When healing takes longer than you’d like

This week I hosted a call for those who are working through my overeating course, Heal Overeating:  Untangled. I heard from many who are struggling with being where they are.

They want to be over there – there being further along in the course, further along in their healing, further along in weight loss – a place where they imagine feeling “successful” and “whole” and enough.

Of course.

Because of this urgency, they felt a lot of grasping, straining energy in wanting to get over there – so they can have those feelings of wholeness and healing. This can be exhausting, overwhelming and lead to a sense of “spinning our wheels.” And because it’s a feeling of judgment, it hurts. As poet May Sarton says, “The use of force exacts a formidable price in self-loathing.”

But what if you could have those feelings of wholeness right now?

If you dig below each layer of seeking – a future time or space where you imagine being more together, more whole, in less pain, further along, more “recovered”  – what you’re wanting is a time and space where you feel love, acceptance and belonging.

The reason that this is so painful is that the judgment of “not healed or not whole” creates separation. In the face of separation, we feel disconnected. We also experience a few key, primary, painful emotions:  alarm/fear/anxiety, frustration, and what my mentor calls “the pursuit of proximity,” or the pursuit of closeness and love.

When you stop judging yourself or the moment as wrong, and open to yourself as you are, you heal this separation. You feel connection and enfold yourself in the love you’ve been seeking. You are no longer in pursuit of love but resting in it.

During the call, one woman shared what was coming up for her. She realized that where she is right now is truly okay – even though it may not be where her mind thinks she should be. In coming to a place of deep acceptance – of accepting exactly where she is in this moment, without judgment – she stopped making herself wrong. In that moment of acceptance, suddenly, she was not broken or in need of healing:  she was enough. She felt connection, not separation.

In sharing this space with her on the phone, I could feel the energy of this acceptance. It felt like a warm, gentle bath, a soft opening – it was unconditional love, and it was beautiful.

Wanting to be any where other than where we are creates feelings of judgment and separation, and this separation hurts our hearts. We’re making where we are – or who we are in this moment – wrong.

But when we drop the judgment and simply accept – this is how it is right now – we open ourselves to the ever changing, ever flowing river of life. We let go of the shoulds of how we should be in control or how our healing should unfold. We connect to something deeper. And in that moment, we are not broken, but accepted, connected, cared for, and loved.

Wanting more hands on help?

• If this post resonated with you, you may also enjoy this post, “I will not make war against my own heart.”
• You may also enjoy this post on how acceptance fosters healing.
• To learn more about healing the roots of overeating through love, I invite you to explore my overeating program, Heal Overeating: Untangled. Untangled is an audio based program that helps you foster mercy and tenderness towards your struggles with food, so that your overeating is no longer viewed as a problem – something “bad” to cut out –  but something to embrace and heal with love.