’ll know I’ve healed it when I don’t feel angry ever again, right?
Well, no.
Here’s the thing: those internal and external stimuli, they never go away.
I can reduce my charge around anger, and thus my angry reaction to those situations, but those situations will continue to arise… and so will my anger.
I know.
That sucks.
We all know how much that sucks.

The good news is that as I heal, as I release my charge around anger and those situations, I get calmer and more capable of dealing with my anger in them. As I’m swimming through life and that stimuli arrives, I’m able to breathe through it better. It’s not so overwhelming. I’m able to interact with those situations from a place of less charge, from a place of feeling better, from a place of interacting with those situations in a more comfortable way. Anger is still here. The intensity is not.

Healing doesn’t mean I’m never going to experience anger again. Healing means, I’m going to experience anger differently, more easily, more comfortably, with less of a charge. The stimului will still arrive, and my response will be softer, easier to deal with. Eventually, as I continue to heal, my anger will just be a little whiff of emotion, still here, but not an issue… Eventually, my husband doesn’t understand me, I pause for a breath, release any little wiffs of irritation and simply consider how to say it differently. (That will be a beautiful day!)

Now let’s look at it in a way that allows us to heal in degrees…

When I’m healing something, instead of wanting it to never happen again, I look at whether I’m improving or not. I look at, “Am I changing in any way? Internally, am I feeling any better? Talking to myself better?Externally, am I acting any better? Handling the situation any better?” And of course, only I am going to know whether I’m better at those things or not. When something floats by in my environment, I can also look back and ask, “Was I completely overwhelmed by it, like a 20 out of 10? Or was I at a nine? Before, I would have gone absolutely ballistic, and just now I was a nine out of 10! That’s awesome!”

I’m getting better. I’m still having a really uncomfortable response to the situation(s), and I’m getting better. I’m healing by degrees. Progress is being made.

The point here is to not conflate the situations happening, the stimuli arising, with you healing or not. You healing is about how you deal with the situations… are you getting better in them or not?

So, instead of thinking, “Oh my god! I still haven’t healed this… my husband still doesn’t understand me and I still get angry!”
Instead, look at “Okay, this situation just happened, and I’m still having this reaction. Am dealing with this any better? Actually, I was at a nine, and I was more conscious of myself. I was less overwhelmed! Sweet!”

A final thought to consider, your reaction will never go to zero.
And you know what?
I actually don’t want it to!
No reaction means I’ve completely shut down.
We have names for that situation, and they all end with ‘pathy’ and I don’t want to be there.

We’ve been gifted with a whole symphony of emotions, a veritable cornucopia! I’m assuming they’re all here for a reason. So, a good question is “How can I use this uncomfortable emotion differently?” Of course, it’s better to heal the past trauma that’s causing me to be really angry when it isn’t useful. Getting really angry at my husband is just painful. It isn’t helpful. Being able to calm down and explain in a different way is.

But when full blown anger does arise, and it’s appropriate, like someone is dumping toxins in my drinking water, instead of exploding and causing myself and them even more pain, can I channel my anger into something like constructive action vs mayhem? Can I channel that anger into getting the toxicity levels known publicly, or changing local laws, or helping the polluter figure out a different way to manufacture that doesn’t create the toxins in the first place, or…?

Whatever happens, the next time you find yourself saying, “What?! This again? I thought I healed this!” Ask yourself, “And, am I doing any better?”