When healing feels like a game of snakes and ladders

[Note: all em dashes (—) are my own, not chatGPT's]

Sometimes the healing journey can feel like a game of snakes and ladders.

Finally, you feel like you're making progress...

You replied to those emails you were avoiding!

One rung up.

You said *no* to something that didn’t feel right.

Another rung. You're on the move!

You did your first Instagram Live!

More rungs.

You didn’t spiral when you felt triggered (you stayed present and felt it).

Rungs on rungs.

You're going to the gym twice a week!

You're climbing now.
Oh, it can feel so good to scale the ladders of momentum and wellness.

And then...

On one harmless morning, just when you thought you'd cracked the code and you were finally feeling lighter and stronger, you wake up with a kettle-bell feeling in your chest (hello anxiety).

Or you got hung up on that cutie you met at the party last week.

Or you see a post by your very pretty entrepreneur friend and it makes you feel small.

Or you do the people-pleasing thing you swore you wouldn’t.

It happens.

Movement, progress, and then bam! —

It can feel like we slid down the snake to square one.

Exasperated or hopeless parts can come up when you find yourself at the snake's tail. 

I'll never figure this out.

How am I back here?

Maybe there’s something wrong with me...

I'll never feel free.

I get it. 

Let those parts know this: this is normal and a good part of the healing and becoming process. Even with a jumbo Disney Land-sized slide, you're actually still on track.

Here's why:

1. Healing happens through expansion and contraction. 

Expansion and contraction. 

Expansion and contraction.

Expansion and contraction.

In breath. Out breath.

Your system is opening and contracting, that’s how nervous systems grow.

So if you find yourself in an exhale (downward snake slide), it doesn't mean you're going backwards. It means you're on the next step of the healing process.

Just take the next step, feel the next feeling.

2. Know that it's not that you went to the bottom. The bottom came to you. 

This feeling came up because it needs your attention. So give it. Be present with whatever's arising now.

You're at the pinnacle of today's healing journey and this is what it looks like.

3. Everything passes. 

Even this feeling. Even this depth, even this height. Go with it. Grow.

4. It’s a process.

It doesn’t happen instantly. Healing (creation, becoming) takes time, but it is happening. Think of a forest that is burned to ash. Slowly, it regenerates. At first the regrowth doesn’t seem like much, but it is happening.

It’s happening for you too.

5. Rather than chasing healed perfection, move toward being present with whatever's here, now.

That's actually where the biggest healing and becoming happens anyway. When you're present with what's here, not resisting it nor chasing something.

Be here now with the parts of you that are showing themselves.

The snakes and ladders are actually one thing. And they're on your side for becoming.

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