Thoughts on why the work is hard
I've often wondered why therapy or therapy-adjacent work leaves things feeling harder before they feel better. Or why, after a stretch of positive self-reflection, things feel like they bottom out and can leave you feeling worse than when you began the growth journey. I know several people who have expressed similar feelings and are left asking (myself included), "What is the point?" and "Wouldn't it be better or easier to go back to the way it was before, when I was (perhaps but not likely) blissfully ignorant?" Shouldn't the goal or hope be to feel mostly, if not completely, differently? To have worked through the hard things that brought me here and live a life that is easier and less painful and anxious andinsecure and depressing (or whatever your things are)?
There's tension in all of the work, especially that hoped-for goal, that I have struggled with for quite a while: desperately wanting to feel and be different but often feeling worse along the way, which leaves me wanting to stop in my tracks and just go back. I think I've been looking for an easy explanation as to why that is, when I suspect any real explanation is pretty complicated.
We spend so much of our younger years developing strategies and defenses to help us feel safe in the world, in our homes, at school, or wherever, and we get pretty good at it, though it comes with a high cost. Then, we "grow up," and we don't change all that much. We still use those same strategies and defenses, but they don't work as well anymore because so much has changed in and around us. This can all be very unsettling because, even though we might not be able to name it, we want those peace-keeping, comfort-seeking, safety-providing strategies to still work for us. At some singular and significant point, or at many smaller points in the midst of our going, our strategies and defenses will be pushed against or outright attacked. We might cling to them, but somewhere inside, with what I feel is a beautiful sense of self-knowing, we realize there are things in our past—old ways of behaving—that we've brought into our present that we must let go of to live well.
And maybe we find ourselves in therapy or something like therapy, and we begin the work, embarking on what feels at times like a brutal and fruitless journey of bringing the difficult and dark things from our past into the light. And this work that we step into feels, to our younger selves, like a dangerous contradiction to all the hard work we put into growing up, specifically keeping at bay all the things we're trying to uncover in the present. On its own, the process of unclenching our fists and letting our walls down can feel so exhausting and confusing and disruptive.
I've likened it to the idea of feeling lost in a forest on a night with no moon, no glimmer of light from a cloud-covered sky, and you know you must find your way out. You're scared or confused or lonely, and you wish you could simply wait until daybreak, but you wait and wait, and hours pass and more, but no light comes. So you reach the point where you must navigate the forest without sight. You begin moving, slowly at first, with your arms outstretched, and later, either in frustration or desperation, you run, and you hit branches and collide with tree trunks and trip over roots, and eventually you crumble to the ground. And you sit there and catch your breath for a time, longing to give up, but at some point, you have to decide to stand up and keep going, no matter how long the night lasts, no matter how long it takes you to find the edge of the trees, knowing that even if you do find your way out, even if the clouds part and you bask in the light of the day, there will surely come a time when you're in the midst of the trees once again. But maybe, just maybe, you'll know a bit more for having made the difficult journey. Maybe you'll have a bit more trust in yourself, and it will be different and less painful than the time before.
I don't know if that resonates, but that's what I feel like the work is: willingly entering the forest to face all the things we've worked so hard to shield ourselves from, to face the things that happened to us, to bring down our defenses in the hope that we will make it through and will be a little better for it. But, if we're honest, don't we sometimes wonder, "Do I really want to go through all that discomfort?" And isn't it easy at times to lose sight of the hopeful journey or the reason we started when we're in the thick of all the hard work—all the unpacking and naming and trying to understand and trying to live honestly and differently? Something brought you to the point of entering into the journey, but the difficult road—the ups and downs—made you lose sight of why you started. I think we try to convince ourselves at different points along the way that our life before couldn't have been so bad as to experience all the challenges that come with trying to change. I think that's the inner, childlike voice that still feels so uncomfortable facing what they so masterfully tried to avoid. To push against all the ways we tried so hard to help us exist feels like changing the current of a river. That's devastating at times, and exhausting, because that type of change can't happen overnight. And in a world where we want everything immediately, the slow process of change can feel so discouraging.
(To my friends who are on this journey, I see you. I see you pushing against the current, refusing to let it win, trying to take some thing or things back for yourself to make a better future for you and for the people in your life. I see it, and it's beautiful. And it's encouraging for other weary travelers.)
There's also something else that I think happens along the journey toward growth that contributes to the desire to go backto the false "ignorance is bliss" lifestyle. For some (myself included), it's easy to miss the beautiful peaks—the small wins or huge uncoverings—because it's easier to focus on and even settle into the dark valleys along the way. It's easy to miss the fruit and just feel all the things that would have us stop moving forward. I've been there so many times over the years, still feeling some or nearly all of the old feelings or behaving in ways I always have, and it just doesn't feel worth it. But, if I'm honest, that type of thinking is so unfair to the parts of me that have remained committed to the work. If I can objectively step back and assess the path I've traveled, there is so much good along the way, so many small ways and a few bigger ways that I have changed.
I haven't arrived, and on this side of life, I know I never will; that's partly because life will continue to throw obstacles across my path, and I'll still struggle in familiar and new ways. But I can trust myself now because of where I've come from and who I am becoming. The journey is so difficult at times, but so was growing up, wasting so much of my energy trying to feel safe and comfortable. There's a cost either way—in choosing to grow or remain the same—but I'll continue to choose the cost that leads toward the edge of the woods and into the light. I'm better for it. My family is better for it. And I hope the people I interact with daily are better for it.
Now, to share a favorite poem of mine, from on of my favorite poets, that feels connected to all this:
"Go to the Limits of Your Longing" - Rainer Maria Rilke
God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:
You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Flare up like flame
and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don't let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.
An afterthought:
I feel like I'm just scratching the surface of something here, and I feel a bit scattered even as I write it, but I want to add a bit more—to mention something about healing in the presence of others. As we go back and face all that happened before and confront what we're struggling with now, it's an incredible thing if we can find someone we feel safe enough with to risk letting our defenses down—someone who is for us, someone who wants to help us on our journey, be that a therapist or a family member or a friend. What a gift that is when we find that person!
We needed someone in our past to attune to us healthily, to help ground us, gently hold us, and really see us in the moments that were so difficult and harmful, the moments when we reacted by developing strategies to help us get by and simply exist. And now, sometime later, if we have found someone or someones willing to journey with us so we can finally face what we couldn't on our own—face the moments that ultimately set our trajectory to where we are now—we can move toward something uniquely beautiful and better, something more, something that was always there, always meant for us, if only we could bravely pursue it.