It is so understandable to feel impatient with our healing. It always tugs on my heart when a client asks me “How long will this take? When will I feel better?” When we’re suffering, we want to feel better! Of course.

When some kind of trauma is involved, whether from childhood, ancestral patterning, or societal pressures, the suffering is a pattern in your nervous system. It’s in your body. This is why we often see health challenges of various types show up when we have unresolved wounding. In my practice I see a fairly wide range of chronic conditions, often autoimmune in nature, along with unmetabolized trauma. Digestive issues are common, too.

Sometimes the suffering shows itself more in emotional patterns. Relationships that always seem to end up the same way — badly. Anxiety that comes up in predictable ways, in response to a boss asking for a meeting, or a spouse making a fairly innocuous request. Even though there’s no particular reason you should think something bad is about to happen, your heart may start to pound. You might feel like running away, or arguing. That’s flight, or fight. It’s a nervous system response. And, it’s likely a nervous system response that is a memory that has nothing to do with what’s happening in the moment.

Sunset near my home at one of my happy places

Without going too much in depth into the mechanisms of healing, it’s important to know that for the healing of traumatic residues in the nervous system to go deeply and last, the process needs to go slowly. I’ll say that again. Healing trauma needs to go slowly, or the nervous system will be overwhelmed and we risk being retraumatized.
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