Blog Posts

Hello friends, welcome to the blog this week. Today I wanted to talk about how hard the process of healing can be.  I have seen this with many of my clients, sometimes things are hard before they get better.  Choosing to grow and heal is so rewarding, and it’s hard.  Healing starts with taking personal accountability and responsibility and that can be hard to do.  It also takes consistency in new attitudes and behaviors.  Let me give you an example from a client I have who is on her healing journey.  Through her journey she has learned she has to have boundaries with people that don’t respect her and her healing process.  She has stayed firm in maintaining her boundaries and people in her life have not respected her boundaries and have continued to try to push her regarding them.  The personal accountability and responsibility it takes to stay in her truth and keep true to her boundaries is not always easy.  Healing has also involved going through some grief processes for relationships that have changed and aren’t as strong as they once were.  This is mainly due to other people not taking personal accountability and responsibility for their actions.  We can’t change this part of growth but we can accept and set boundaries with people who aren’t willing to change.  

I wanted to spend some time talking about how there is a grief process that comes from growth, healing, and change.   I often tell clients who are in this process that it is ok to allow themselves to feel this grief and loss and to work through the grief process to be able to get to a new level of acceptance and growth.  If you haven’t heard of stages of grief I will go over them briefly.  The grief process can include shock, denial, anger, guilt, sadness, acceptance, and growth.   The stages of grief don’t always go in order and some people may not experience every stage, some stages may also be repeated at times.  Sometimes growth and healing also comes with grieving the loss of relationships, the person we were before, and things changing to make room for new things.  So whether you are still considering making changes in your life for healing and growth or in the middle of a healing process, know that it is a process and it’s ok if it is hard at times.  For anyone on your healing journey things I recommend are:             

1. Remember to live life in the now and not to get trapped in a continuous cycle of healing and forget to live in the present.               

2. Healing is not a goal or outcome to be achieved, it is a continuous process of continuing to show up in all phases of life with love, self accountability, compassion, and trust.                        

3. It is ok to allow yourself to feel how you feel – as people tend to struggle with trying to avoid the feelings and distracting.  When it comes to healing there is no way around sitting with your feelings and allowing yourself to feel them.   The only way out of this is through it.  It will be ok.                                 

4. Healing isn’t about there being something wrong with you or something to be fixed.  Ultimately it is learning about you, understanding parts of who you are, and unlearning things and removing obstacles that limit your growth and healing.         

5. Celebrate the journey.  Taking self accountability can also come with self appreciation and higher self confidence.  Being able to learn and grow from life circumstances and challenges faced is incredibly brave and is worth celebrating.                       

Thanks for reading, until next time.                                          

Emilie Barragan, LCSW       

Tackling physical and emotional pain – Therapeuo Health