This is Why Therapy Isn't Going to Heal You
Healing isn't a destination to arrive at, healing is it's own organism. Healing is not the cards in your hand but you're relationship to the cards... and here's why.
Wounds can be a tools or a weapon and you’re one choice away from how you want to wield it.
There is that biscuit of information, yes instead of a tidbit I want to call it a biscuit, about how therapy and healing isn’t about not being affected but our past anymore, it’s about creating enough distance from it to grant new perspective and allowing that distance to be filled with steady and resounding choice.
Just a few weeks ago I was chatting with a dear friend of mine about how life truly is like playing cards and working with the hand you’re dealt. But I think even this analogy invokes something short sighted in us, like settling or making the best out of what we are given but we miss that the game we are holding this hand of cards inside isn’t poker or black jack or solitaire, it’s life and we aren’t limited by anything in how we choose to use or view the cards we have. Nothing has more or less meaning than what we give it and the holder gets to be the caller of the shots, not the dealer.
I went on to say, that we look at the cards we have and the ones that cause us pain often quickly get shuffled to the back of the hand, cards we will deal with later, I suppose. Try as we might though to discard them, like forgetting, minimizing, or shoving them down into oblivion wouldn’t make them any less ours. In life, your experiences, all of them are cards in your hand and you can use them as tools of compassion and triumph or you can use them as weapons against yourself or other’s detriment.
But alas, life does not have a discard pile.
So how do we get from the agonizing reality that we must hold space for the cards that feel like bruises and scars on our hearts to seeing those exact same experiences as tools for connection.
I think we first remember that every single person is holding their own hand and every single person has cards they wish they didn’t. Can you imagine if we walked around in life with the reality of our pain on display? Some might disagree, and there will always be outliers but I think if we did, 9/10th of the world would morph into something we wouldn’t recognize today in the most beautiful way. Compassion and empathy would be a choice we’d have to meet as we looked people in the eyes. Even the notion of that touches a place in me that wells with sadness at the thought of what that experience might do to me.
I also think on another side of the same coin it would regularly expose us to how powerfully resilient and good we all inherently are. What could it inspire in us if we knew and saw, we were innately so damn capable. That it takes a lot more to break us, rupture our humanity than we think.
So back to the task at hand of how we are going to change our relationship to these cards since they are ours and there is no do overs. The work begins by becoming aware of the cards as they are being wielded. Remember, that’s as a tool or a weapon.
Well, obviously there needs to be a whole section around how to build awareness of oneself, and to be honest, that could be a whole book in and of itself. There are actually many books on how to hone this skill through much much practice, so I won’t be getting into that today.
But without getting too deep, I think it’s safe to say that even without doing much work we have a general awareness of some of our personal tendencies.
I’ll use my mid twenties self as tendency tribute.
I tended to be stubbornly self-reliant.
I tended to be impulsive in decision-making.
I tended to emotionally invest in potential no matter the cost in the present.
All of these expressions of me were adornments of the cards they were representing.
The card of ….. my parents weren’t around to be my confidants growing up.
The card of ….. life means living, even if it’s reckless, especially if it’s reckless, because I know too many who will never get the chance to live.
The card of ….. if it’s not worth fighting for, it’s not really love because love and relationships are a battle.
And to be honest, there are probably many experiences that make up the wounds these cards represent, these are just the first examples that come to my mind but trust me when I say, the cards are ornate and intricate works of traumatic art when I picture them in my mind.
I will never be able to change my perception of my childhood, the memories and my experience of them are what is real for me.
I will never be able to change the countless lives I knew that have been lost.
I will never be able to change the arguments and nasty words that were louder than any I love you ever was for the first part of my life.
They are my cards. Some of them anyway.
Healing doesn’t mean getting over them, it doesn’t mean trying to erase them, it doesn’t mean minimizing their impact. Healing began for me when the death grip I held on the meaning I gave them in my life broke loose for space, for choice. Therapy is a powerful thing.
The card of ….. my parents weren’t around to be my confidants growing up, expressed as stubborn self-reliance in my twenties became the choice of carefully considering how much I didn’t desire to do all of this group project called life alone in my thirties and what I want to do about it.
The card of ….. life means living, even if it’s reckless, especially if it’s reckless, because I know too many who will never get the chance to live, expressed as impulsive decision making in my twenties became carefully considering what living with powerful intention, meaning, and purpose meant for me in my thirties and what I wanted to do about it.
The card of ….. if it’s not worth fighting for, it’s not really love because love and relationships are a battle expressed as emotionally investing in potential no matter the cost in the present in my twenties became carefully considering my boundary around potential, as I root myself in the wonder and joy of possibility with trust and knowing in my thirties.
Again, this is only one thread I’m choosing to pull and share here. This has evolved so much, in many ways, and will continue to do so with my full consent in the future.
I am not fixed, because I was never broken to begin with, and you aren’t either.
Allow the surrender to the beautiful evolution that is your life. What will my 40s self transform these cards into, Goddess willing, I can’t wait to find out.
With this new regeneration, the cards themselves haven’t changed but my relationship to them has.
This is the space where weapons or tools are forged. I also like to point out that each and every time this wound (card) is triggered the choice presents itself, and I have only found that with diligence and practice does choosing tool over weapon become easier. And sometimes I still lose, it’s like a 90/10 ratio now and I’m pretty satisfied with that ratio. I am only human.
I think in another post I’ll delve into how these cards can become bridges we build in the name of connection, and even more so why I believe some times the very things we go looking for in life…. love, purpose, etc. can be found where the rubber meets the road so to speak. In the gaps that are waiting to be filled with brave exploration of self. That’s where the magic of your story lives.
Using the cards we have, all of them, to help inform our relationship to the cards we pick up in the future, and what we’d like to do with it to help heal ourselves and maybe a little of the world along the way.
I have recently opened my new offering called Unearthing.
It’s the tip of the iceberg in what I referred to the “brave exploration of self” above.
It’s the willingness to look at what’s no longer serving you in a safe container to choose something else.
It’s the space for surrender, discernment, and powerful choice in the name of who you are and how you want to represent that in the world.
The openings are limited to 9 individuals per quarter, and if this post peaked your curiosity on what you might be missing. Book the first complimentary 75 minute call with me and we can discuss Unearthing together.
Again, the choice is entirely yours. :)
Find out more information about the offering here.
Love you, mean it,
Xx,
C
it’s only $5/month or $50 for the year, Founding members are like Pay it Forward and that’s $75 for the year.