What do I do when healing feels hard?

Recently in our Trust in Love group program, we ended up talking about and working with resistance.

Everyone who does this work encounters resistance at some point. What we’ve seen is that 99% of people are actually really afraid of resistance…they think it *means* that they aren’t doing this whole healing thing “right”, that they’re somehow flawed, or moving backwards in their healing journey.

I want to debunk this, and help you learn how to work through resistance when it comes up.

In group, I led everyone in an embodied self-compassion exercise. Afterwards, a lot of the group members reflected that they had a hard time with it. They were saying things like “ugh, I just want to be able to get into this work and I should be getting into it more, I should be feeling this way, I don’t know why I’m feeling so resistant, I just want to be able to feel X, Y, and Z.”

I easily could’ve just said “yeah that happens sometimes” and moved on to the group topic we’d been planning to explore.

But instead, I had us pause, and consider the resistance.

I asked everyone, “if we didn’t feel any shame or “shoulds” towards the resistance, if we could actually just be with the part of us that is pushing back or putting up walls, what could we learn from that experience?”

As we actually unashamed the resistance, allowed ourselves to sit with it and really SEE it, we began to see the need that was living within the resistance.

So many people we work with think their resistance is a problem, when really your resistance is information. And it’s very important information.

When we allowed ourselves to be open to receiving that information - instead of shaming it or trying to blow past it - that information actually unlocked the very key that they needed in order to go to the next step in their healing process.

One version of resistance that we often encounter is what I call “healing burnout”.

When we’re constantly processing and processing and processing…thinking that in order to heal we need to always be doing this deep, dark, inner work. 

I’ve heard so many clients say something like “I almost didn't show up to session today because I was feeling so much resistance,” or “I’ve been doing so much inner work and inner processing for so long, and I just want to talk about something superficial.”

What if that wasn’t a problem?

What if you need to reconnect with the version of yourself who isn’t so identified with your trauma?

What if play was the thing that allowed the deep work to take root and integrate?

When you meet resistance in your healing journey, see if you can slow down. Look at it. Feel it. Embody it. Ask it “what do you need from me right now?” Be open to receiving the nugget of information that the resistance might unlock for you.

And if you want support with this - then you’ve come to the right place. Apply for a free 15-minute FREE Clarity Call with our Client Relations Manager, Mariana, who will help feel EMPOWERED to take the next step in your healing journey.