Sometimes it gets worse before it gets better
This is part of the process. There is nothing inherently wrong with you.
On the path of healing and self-actualization, sometimes it gets worse before it gets better.
If you’re ever done a juice cleanse or remodeled your kitchen or had surgery, you know what I’m talking about.
Sometimes people embark on this sacred sexuality healing path and think it means they are just going to feel good all the time.
Recently I treated myself to a tarot reading with Pleasure Witch Haylin Belay (10/10 highly recommend). At the end of our reading, she shared how people hear her title “Pleasure Witch” and think that she must feel pleasure all the time.
“Being a Pleasure Witch means I know how to stay in it long enough to be able to learn and feel pleasure from it. Pleasure means feeling safe enough in your body.”
- Haylin Belay
Friends, it isn’t always sunshine and rainbows. It’s learning to bear the discomfort of transition and move through it.
In June, I started a meditation course. Today’s meditation culminated with me screaming into a pillow and coughing until I gagged and wretched.
(That wasn’t part of the meditation structure, I clearly improvised.)
Sometimes becoming conscious isn’t the tranquility of sitting on a meditation pillow in Lululemon leggings chanting OM. It’s the active release of the shit that has been holding you back.
When this shit comes up it means your body is safe enough to show you what is there.
Thank you, body. Thank you, nervous system. The triggers are a gift. They are a map to your aliveness.
So here’s some support along the way.
Go slow.
This isn’t a race. Take your time, don’t overdo it. Healing can only happen when you are safe and within your window of tolerance. If this is a new term to you, the window of tolernace was coined by Clinical Professor of Psychology Dan Siegel. It refers to a state of arousal where we are present, open, and able to self-regulate. From this state we can thrive.
Moving outside of the window of tolerance can lead to hyper-arousal or hypo-arousal.
Hyper-arousal looks like overwhelm, anger, anxiety, and hypervigilance. This is a result of the fight or flight stress response.
Hypo-arousal looks like shutting down, withdrawing, depression and shame.
To come back into your window of tolerance, here are a few techniques to support you:
Self soothe.
Use touch to soothe your body, running your hands gently along your arms or legs. Let your body know that you are safe.
The 2x breath. Inhale for a count of 4 and exhale for a count of 8. The longer exhale will help you to activate your parasympathetic nervous system which aids with rest and digestion.
Butterfly hug. When we are outside of our window of tolerance, the body is split. Doing the butterfly hug, which involves bilateral stimulation, helps to bring the body back into alignment.
Cross your arms over your chest, with opposite hand resting on opposite shoulder.
Alternate tapping on your each shoulder. This bilateral cross-body kind of touching will help to bridge the divide between the right and left side of the brain and body.
When I do the butterfly hug, I feel my body come back online.
Here’s a demonstration I did on Instagram last year:
Introduce pleasure.
For every difficult thing that you feel, counter it by bringing two pleasurable things into your experience. Pleasure is a way for your body to resource.
Think about it like this: If your body experiences healing as feeling like shit all the time, it won’t be a big motivator to continue.
There’s a thousand ways that you can feel pleasure, so choose what feels good to you.
Embody your experience.
Remember that your body is an animal and has native methods of releasing stress and synthesizing trauma.
Transmute this energy! Cry, shake, scream, kick, punch, snarl, spit, wretch. When you feel the need to release, these are the toxins coming up and out of you.
As women, it’s far easier for us to access sadness than it is to access rage. It may take you some practice to feel what is underneath the emotion.
There is a part of you that will feel too polite or proper to let go in an animal way. Let the impulse come through! Allow yourself to complete the stress cycle. Your body knows what to do. Sometimes we just have to get out of the way.
Approach your experience with love and compassion.
Be so gentle with yourself through this process. Tend to yourself as if you were the mother you always yearned for. Don’t overdo it. Take a break when you need to.
The good news is this. It takes an incredible amount of psychic energy to hold old conditioning in place.
As you begin to unwind this conditioning, you release old stories and activate your personal energy. More of you comes back online. Your life becomes yours again. You will recognize yourself again in the mirror.
This is how you rewire your nervous system and rewrite your reality. Healing is possible, one small step at a time.
Did this resonate with you? Have you had experiences with this in your life? I would love to hear about it in the comments below.
If you’d like to learn more about this process, reach out for a complimentary 30-minute coaching session. It would be an honor to hold space for you.