Managing the Nonlinear Path of Healing (with Journal Prompts)

Healing journeys are a roller coaster of ups, downs, and everything in between! In this episode, I'll be chatting about the nonlinear path of healing, embracing the understanding that everything in life is temporary, and sharing personal insights and experiences that highlight this phenomenon. Towards the end, I'll provide journal prompts that have helped me find balance and rediscover myself during challenging times. So take a listen to explore the nonlinear path of healing, find peace in impermanence, and discover the transformative power of journaling to bring us back to our center in order to move forward.

Healing requires energy, vulnerability, and hard work. It’s a lifelong journey and it's never linear. Whatever season you're in on your healing journey, hold on to hope. <3

I hope you have a lovely rest of your day!
Love,
MacKenzie Mae


For help NOW!
RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline: 1-800-656-HOPE

For boys and men specifically: 1-800-656-4673

More resources here! https://linktr.ee/traumachatspodcast

Transcript

Welcome back fellow survivors and allies to trauma chats with mackenzie mae! As always, thank you so much for clicking on this episode. Today I’ll be chatting about the roller coaster journey of healing, the ups and downs, how everything in life is temporary, and towards the end I’ll be sharing some journal prompts that have truly helped me when I’m experiencing a low in my healing journey to bring me back to my center, to balance me, and help me feel more like myself again. Be sure to follow this podcast, leave a rate and review, and share it with someone you think would benefit from it! Let’s grow this community, help other survivors feel less alone, and raise awareness of sexual trauma! Alrighty, let’s get into today’s episode!

Healing journeys are filled with high highs, low lows, and everything in between. I don’t think I’ve gone a year where I don’t have at least a few months of feeling very low, struggling heavily with my mental health, and in those times it truly feels like I’ll feel that way forever. I also usually have a few months of feeling on top of things, feeling balanced, fulfilled, optimistic and always hoping those times last forever. I think throughout the years I’ve been able to look back and realize every low I’ve had has been temporary, but so is every high. Truly everything in life is temporary. In low times though I feel it’s going to last forever and in high times I’m wishing it’ll last forever. I’ll have a few months of feeling stable, on top of everything, balanced in life and then a change starts creeping in or something triggers me and starts disrupting that balance. I’ve found that it takes some time to recalibrate and adjust to change, but in those times of change, which are unavoidable and frankly inevitable, I tend to regress back to old thought patterns, old neural pathways that I’ve worked so hard for so long to rewire. It feels defeating because oftentimes before a change my brain was just getting good at taking the new neural pathways that I’d established, but once my brain feels unbalanced and unstable, it reverts back. Then the more my brain takes those old neural pathways enough, they start to solidify again. I feel like my whole healing journey it’s felt like I’ve taken 1 step forward then once unbalanced, 2 steps back. But in reality, it’s really like 2 steps forward, 1 step back. See even if my brain starts to revert to old thought patterns, old behaviors, and habits, I still have the learnings I’ve worked so hard on beforehand that I can re-establish. And the more and more I re-establish those learning, recalibrate my balance, the more and more they solidify and allow me to bounce back easier. Everyone is going to go through change, times of feeling unstable and unbalanced. We are all challenged throughout life; we really can’t avoid that. What we can do though is learn how to efficiently adapt, how to bounce back quicker, and re-establish that balance again, to incorporate those newer, more aligned, learned behaviors, thought patterns, and habits. What I’m trying to say is we don’t lose the progress we made, because it’s still inside us. Lately I’ve really been struggling with believing in myself and feeling that I’m capable of achieving my goals. I’ve begun to revert to old thinking patterns that I’m not worthy of success, that I’m not only not worthy, but I’m not capable of succeeding. I’ve been struggling with self-deprecating thoughts. Constantly cringing at what I say and what I do, thinking I’m ruining the moment, I’m the one to blame when things go any way other than what was planned. I’ve battled with these thoughts for seemingly my whole life on and off. So now this time, I’m taking a different approach to getting out of this rut. This time I’m really trying to reflect on the times when I DID believe in myself, when I DID succeed, when I felt capable of creating the life of my dreams. What did I learn during those times? What made me feel capable? What made me believe in myself? What I’ve re-discovered is turning inward, going back to the basics of my healing, and consistently taking imperfect action is what made me feel capable and believe in myself. The other day I was having a breakdown, on a verge of a panic attack, crying, self-deprecating thoughts spiraling in my mind, wanting to rip my hair out of my head, and I decided to take out my journal that I saw I hadn’t written in for over two months. I just started writing out my feelings, what was going through my mind, ended up jabbing the paper enough to rip some holes from my frustration, and slowly but surely, my thoughts started moving towards knowing I didn’t align with the horribly, rude thoughts I was thinking about myself, that I didn’t have to align with them, and that they were just thoughts coming up due to old thought patterns that I’ve determined I do not align with long ago. After becoming aware of this, I was able to sit back and truly observe the thoughts one by one, and ask myself, “hmm, do I align with this? Or am I going to let it pass because it’s only negative thoughts trying to bring me down?” After doing this for a few minutes, I was able to come to an awareness that these thoughts were not me, they were my mental illness, old shame and guilt, trying to take control of me, trying to take me back to where I was in the past, in my comfort zone, trying to protect me when there was nothing to protect me from. Negative thoughts of feeling shameful, guilty, unworthy, and incapable were attempts at keeping me safe because if I can take all the blame myself, if I can acknowledge that I’m incapable, then I won’t be hurt as bad when someone does blame me or when I do fail. In reality though, these attempts don’t keep me safe. They hold me back, make me internalize that I am the problem, and don’t give me enough credit. As I was writing these thoughts and interventions down, I moved forward to thoughts of, “okay well I’m clearly feeling off balance since my old thought patterns are coming forward again.” Why do I feel off balance? I remembered how I hadn’t written in my journal in over two months. I remembered I had started a new job, had many other changes arise that caused me to feel overwhelmed and led to me avoiding the gym, not eating nutritious meals, not taking care of myself and doing what makes me feel good all in that two months as well. For a while I was racking my brain on why the heck I’ve been feeling so off when just a few months ago I was feeling on top of the world? And in this low moment as I turned inward and got my thoughts out on paper, I finally made the realization that I’d just been knocked off balance which caused me to fall off of what makes me feel like me. This realization was so comforting, and I was able to finally take a step back and show myself compassion. Honestly, I need to listen to episode 3 about rewiring your brain with self-compassion again because as I mentioned in that episode, I definitely still struggle with it. For me, at times it’s much easier to put myself down than be my own best friend. It’s another aspect of my healing journey that has its ups and downs. But the truth is, it’s okay to get off track. It’s okay to fall out of balance. Everyone does at some point or another. This is just another instance that proves everything in life is temporary, the few months of feeling on top of the world was temporary, and so is this period of time not feeling like myself. But I can influence how I’m feeling and take action to bring me back to base. I then started writing about some imperfect actions I could start doing right then to catalyze my re-calibration back to feeling grounded, balanced, and centered. I went back to the basics. What makes me feel good? I wrote 8 hours of sleep, nutritious foods, journal, move my body, and read. Then I realized and wrote, I am the only one who can make the shift to feel like myself again. 1% better each day. That’s all. After that I immediately got up and started making myself a nutritious dinner, then got ready for a good night’s rest and already started to feel better. I wanted to share this with you all because I know so many people struggle with the ups and downs of healing, truly of life in general, because whether you’re on a healing journey or not, you’re still going to experience ups and downs. I think on a healing journey though, we can almost be MORE critical of ourselves because we just want to be healed so badly. Many survivors also struggle with shame and guilt from the experiences we’ve endured, so commonly we can even feel shameful for falling into a rut or off balance. We truly put in so much time, energy, and resources to heal ourselves so when we get into a rut it feels that much more disappointing. If I hadn’t done all the healing I had prior to this low time though, I wouldn’t have had the knowledge to journal my feelings, to go back to the basics, to prompt myself to reflect and determine a realistic plan forward. Those learnings remained even though in the moment it felt like I had regressed maybe even to a worse place than before. This is just all part of the process, all part of a healing journey, of life in general. Healing journeys are not linear, however they still do positively trend up and overtime if you put your healing on a graph you would realize that you are much more healed, at a higher point, than where you started with the various ups and downs throughout the journey’s graph. This is why I think it’s incredibly important and helpful to journal because journaling allows you to actually look back on how you thought in the past, where you were at mentally in previous points of your healing journey and life so you can reflect and find gratitude in where you are at now. You should be proud of yourself! Be proud of yourself for even trying, because so many of us can’t even fathom trying to heal something so destructive. You are on the right track just thinking about healing, just listening to this podcast. For my fellow survivors I want you to know you are truly brave to listen to this podcast. There are years of my healing journey where I don’t think I could have listened to a podcast about this topic. I didn’t want to hear about it, it hurt too much. But healing comes when you seek it out, when you seek out what your life could look like if you did embark on this uphill battle of moving forward with traumatic experiences. Everyone, every survivor is on their own journey at their own pace. I found that creating this podcast has been incredibly healing for me, but at the same time triggering, heavy, and difficult to create at times. That’s another point about a healing journey is that sometimes you’re just not in a mindset to engage in healing, sometimes you need to take a break, need to step away from it because it becomes too much. That’s okay. That’s why I’ve had to slow down on this podcast because it was becoming a little too much for me. Whereas when I started I was full of energy to dive into these topics. Healing is going to ebb and flow. You don’t have to constantly be working on something, improving yourself, etc. You can choose to take a step back and just exist on this planet, just engage in simple pleasures of life, find that balance again, which will energize you to then come back to your healing and make even more progress! That is the nature of healing and the nature of life itself. I’ve mentioned in a past episode on 3 insights I wish I knew before starting my healing journey, which is you can’t heal everything all at once. Trauma literally changes your brain, impacts different parts of your brain, your nervous system, your body, changes your brain chemistry and so much more. It would be impossible to heal everything at once. You wouldn’t even know everything that could be healed. If you tried to do that you wouldn’t have time to live your life, spend quality time with loved ones, engage in other goals, etc. It’s all about balance and going at a pace that works for you. So knowing this fact, you must internalize that you will always have something to improve upon, but you are not a machine, you are not a science experiment, you are not something that needs to be fixed, you are a human being, just like every other human being, and we’re all just trying to move towards the best version of ourselves, but self-improvement isn’t the purpose of life. It’s only one facet that can improve your existence here, among many other facets like pleasure, connection, challenges, exploration, and more! So the key is to seek a balance in it all, because what would life be if you only had time to improve yourself but no time to explore, to feel pleasure, to connect with others and nature, to challenge yourself in other ways? You know what I mean? 

If you’re in a rut, not feeling like yourself, feeling disappointed in yourself, or struggling with negative self-talk, know that you are not alone. Know that it is temporary. It will pass. You will be okay. Listen to your body and do what makes you feel good. I challenge you to do a similar journal entry that I did. Get out a notebook or your notes app and write down these questions to answer. If you’re struggling with negative self-talk, write out those thoughts, then ask yourself, “Does my best self align with this thought?” yes or no? I’m going to assume it’s no. If feel up for going further, I want you to reframe that negative thought and find just one experience that disproves it. For example, I’ve been having thoughts of not being capable to create the life of my dreams. So I would write that thought. I am not capable of creating the life of my dreams. Does my best self align with that thought? Heck NO! how can I reframe this? I AM capable of creating the life of my dreams? How do I know? Because I’ve always wanted to help other survivors feel less alone and guess what I’m doing that! So that’s my proof that the reframed thought is true. If you’re not feeling like yourself, feeling in a rut, feeling disappointed in yourself, I want you to journal about the times you DID feel like yourself, when you felt balanced, on top of the world, etc. even if it was only a day. Discover what made you feel most like yourself. And if you want to go further, write out a simple, realistic plan to get back to feeling like yourself. I discovered that I feel most like myself and proud of myself when I’m eating nutritious foods, getting 8hrs of sleep, expanding my mind through reading, and moving my body. I wrote those out and a plan to follow through on those to slowly find my balance again. I kept them very realistic and simple because I didn’t want to get to complex right out of the gates in fear of not being able to attain it and feeling guilty for that on top of how I felt in the first place if that makes sense. Imperfect action is better than no action at all. Let me know if you try out these journal prompts and if they helped! These are exactly what I did and I’m already feeling a little better than I was. 

This is all I have for this week’s episode! I hope it made you feel less alone or you were able to relate a bit! I truly appreciate each and every one of you for listening and showing your support! If you like this podcast, you’ll probably like the Instagram page, it’s @ traumachatspodcast so go give it a follow if you’re interested! Share this episode with someone you think would benefit from hearing it! Alrighty, I hope you have a lovely rest of your day and I can’t wait to chat again soon!