What I've Seen at The Heart of Growth & Healing

Recently I found myself reflecting on what I've seen over the past 10+ years as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker when it comes to growth and healing. What came to mind were tons of examples of long term healing and growth that rarely, if ever, had an external change at the heart of the growth and healing. Okay, sometimes it is the ending of a relationship or some big transition that starts the shift, or is a part of it, but really the awe moments are always internal. The long term wins are alway big internal shifts; in the story someone is caring around about: a past event, themselves and who they are, their future, others around them or even about their current day life.

Neurobiology, aka; how we are all wired as humans, is a great way to look at all of this; the creation and purpose of internal stories, the magic of internal shifts and why they are typically a huge factor in growth and healing. Simply stated, our brains are wired to take in information, allocate energy and most of all survive. Survive, for our brains, looks like a big prediction or risk analysis game, for the most part. So an event occurs, our brains use past events that were somewhat similar as a reference for how to take in the information of the current event and how to allocate energy (influence how we participate in the event) accordingly. Then after its done our brains go on to decide how to store that event in memory. Was it an event that we needed to survive or not, are typically the two very high-level options for storage of events categories.

The importance part here is that when events occur in our lives that our brains decide were things we had to survive they then typically store them in a way that gets connected to these internal stories we cary around with us. These internal stories play a part in the important ways we are all wired to ensure we continue to survive. (Important side note, and for sure a future blog topic, defining survival events as our brains see it. Survival events typically are events that occurred at any moment in our lives, that in that moment we experienced something we didn't, at that time, have the coping skills to use for ourselves and/or didn't get immediate support to wrap our minds around the event and/or regain stability/safety (emotionally and/or physically) timely.)

Let's go with an example of a parent who's own childhood consisted of a lot of confusing emotional responses from caregivers. Events like when this parent would cry, get upset or mad as a child it would result in disconnection from their caregivers. In other words, her/his caregivers didn't know how to handle the big feelings so the message they were given, in childhood, during those events were something like we don't do big feelings go deal with that stuff alone and come back to us when you are happy, calm, quiet. These would have been survival events for sure for that parent in their childhood. (another side not; In childhood, as humans, we are wired to be dependent upon caregivers, so any push away from that is a big threat to survival.)

This picture was taken during my pregnancy with our second daughter!

So this parents brain holds on to those events as trauma stored throughout childhood and into adulthood and their own parenting journey with their littles. The trauma memory stored narrative might have been something along the lines of; big feelings/displaying or sharing big emotions equals disconnection from others and is a threat to survival. Sometimes even another layer of the story gets created as the brains was to attempt to secure future survival; a message of I am not good/broke/bad for having big feelings. As we read this example on paper, we can see how that could create a wonky internal story that this individual would carry around (consciously and/or subconsciously) and then how that could impact how they engage with others, themselves and the world around them. Imagine how parenting their own kiddos for this individual would be complicated with that internal story playing.

Cue the growth and healing awe moment, the shift in that narrative. Think of how different that parents life and their own parenting would look if all of the sudden big feelings were just a part of being human, not something that threatened survival. Think of how differently their internal story would sound. It makes my heart smile to think about it! This is what I think of as the magic of long term deep change, growth and healing. It's what I have the honor of witnessing in clients that is life changing on all levels. I do want to note (also another future blog post topic) this growth and healing can be complex and even part of life long journeys as different layers of these internal stories get pealed back with different seasons of life. This journey is also a part of being human. I am a big believer in the first steps to anything are awareness/insight and then the willingness to being open to change and growth!

Sending some love and Thank you for your time.

- Jessica Barber, LCSW-S