How Much Effort Does Healing Require?

There are few patterns I’ve seen more consistently over the years, than the proclivity people have to give in to fear when it comes to self-help and the whole realm of healing and growing self.

-       Story after story of people ordering one of my books then letting it sit on the bedstand for months or a year. Or reading the first chapter, getting their ass kicked by it, and closing it for weeks into months.

-       I’ve had clients shut down in session, stonewalling me, session after session, even though I persist in going to the well of their deepest fears and troubles in a variety of different ways.

-       Heck, I’ve even had clients so terrified of truths, admissions, or the implications of admitting truths, even to themselves, that they’ll shut down the session in the middle of our conversation, literally hitting the “End Meeting” button on their computer, after barking, “Keep your money. I’m done.”

-       Or, with the always optional homework assignments, I frequently get the client who session after session, forgets, neglects, or outright refuses to do a particular task (usually a letter to a parent that I instruct them not to send), even while performing every other task on the to-do list. The blockage is so great that they refuse to do it, literally month after month, to the point where I’ve had numerous clients send an email between sessions thanking me for my great work, but they’re convinced they have healed and feel great about life. Or they will say that the letter (to the parent) really isn’t necessary at this point because they’ve made up with that person, or what have you. In other words, people will quit counseling rather than go into certain issues at the deepest levels.

That’s how powerful fear is. As discussed in my bestselling book, There’s a Hole in My Love Cup, the pain in your life must become unbearable before it can push you through your fears. The fear is of the stuff that is dragging you down most inside.

Thus, the work of healing and growing self to full authenticity and ALIVENESS, is conversation between you and your own fear. Always fear. Everything is fear, which is why, again, everything boils down to courage.

Without Focus, There is No Success

However, within that larger context of the ongoing conversation between you and your fear are other sub-issues, not the least of which, is focus. Back when I was an NCAA Head Coach for Strength, my athletes would constantly hear me bellowing from across the weightroom, nagging them, up their asses about one thing, above all else:

“There is no success in any venture in life without the capacity to focus your mind!”

I have waited tables with a 12-table section, and I’ve counseled clients who’ve just sent me a 30-page autobiography that I’ve studied. Both require immense focus. I’ve been a competitive, record-setting powerlifter and an abject failure at home repairs. Both require focus. I know the requirements, successes, and pitfalls of focus. One’s ability and willingness to focus on anything directly correlates to the likely success of the venture. Lack of focus radically increases the likelihood of failure.

Self-work and even therapy with a trained professional require cracked out focus. It demands focus, even more than it demands speed or intensity. It demands the willingness to sit in, and welcome it all: the discomfort, the pain, the implications – when you so badly want to distract, pick up your phone, walk away, start cleaning, skim the surface, or do anything to RUUUUUUNNNNNNNN, just like you always have.

See, getting past or through those giant fears that have kept the pain and discomfort packed down, bottled up, and stuffed away, demands something far stronger. It demands the pain itself giving you the courage, as mentioned above. And, that courage is the gas in the engine. But the engine, itself, is the focus. You have to sit down in it, and read the books, do the journaling, write the letters you don’t send. You have to keep going into, and back into the crud. You have to plan it, block off time, even when life wants to intrude. You have to make it a priority, just as you would the gym or anything else that you know is good for you and you want to do, but it’s an inconvenience.

Kenny, the Blown Adoption, and the Price of New Life

Kenny and his wife had been married 5 years. They were both successful in their businesses, but she more so than he, by his own admission. He totally adored his wife. He was a very sweet man.

They had been deliberating and planning for over a year to adopt two babies from overseas. They were both fully on board. She had held off on kids for career, but she made the final decision that it was time. For biological reasons, they chose to adopt. The paperwork was a long, laborious process that, because of Jan’s work and travel, Kenny did most of on his own. He also built out what was to be the baby room, installing double of everything. He’d invite his buddies over to demo walls and plaster new ones. He sucked at plumbing, so he had a plumber buddy from his time in the Navy to help with a better tub for bathing the twins and better sinks in the bathroom. Constantly, his work, his dreams, his conversations with Jan were about this new giant step for their lives.

Then the bomb dropped. One week before they were to fly overseas to get their twin babies, Jan sat him down, shook her head, and said she can’t go through with it. Not only that, but she wanted to take a six-month separation from Kenny, leaving him within the week.

To say that Kenny was devastated is an understatement. He begged. He tried to remind her of her vows. He pushed her to look at all they had planned. He tried everything. But it didn’t matter. Her heart was hardened. She knew she had to go.  It was not to be a prelude to divorce or even a legal separation, she just needed some time alone. He had her put that in writing. She kept telling him she wanted to stay married to him but just needed time alone to figure herself out.

Everything down the drain.

What would unfold, over the next month, then the rest of summer, then into the fall, would be the unraveling of their marriage. The revelation of infidelity on her part, her gambling addiction, and a seemingly never-ending barrage of new revelations forced Kenny further and further into the decision of whether to do the healing work or stuff it all down, like he had done his entire life.

For whatever reason, whether because he and I had developed a rapport and trust or because he was sick of living with so much crud inside, he chose to keep counseling with me. At first it was weekly, then after a few months, every other week, then every three weeks. Some of the money that had been socked away for the twins (who were now a lost dream), he committed to his own counseling, to the tune of 3-hour sessions, which occasionally ran longer. He doggedly went after everything I could throw at him: every writing assignment, every book I recommended, every song I told him to listen to, and every movie I told him to watch. He attacked and attacked, relentlessly, with the same singularity of purpose that he had devoted to preparing his house and life for twin nuggets and, really, so much else he had done in life.

And, it was brutal. He cried his ass off at times, both in session and out. It took a while to unlock his rage, but we finally got at it. Then that rage became the dominant force in him for weeks into months. Deeper we went, not just into the marriage, infidelities, and countless lies, but especially in tracking it all back to his own childhood. Kenny was fearless. Well, he was full of fear, but he kept attacking. He stayed his focus and just kept at it, to the point where he would remark things like, “I love journaling.” He would come prepared for a long session with a list of new insights from his self-work and things he wanted help sorting through or getting new angles on. The guy was an animal.

What was down there, deep inside? A boy who had been conditioned to give, at all costs, constantly, to everyone, but especially to those closest to him. For, that was the only way he could have worth. That was the only way he could hope to get approval and love. It was that incessant giving of self that drove his deployments in the military, the over-extending himself in volunteer work, always saying yes when his mother constantly asked him to do stuff for her, and when it came to going way above and beyond to serve his woman, as he would say. He realized he had been conditioned to believe that he only had worth when he was doing something for someone else; otherwise, he was worthless. It was brutal work, but he kept going in and going in, daily.

Then, at almost the exact six-month mark, long after realizing his wife had never been who she presented herself as, long after realizing the marriage was toast and divorce papers had been filed (by him), we had what he called “the first happy session since the day the bomb dropped.” So, we took some time to read over my notes from our first two sessions. He was fascinated and really blown away by how much sadness and softness he had for that man he had been, just six months prior. But that enabled him to see with blazing clarity how radically far and fast his transformation had been. I too was impressed by the velocity and magnitude of his change. He was like one of those athletes a coach just loves; no matter how hard you push them, they gobble it up and do the work, because they just get it and want to push harder. It was in that session that Kenny made this comment,

“You really do have to treat this work like a job.

If you’re going to do it and get the most out of it, it’s gotta be total focus.”

He was blown away by the depth and speed of his becoming a near-completely different version of himself, barely recognizing who he had become. Yet, he was so full of peace over his relationship with his new self, “It just feels right. This is the real me. I can feel it. If I hadn’t treated this like a job, it would’ve taken me years. No, that’s not right. I don’t think I would’ve ever gotten here, because it would’ve been too easy to just keep distracting myself from the discomfort and sadness of life by doing what I always did, immersing myself in doing stuff for everyone else. Negative! I don’t think there’s any way I would’ve gotten here, if I wouldn’t have gone at it with this much focus and daily dedication. I made it my calling, and it worked.”

The Only Way Out is Through

There is no doubt that the work of healing is scary, ugly, and regularly overwhelming. No doubt. But the simple fact of the matter, is that the work has to get done, whether you like it or not. It just has to be done. There is no quick fix. There is no end-around. There is no deus ex machina, miracle, or time-heals-all-wounds that’s going to make it all go away or magically fix itself. The only way truly out is through—demanding the focus to go in, again and again, if not daily then weekly; much as you might commit to a fitness routine, multiple times per week at the gym and every time you go into the kitchen.

This is what it means to focus the mind. To keep going in, again and again. To keep attacking.

You have no choice. The liberation and enduring freedom of your soul absolutely demand it. And the hidden hellscape of your life is only further confirmation that what I am saying here is absolutely true. It is the reminder of this, that must keep you going in and going back, again and again.

How do you know when you’re healed? Are you ever fully healed?

So, how long do you keep going back in and back in? How do you know when the work is done?

Generally, if you’re asking that question, you’re not done yet, but you are asking because you want it to be done.  Likely because either the work sucks so badly or you’re not seeing the results you want. Because the truth is, that work is done when the results are felt, and you will feel them.

There are a whole lot of people who will say that healing is lifetime work and that you’re never done. Um, yeah no, but yeah but no. I mean, yes, there’s always new crud in life that gets dropped into our love cups – new deaths, new losses, new fears, new everything. That’s just part and parcel of life.

But, you gotta understand that once you repair that hole in the cup and finally clear out all the manure, rocks, crud, gunk, oil, encrustations, and everything else that has been in your love cup for decades, you are now burning clean energy, filling with love, and you also have far greater capacity to handle the inevitable new challenges life will throw at you. In the past, because you were already so full of toxicity, any tiny fraction of new agitation, pain, setback, or loss just set off everything inside you. You got triggered, a lot. But, when all that past crud, especially the core beliefs you were taught about yourself, is cleared out, there is nothing left inside you to be triggered. Thus, you finally calm down inside, finally have peace. The motor finally shifts to idle, or even off, at will. That means you have emotional space and strength to handle new stuff.

Equally important, when you’ve done the heavy lifting of flushing out and mending the love cup, you have learned the tools necessary to re-empty it in the future when those inevitable life pains come. So, you not only have greater bandwidth inside, but you also have greater computing power by virtue of the new tools you’ve downloaded and become fluent in.

Yes, but how do you know if you’re actually healed, or are well along in the healing journey? Simple. You feel it, like literally feel physically different. There are words I repetitively hear the thousands of people I’ve worked with use to explain the new state of transformation they’ve reached (you can see it written all over their faces and in their energy so you know it’s not BS; it’s evident in their actions, choices, and what they refuse to allow, as well as their pursuits and new beliefs about life and self). They report feeling:

-       Driven, but by my own GPS, finally

-       Lighter

-       Sense of direction

-       Empowered

-       Peace

-       Spontaneous energy like I’ve never felt before

-       Calm

-       It all makes sense

-       Energized

-       Grounded

-       On fire

-       Clear/Clarity

-       Bliss

-       Happier

-       Purpose, not lost

-       Knowing, not wondering anymore

If you are not experiencing literal, tangible, physical transformations, you’ve not gone deep enough in your soul work. Yes, that’s right, there is a direct correlation between the soul and the physical body. I don’t have some contrived theory as to why it is. And, quite frankly, I don’t care why it is. I just know, after 30 years of doing this stuff, that it is.

You know you are making progress in your healing and growth transformation when you’re experiencing physical changes and greater clarity of energy and understanding of life. That means if your therapy or self-work is primarily up in your head (where it’s safe) you ain’t healed and ain’t gonna be healed anytime soon. To have these transformations you gotta go deep. Thus, the healing work will last until you have the courage to get out of the safety of your head, go deep and keep going deep, keep flushing out the pain, and keep identifying and extracting the core beliefs you’ve been taught to believe about yourself that have been lies all along. You can claim all sorts of nonsense to others about how you’ve healed or all the work you’ve done, but if you’re not experiencing some or most of those things above, you’re lying to others to cover or justify your fear, causing you to not go into the real work and sustain the focus until those tangible results come.

Forgiveness, Triggers, Fears, and Conversations You Don’t Want to Have

So, this leads to the question of what keeps someone from achieving those changes in physical energy and outlook on life? What if they’ve done the work, read the book, done the journaling and letters, and still aren’t getting results? How does one know where to dig or what to look for in order to go deeper?

This is a next-level question. This is where the already ugly, scary work of self-help and counseling gets even nastier and more frightening. See, when I get someone asking me why they’re not experiencing the fruits of healing that I speak about, I have to dig around to find out what they’re avoiding. Because, there’s always some fear that keeps them from touching something or going deeper on something. Often, they can’t see it, even if it’s right in front of them.

One of the single most common examples of this is the person who talks about a terrible childhood, but then explains that they’ve forgiven their mother or their father for it all, whomever the bigger perpetrator of pain on them seemed to be. After not much digging, I can tell that what forgiveness usually means is that they don’t want to look at the real pain of it all, don’t want to feel it all, and are still wanting that parent to confirm their worth, acknowledge all they did, apologize, or just offer them some positive attention and affection. Claims of forgiveness are often the very cover for exactly where they most DO NOT want to dig, yet most need to dig.

See, until the pain is out of you, it’s still in you. Forgiving, or claiming to forgive or understand someone does not magically make all that pain and that which accompanies it go away. It just gets stuffed down deeper, which is why I’ll get people coming to me months or years after forgiving a person, stating, “I forgive them, but I’m still so angry at them,” or some such thing. Forgiveness accomplishes nothing, except letting the other person off the hook.

The hope was that if I forgive them, then they’ll want me. Then they’ll see how much they’ve hurt me and how benevolent I am. Then they’ll come to me and apologize. Then we’ll have kumbaya and namaste gardens of peace and tea ceremonies.

Or, the hope was that if I forgive, then I won’t have to face all of the shit of pain and anger inside of me for all that they did to me. But also, and far more terrifying, I won’t have to face the very ominous realization that they didn’t love me and that I’ve been alone the whole time and am alone right now. Further, how can I love myself, how can anyone love me, if my own parent didn’t love me? So, the forgiveness of the parent enables a person to not have to face those questions and thoughts.

But also, forgiving the parent enables a person to keep the focus on how the problem is really ME and not mom and not dad. It enables a person to keep protecting mom and dad. For, it’s far easier to blame me than to blame them. To really look at them as the flaw in the equation means that they actually didn’t love me and don’t love me, at least not as evidenced in their actions, again meaning I’m alone.

So, forgiveness is an effective and illusionary tool for keeping a person stuck in not healing the pain, fears, and BS beliefs they’ve been taught about themselves that are still lodged down deep inside.

Another great place to dig or look when you’re not experiencing the results of physical and emotional breakthrough is where you’re being triggered. What, or who are the places, people, things, events, circumstances, plans, etc. that set you off still, or get you cranked up, or that you have to avoid? Who are the folks you hate being around or can’t talk to? What are the topics of conversation you have to avoid?

Triggers are one of the single best indicators of where you still need to do deep healing. Why? Because the problem ain’t the stuff outside you, but the stuff inside you that is being triggered. So, that is where you need to start digging:

-       Why is this triggering me?

-       What’s going on inside me right now?

-       Why does this hurt?

-       Why does this anger me?

-       What memories does this go back to?

-       Why do I sooooo want to run away right now?

All of these questions and more are opportunities to go down in to find the stuff that you still have not healed or broken through yet. You’re running from something for a reason and that reason unlocks the greater mysteries of things you’re not wanting to face and heal from!

Another area where you can start digging, is to ask yourself, who is someone I’m still wanting something from? Who is someone I’m either holding onto (clinging), or changing my behavior around, or stuffing down my real feelings toward? That wanting something or changing yourself is the desire to make up for something inside you, some compensation of a weakness inside of you, as you see it. But you’ve not wanted to face that.

Why are you clinging to this person? What is it precisely that they have that you want? What is the weakness inside you that you’ve not been wanting to face? You see yourself as at a deficit and this person has the power to create some measure of wholeness. Well, what is the origin of that deficit? Who taught you that you are not complete in this particular way?

Another area that you can be digging through to bring about the changes you want, is to look at the conversations, pursuits and people you’re afraid of or avoiding. What are you afraid of? What are your fears? Why are you afraid of these things or people or conversations? What feelings do they stir up? What are the origins of these feelings and fears? Who or what first made you feel this way; when is the earliest you remember it? Start journaling there.

All of these are tools to unlock the vault that holds all the stuff you have not healed yet, the stuff that stands between you and that new life you so desperately seek. In the end, the biggest obstacle to your new ALIVENESS is the fear of going into the stuff that elicits the strongest feelings inside of you. And the indicators of what those things are, usually hide in plain daylight. It’s the stuff you least want to touch, look at, think about, or even consider.

In the immortal words of Joseph Campbell,

The cave you most fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.

also

Where you stumble, there is your treasure.

Got the guts?

Please feel free to check out my free online moderated community, Badass Counseling Group, on Facebook. But, if you long for a closer community that’s more committed to next-level growth, direct access to me — Sven, and more excellent resources for transformation to greater ALIVENESS, go to www.badasscounseling.com and click on CMTY-PLUS! It’s what you’ve been waiting for!

Thanks for reading.

HAVE A KICKASS DAY!

-- Sven Erlandson, MDiv, Is The Author Of Seven Books, Including 'Badass Jesus: The Serious Athlete And A Life Of Noble Purpose' And 'I Steal Wives: A Serial Adulterer Reveals The REAL Reasons More And More Happily Married Women Are Cheating.' He Has Been Called The Father Of The Spiritual But Not Religious Movement After His Seminal Book 'Spiritual But Not Religious' Came Out 15 Years Ago, Long Before The Phrase Became Part Of Common Parlance And Even Longer Before The Movement Hit Critical Mass. He Is Former Military, Clergy, And NCAA Head Coach For Strength And Conditioning; And Has A Global Counseling/Consulting Practice with offices In NYC, NJ, And Stamford, CT: BadassCounseling.Com