Healing: Can Someone Sabotage Their Healing If They Have The Need To Suffer?

If someone is finding it hard to function, they may have the need to look into what they can do to change their life. This can mean that they suffer from anxiety and are often depressed.

They may even have the inclination to end up in relationships that are not very fulfilling. This can be because the people they have been with were emotionally unavailable and perhaps didn’t treat them very well.

The Next Step

After this, they can look for a therapist or a healer to work with and end up booking their first session. During their first session, they can talk about what is going on for them and what they are looking to achieve.

Before long, they can explore their thought patterns and look into what they believe. They might find that a lot of their thoughts are negative and a lot of what they believe is very limiting.

Another part

This might be as far as it goes, or as the weeks and months pass, they might explore what is going on for them at an emotional level. If they do, what they may find is that they have a number of unresolved losses to grieve.

These can relate to what they have experienced as an adult and what they experienced as a child. If it does relate to what they experienced as a child, this may have been a time when they experienced a lot of neglect.

One More

And, if the person they are working with has an understanding of the impact that their nervous system has on how they experience life, they might end up doing some kind of somatic work. What this can do is allow them to feel more settled and rooted in their body.

Thanks to the work that they do with their therapist, and when they are by themselves, they can find that the area or areas of their life that were not working start to fall into place. So, for example, they can feel more settled, have more energy and/or their love life may have improved.

Another Scenario

They can then conclude that they no longer need to work with a therapist or healer and can do this work by themselves. However, even if their life does improve, they can find that, over time, their life goes back to how it was before, or close to it.

If so, they can go back to working with the same person or believe that they need to find someone else. Once again, they might make progress only to go back to how they were before, or close to it, after they have stopped working with this person.

Around In Circles

Now, this is something that can go on for many years, if not decades, and they can wonder why they can’t just move forward. Due to what they have done and largely how ineffective it has been, they can feel helpless and hopeless.

It can be as though they are trying to change something that doesn’t want to be changed, which is why they haven’t been able to truly move forward. This is not to say that they won’t see that they have made any changes or they won’t have a stronger connection to themselves, but that their life won’t have been transformed.

What’s going on?

If they were to step back and think about how they were before and how they are now, what might stand out is that they have continued to suffer. They might then see that part of them has the need to suffer, and this is why they are unable to move on.

Assuming that this enters their mind, they might conclude that there must be something inherently wrong with them. But if part of them feels comfortable when they are not doing well, this is to be expected.

A Deeper Look

As strange as this will be, if they were able to go back in time and observe their early years, it might gradually make sense. This may have been a stage of their life when they typically only received attention and acceptance when they were not doing well.

So, if they were struggling, unwell or were working hard, for instance, they would have been acknowledged and accepted. This would then have caused them to associate suffering with love and thus, what would allow them to be connected and survive.

Moving Forward

Taking this into account, for them to know that they can be connected and survive without needing to suffer, they are going to have a number of steps to take. They are going to have pain to face and process, and unmet developmental needs to experience.

This will allow them to gradually emotionally separate from their inner parent or parents, so that their own aggression is no longer used to punish and undermine them. Consequently, they will gradually be able to let go of their attachment to suffering.

This will take courage, support, patience and persistence.

Awareness

If someone can relate to this and they are ready to change their life, they may need to reach out for external support. This is something that can be provided with the assistance of a therapist or healer. 

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Oliver JR Cooper
http://www.oliverjrcooper.co.uk