Sarah Smith’s Path to Healing

Hello,

I had an interesting chat with AI today. It kept asking me to dig deeper and to go further. I asked it why I should do that.

AI answered that I was using my circling technique as a mechanism to protect myself. That I was using it to avoid things that I didn’t want to, or wasn’t ready to, feel yet.

I will admit that I probably do that, but I try to do it consciously. Like the post about giving myself three days. I knew I wasn’t in the mindset to deal with it in that moment, so I set myself a limit as to how long I was allowed to avoid it.

It also showed me another thing. Most people (me mostly included) see healing as a change. The ultimate goal is change and happiness.

This definition has changed for me, and it’s mostly thanks to this blog. My definition of healing has become acceptance.

Healing means change, yes, but it doesn’t mean that the goal should be change. The goal should be acceptance, because we are only able to change something after acknowledging it.

I feel like I could explain this best with an example.

Let’s say you want to visit a friend. You get into your car and you turn the steering wheel. You make every turn exactly as it’s supposed to be. You turn the wheel to the left when you should be turning left, and right when you should be turning right. But you don’t arrive. What did you forget? You didn’t start the car.

Change without acceptance is like turning the wheel without turning the engine on and putting the car into drive.

Acceptance is as important as making a decision, because if we resist something then we cannot go towards it. It’s like pushing two magnets together that don’t go together. You can push and push and push, but as soon as you let go, they will do what they want to.

Acceptance is taking the magnetic force out of the magnets.

It seems dangerous at times because it can be. I remember being in toxic environments and being in life-threatening situations. I remember how hard I had to fight to hold on. The thing is, even in those situations, I was only able to change something when I accepted that this was my reality. That I was in a bad place. It made me realise that I had to get out.

Acceptance becomes easier with time. I’ve been “training” it for years, and even I still struggle with it at times.

Acceptance does not mean that you accept that it has to stay the way it is.

It means that you accept the way it is at the moment.

You start the car, you accept that you are in your driveway, and then you start changing things by putting the car into drive and turning the wheel.

That’s how it works in real life. Acceptance is starting the car so that you can change your environment and head to where you actually want to be.

Yeah, I really just wanted to explain why I don’t go deeper in my posts. It’s not about solving everything in that moment. It’s about accepting life as it is, so that I have a chance at changing things.

I hope you enjoyed my brain dump.

Lots of love
Me