Barriers to Healing: Ownership or Attachment to our Struggles

I’ve been reminded lately of barriers we put in place that prevent us from healing chronic health challenges, or negative habits.

That barrier is how we attach ourselves to and start to own our struggles.

Here are a few example statements that illustrate this:
– My typical GI struggles.
– I’ve always hated vegetables.
– I’ve always struggled with digestion. So have my parents.
– I’ve had that ever since I was kid. I’ve always had it.
– I never recover well during a (marathon) training cycle, and never get my nutrition and health to go right enough to be prepared for the race.
– My anemia pattern.

Another example is identifying with our diagnosis or diet pattern as if it were a job title. This is often easily visible on social media. You might witness or use something like IBS Warrior or Ulcerative Colitis Warrior, or Celiac next to a name in a bio, as an example.

I’ll use my past self as another example. For a long time, I felt like whatever medical mystery that presented as something autoimmune meant I’d be in daily chronic pain forever. This began at age 27. I was in constant fear and anxiety about the pain, and I felt like I couldn’t get outside that experience, even temporarily. Fast forward seven years and my body and mind feel remarkably different. The cloud of bleakness hanging over me, the fear of pain, the internal anguish that I couldn’t understand is no longer part of my everyday.

Yes, when it comes to healing something that has been chronic, finding the right nutrition plan and lifestyle practices are incredibly important. But healing is also energetic. You have to believe it’s possible. And you have to change your mindset and the energy you put around the process.

You have to believe your body is meant to heal.

And we start to believe what we say about ourselves. By saying we always struggle with something, that means deep down that we probably believe we will always struggle with it.

This simple, though definitely not easy, nugget of first changing what we say (out loud and internally) is what catalyzes healing. We start to believe lasting healing is possible. We seek out and then are put into connection with individuals who further light the healing pathway from whatever we’re currently experiencing – an autoimmune condition, IBS, chronic fatigue, a lifetime of emotional and disordered eating and body hate, weight woes, medical diagnoses that are largely written off, etc.

And sometimes our catalyst for healing is just an example from another person.

For instance, we all operate within a community, whether that’s in person in our daily lives, or people we follow online who influence us. Often, we identify with individuals who have journeyed through similar experiences and challenges as us.

What often distinguishes individuals who are incredibly good at healing themselves for the long term, and those that have chronic set-backs, lies in what the first group don’t spend their time doing.

These “experts at healing” don’t hang out in forums or self-help groups with individuals discussing the woes of their symptoms or how bad it is. They get out of their negative head space as soon as they notice they’ve fallen into it. They change their language in how they talk about their health. Instead of statements like “I always struggle with….” or “My faulty digestion….”, they view a health challenge as a temporary setback. My digestion is currently less than ideal — That’s a less permanent way to state that.

Or I haven’t yet arrived at the end of a training cycle feeling like I’ve nailed my nutrition and recovery strategies, but I believe it’s possible and I’m committed to exploring what has prevented me in the past.

Or My doctor believes I have lupus that I’ve put into semi-remission enough to be below the threshold for clinical diagnosis. I am not a victim. And I’m committed to my nutrition and lifestyle practices to continue my journey towards complete healing. This statement was my personal example.

In my case, I refused to mentally identify with or use the word lupus. For one, I didn’t have an actual diagnosis. But for me, that choice was energetic. This is similar to (before then) never using the words celiac, IBS, or dysbiosis about myself–though they were all either likely or true. These words we attach ourselves to are incredibly powerful. And here I am a handful of years later, and I haven’t thought about the words “autoimmune” or “lupus,” “IBS,” or “dysbiosis” as it relates to myself in quite a while.

Think about how you can shift the statements you make about your health. Catch yourself when you say what “you’ve always” said about your situation. Restate it in a less attached, or less in ownership, way.

Let the way you speak be a catalyst for how you think about your health.

*Note on the book pictured above: I don’t remember the plot. But I do remember it was part of my finding joy and rewiring how I thought about my health process.