Healing Can Be Scary

     In my session this week, I was talking about a couple of days in which my intrusive thoughts were at full volume. I went down the list of things I did to help ease my anxiety: the identify and flag technique, meditation, looking up funny things, reaching out to friends, taking "turns about the room" (AKA pretending I'm in a Jane Austen novel and walking around my living room), and then finally taking an L-theanine capsule to get my anxiety to a manageable level. I did everything I could think of that I had learned from therapy to work through the anxiety. As a result, the heightened anxiety and full-volume intrusive thoughts only lasted for around three days this time. VICTORY WAS MINE!
     My therapist always says things like, "You work really hard to manage your anxiety." And, "I honestly don't think I've had a client work as hard as you do to manage your anxiety." She's always so quick to make me recognize my hard work and progress.
     I never really understood why she made such a big deal about it. I mean, I'm in therapy to do the work, manage my anxiety, and rewire my brain. I'm choosing to be in therapy. Of course, I'm going to use what I learn there and work hard. It feels like I don't have any other choice but to work hard to help myself heal. Not working on it, to me, is like chopping my leg off and just watching myself bleed to death instead of trying to stop the bleeding. To that last statement, which I actually said out loud, my therapist responded, "You'd be surprised..."
     I've been thinking about that part of our conversation ever since. At first I was puzzled. Why would a person choose to go to therapy, but then not apply what they learn there to try to get better? Then I felt like, maybe, I started to understand a little bit, why that happens sometimes. (Spoiler: It's not because we just don't want to get better or because we're just lazy.)
     Healing is scary. Healing changes us. It changes the way we think, the way we feel, and it may even change a little bit of who we thought we were as a person. Healing is unfamiliar, and as we all know, the new and unfamiliar is enough to make even the healthiest of brains a little bit nervous. New and unfamiliar to an unwell brain that lives in unhealthy thinking patterns and craves the same old routine, well, that's enough for our funky brains to scream, "ABORT MISSION! WE CAN'T DO THIS! ABORT! ABORT! RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!"
    Healing is also scary on a more conscious level because healing hurts, in a way. We have to confront bits of ourselves that we might not like very much and the bits that are causing us to (unintentionally) hurt ourselves and maybe even loved ones. We have to face fears and traumas. We have to feel things we may have buried. There will be guilt. There will be shame. There may even be some self-loathing. Those are hard feelings for any of us to deal with. Add in the blown-out-of-proportion servings of guilt, shame, and self-loathing we experience when we have a mental health condition, and it's that much more intense.
     The idea of healing, for me, was scary in another way. Going to therapy, and thinking that I might actually be able to heal gave me hope. Hope, especially when we aren't used to feeling hope, can be scary because it's almost "too good" a feeling. That makes us want to back away from the feeling before someone else can ruin it for us. Add in the fact that I didn't think I deserved to feel hopeful because I felt like I was a terrible person, and it's even worse. I was just waiting for my hope to be taken away. I was waiting for my therapist to say she'd changed her mind and thought she couldn't help me or thought I wasn't trying. (I was crying in EVERY SINGLE SESSION for MONTHS. I was a mess. I was worried she'd give up on me.) She never gave up, and I eventually worked through my fear.
     I'll end with this: Healing can be terrifying, especially when our brains are telling us that we can't do it, that it won't help, that it's too new and unfamiliar, that it hurts too much, or that we don't deserve it. Our brains are lying to us. We can heal. EVERYONE CAN HEAL from whatever trauma or mental health condition they live with, but we all have to work at it. Just because healing seems scary doesn't mean you shouldn't try. Some of the best moments of our lives come out of the times when we're almost too afraid to try.