The growth-killing sentence that is keeping you stuck

Last week, I was sitting with a relatively new client - let’s call them J. J and I were talking about a situation that had just popped up for them at work. J’s colleague had made a decision without checking with J first - an action that had visibly caused J to spiral into anger, hurt, frustration, and paranoia. 

While J was pretty clear on what they were feeling, the two of us were on a hunt to find out why. Why did J feel this way? Why did the emotional reaction seem unshakeable? 

I asked J if they could recall the first time they felt these particular emotions. After some thought, J responded with a brief story about their upbringing and household - sharing a scenario that clearly mimicked the scenario at work but carried with it a heavier weight of abandonment.

I curiously pointed out the similarity. J quickly, dismissively and defensively replied:

“But I’ve already worked on that. It must be something else.”

“But I’ve already worked on that” is a sentence I’ve heard more times than I can count. Interestingly enough, it is also a sentence I’ve said (and thought) more times than I can count.

And in both my personal experience and in my experience with clients - whatever we use that sentence to refer to is exactly what we need to be working on right now. 

We can only heal what our awareness allows us to

Most of us have little pockets of pain that we carry around with us through life. Sometimes they stem from our childhood, sometimes they form later on. Often times, they are born from totally harmless situations that, for whatever reason, we experienced as threatening or hurtful to us. 

Usually, we are pretty unaware of these pain points. Sometimes, we know exactly where they are but they only hurt when we poke them. So, we simply avoid poking them and go on our merry way. 

Every once in awhile, an external person or situation comes along and pokes our pain point for us. It hurts! So, we do our best to make the person or situation go away. If that’s not possible, we do our best to make the pain go away - either by developing a deeper numbness to it or by addressing it head on and doing the work to heal it.

But here’s the thing. Often times the pain point is actually much bigger than the part that’s being poked. Sometimes, multiple pain points overlap in some odd and uncomfortable venn diagram. 

With J, for example, the pain point of abandonment was obviously huge. So while J may have done work in the past and healed a portion of it - a large piece of it still remained. Additionally, a portion of J’s abandonment pain point was overlapped by another pain point - one called control. So, the work situation was triggering both points, and as a result, allowing J to see a '“hidden” portion of the abandonment point that they weren’t aware of before.

This is good news - when we let it be

Yes, healing our internal triggers and pain points can be painful. 
Yes, I know what it’s like to do so much work only to be faced with more areas to be healed. 
Yes, I have declared an area of myself healed in order to avoid doing the work to heal it further. 

However, the growth that comes - both personally and professionally - from a willingness to keep healing the “same” spots on a deeper level is profound. And more importantly, it’s worth it.

So, if you’re seeking a greater sense of relief or happiness in one way or another, I encourage you to stay open. Be aware. Pay attention to what you feel and ask when you’ve felt this way before. 

The answer may be simple. It may not be the answer you want to hear. You may feel like you have been here before. You may have thought you would never come back here again. But here you are. 

What are you going to do about it?

Are you going to turn around and pretend you didn’t see anything? You could! Your ego would certainly be happy with that.

However, if it’s really growth and healing you’re after - I’d recommend leaning into the lesson in front of you. Yes it’s uncomfortable, and the ego won’t be happy. But in the end it seems like a small price to pay for happiness and peace - don’t you think?