Healing is Active

    I was discussing mental health and therapy with a friend recently. (I know, I talk a lot about mental health with my friends, but we talk about lighter stuff, too, I swear.) They asked me if I thought true healing was actually possible. Of course, my answer was, "Yes, healing is definitely possible..."

    Could you sense the "but" that comes next? Here it is: "Yes, healing is definitely possible, BUT it doesn't just happen." What I mean by that is that healing is not a thing that happens TO you. Healing is a thing that happens BECAUSE of you.

    There seems to be this common misconception about the healing process. Many people think that healing sort of just magically happens after you've been in therapy for so long. People tend to think all you have to do is go to therapy, and then you'll wake up one morning and miraculously be healed from past traumas and unhealthy coping mechanisms. I can see why people think that. Thanks to jump cuts in movies and TV shows, healing looks a bit like a new and improved phase of life that someone just sort of falls into with the passage of time.

    Healing is actually nothing like that. Healing is not a journey in which a person can just sit back and enjoy the ride. Healing is a journey that requires active participation. You have to choose to start that journey and then carefully choose every step you take in order to heal. Like I said, healing doesn't happen TO you as a result of therapy; healing happens BECAUSE of you, BECAUSE of the things you learn and the steps you decide to take.

    Healing takes effort. Your therapist can talk to you about it for years, give you information, give you tools, and do everything that a therapist possibly can to help you, but it won't actually help you heal if you don't take the information to heart, believe it, and then use it. The actual sessions are only part of healing. The other part comes after the hour-long sessions end. That's when you have to choose to use the information and the tools to help yourself. 

   I'm not at all saying that healing will always happen, and it's our own fault when it doesn't happen. I completely understand that there are periods when survival will be the only option, and healing will have to take a backseat. I get that. I still have those periods, and I probably will always have them. During those times, my only priority is making it through that day. It could be DAYS or WEEKS before I can shift out of survival mode and back into a more even state of existence. That's okay. Having those hard times does not mean that all the healing we've worked toward has been undone. 

    Healing does not happen in a linear progression. (My therapist says it's more like a spiral. Which means the bad times and times of healing can and will circle back around time and again.) Healing also is not a phase of life that can be ended for us or a destination from which we can be kicked out. Healing is an active state of existence that we can create around ourselves over and over again.

    I'll end with this: Many people think that healing is a thing that happens TO someone, but healing is actually an active process that happens BECAUSE of someone, BECAUSE of the steps they choose to take on their mental health journey. Mental health management functions in a spiral of bad and good days, which means that those of us with mental health conditions will have times when healing can take place and times when survival mode is activated and healing is paused. That is okay. Don't give up on the hope that you can heal because you continue to have bad days. The bad days don't undo the healing that has already happened.