A trusted friend with long time recovery said the other day “I feel like I should be further along in my healing” and I was reminded of a Fibonacci sequence or a spiral. Once we have awareness of the pattern, behavior or wound, we will continue to revisit that center point - often times more frequently in the beginning as we’re still close to the entry wound. As we begin to heal, we move around the circle, each time viewing the core wound from a higher perspective or “further out” purview. Somewhere along our trudging of the labyrinth, grace, acceptance, and ultimately healing can follow if we allow and not judge ourselves too harshly.
Thank you for this CallieJo. The spiral image feels exactly right to me. Healing rarely moves in a straight line because the psyche is not simply trying to “get away” from the wound. It is trying to return to it from a different relationship. Early on, we circle close to the entry wound, so it can feel like nothing has changed. But sometimes the evidence of healing is not that the pattern has disappeared. It is that we are meeting the pattern with more awareness, less shame, more compassion, and a little more room to choose.
“I should be further along” is often the ego’s impatience with the psyche’s deeper repair. The wound keeps appearing not to punish us, but because something in us is still asking to be seen, held, and brought into right relationship.
Grace matters there. So does patience. The spiral may revisit the same center, but we are not always the same person when we arrive.
A trusted friend with long time recovery said the other day “I feel like I should be further along in my healing” and I was reminded of a Fibonacci sequence or a spiral. Once we have awareness of the pattern, behavior or wound, we will continue to revisit that center point - often times more frequently in the beginning as we’re still close to the entry wound. As we begin to heal, we move around the circle, each time viewing the core wound from a higher perspective or “further out” purview. Somewhere along our trudging of the labyrinth, grace, acceptance, and ultimately healing can follow if we allow and not judge ourselves too harshly.
Thank you for this CallieJo. The spiral image feels exactly right to me. Healing rarely moves in a straight line because the psyche is not simply trying to “get away” from the wound. It is trying to return to it from a different relationship. Early on, we circle close to the entry wound, so it can feel like nothing has changed. But sometimes the evidence of healing is not that the pattern has disappeared. It is that we are meeting the pattern with more awareness, less shame, more compassion, and a little more room to choose.
“I should be further along” is often the ego’s impatience with the psyche’s deeper repair. The wound keeps appearing not to punish us, but because something in us is still asking to be seen, held, and brought into right relationship.
Grace matters there. So does patience. The spiral may revisit the same center, but we are not always the same person when we arrive.