Fear of Healing
Fear of healing might seem like an odd topic for a blog, or even just an odd topic in general. After all, who doesn’t want to heal? Who doesn’t want to move back into living their life again after a trauma or illness? What is there to be fearful or anxious about in surviving? Who wouldn’t want to step into loving and leading the life they have been dreaming about?
Expressing ones fears when it comes to healing has a culture of shame around it. Why? I believe it is because it is hard for people to understand and make sense of these types of fears since they are not part of our conscious mind and choices but rather lurk in the shadow of our unconscious mind. People tend to shame what they do not understand or feel that they can control. I would like to start to try and shift this stigma. What if instead of shaming ourselves for having these fears and thoughts we see them for what they truly are – survival tools and patterns that our subconscious developed to help protect us and keep us safe. These fears/limiting beliefs are not something to hide and shove back into the depths of our subconscious. They are very real and are what’s called hidden or secondary gains of an obstacle. Secondary gains are the hidden benefits or beliefs that your unconscious mind has grab hold of that are ways for you to get your needs met despite the illness, trauma, or pain. By learning to open our awareness to them with compassion and curiosity, verses judgements, we can find the hidden keys needed to truly heal and free ourselves.
I know all too well these types of fears and the sense of shame that can arise in yourself for even thinking them let alone saying them out loud to someone else. I’ve been there, done that. Even today, I find myself working through releasing these types of fears and beliefs.
About five years ago was when I started to finally be open to the concept of secondary gain. It was a bit of an awakening when I finally agreed that I had conflicting beliefs and hidden resistances to healing and accepting that I can love myself just the way I was – flaws and all. Once I understood the different belief systems I could all of a sudden see the places in my everyday life that I had shifted to embrace the rolls of survivor, warrior, underdog, and many other archetypal myths that I had enlisted as part of my carefully crafted shield to dealing with the world and life in the mist of trauma and illness. I also saw clearly how learning to engage with life through the very real illnesses and events that were a part of my life history has developed the perfect shields and defense system that just keep running after it was no longer needed. One of the hardest things I had to admit to myself was the ways in which illness and pain had in some way transformed into my most treasured protector that I didn’t even know was there.
However, once I cracked the door into awareness and acceptance that these shield existed and I was willing to look at dissolving them it opened a tsunami of push back from my subconscious that really didn’t think that was a good idea! Wave after wave of doubts and questions ran through me. Who was I without them? What if I couldn’t really do the things I had dreamt about? What if people will leave me because I no longer literally needed their help? What if I wasn’t strong enough to “do” life? What if…
Solution – This was when I first found an amazing technique and tool that is perfect for handling this type of tsunami of emotions and fears – Emotional Freedom Technique or EFT. I use (and we use with our clients) EFT to help work through the healing process, especially when realizing that I’m hitting one of these types of secondary gain issues that are blocking me from moving out of limiting beliefs and into empowered choices and actions. I really like one type of EFT called Progressive EFT (Pro EFT) developed by Lindsey Kenney.
So how does Tapping work?
Tapping combines the principles of ancient Chinese acupressure and the meridians systems with modern psychology. By tapping on the different meridian points while working through a limiting emotion, sensation, belief, or event you can help your body to release its “active threat” response and calm down the nervous system. Once your fight/flight/freeze response is no longer active and up and running you can then replace and rewire your system with new empowering beliefs and emotions. Tapping has been proven to help rewire the brain to respond to triggers in healthier ways. Once your body shifts to being in balance in the here and now, you literally feel different and have more access to choice and actions that are in alignment with that choice. What I also love is that science and the field of epigenetics is now able to show that when we bring an internal balance and change to our body’s systems via shifting our emotions and beliefs, then external changes in our mental and physical health will follow as well! Tapping is a great way to bring about those changes.
I’ve included one of the guided mediation that I share in our Growth Course for helping release these types of shadow beliefs that are blocking us from feeling safe to actually reach our goals.
To those of you that might be struggling with these types of feelings and underlining beliefs, I would like to let you know that you are not alone.
Sending light and love on your journey — Michelle
P.S. To learn more about our program for finding hope, healing, and growth check out our programs page, because sometimes we need a little support to embrace the beautiful amazing being we are!
