Why Healing Involves Grief
By: Hilary Weinstein, LCSW
“Growth is uncomfortable because you have never been here before, you’ve never been this version of you, so give yourself a little grace and breathe through it.” – Kristin Lohr
Healing involves healthy grieving. Getting better comes with feelings of sadness, and anger. We feel sad and angry when we realize all that we’ve missed out on, how badly people who were supposed to protect us failed us, and what our younger selves deserved.
There’s a misconception that when we seek help it’s all uphill from there, that our minds heal in a linear trajectory like a wound dressed and bandaged or a broken bone set in a cast. This mentality sets us up for failure. Healing and growth involve unlearning coping mechanisms that were put in place to protect you, and may have served that purpose at one time, but now do you more harm than good; they stand in your way of becoming your most authentic self and living your most full life.
The catch is that as you heal, and these coping mechanisms are replaced with more adaptive, healthier ways to cope, you are left with a lot of new mental and emotional space, space that was previously taken up by the unhealthy ways you coped. All this new space comes with a rush of the difficult feelings you were previously trying to avoid facing, a heightened awareness and room to sit with painful memories; it also comes with experiences of shame, guilt, sadness, or anger when met with the reality of experiences you missed out on, and questions about what could have been different.
When I sought help to recover from my Eating Disorder, giving my body nutrition, & removing the binging and purging didn’t stitch me up and send on my merry way. Taking away my hunger, my compulsive worries about food, my binges and the dissociation that came with it all meant a ton of new room to think. Room to think about painful memories I was using the disorder as a distraction to prevent me from thinking about, room to think about the bridges I burned, friendships lost, and the loneliness I felt, room to feel angry for my younger self, to wonder what more I could’ve achieved, and shame all at the same time.
I should say I wouldn’t wish the pain, shame spirals, panic attacks, uncertainty about the future and days when I didn’t leave my bed, on anyone. The thing is, that’s a hard statement for me to make from where I stand now on the other side of it. That part of my recovery journey was brutal at times, I won’t minimize that, but it was temporary. The professionals I worked with told me it would be, but I didn't fully buy it. What I see now, and tell my own patients, is that I didn’t have to, and neither do they. How could anyone, fully buy in, without a crystal ball of what the other side would look like or the certainty that they’d even get there?
The hard truth is that this grieving process, that happens when the coping mechanism is used less and less, is necessary to truly heal. As difficult as it feels when you’re in it, it serves the crucial purpose of motivation; it’s motivation that informs you how much more you want in your life. You don’t have to fully buy in, that would be a ridiculous expectation. You just have to make a tiny space for entertaining the possibility that there’s another side to this. In this space, the pain is temporary, the pain is a sign that growth is happening (albeit not as quickly as you’d like) and in this space the professionals guiding you are capable and determined to do the rest of the believing for you until you are able to yourself.