Healing Versus Learning About Healing

Welcome to the Overcoming Sexual Abuse podcast where you get the tools and inspiration to help you overcome childhood sexual abuse. I’m your host Christina Enevoldsen, certified coach, author, and incest survivor, and I’m here to help you heal and live your very best life.

There’s never been more information about healing from trauma. Information might equip you for healing or it might distract you from healing. Learn the hidden traps of more information and how to recognize if it’s actually a coping method and the steps to make your quest for knowledge empowering and fruitful.

In this time in history, we have access to an unlimited amount of information on trauma and abuse and dysfunction and all these related topics. Thank God. But more information is published than we can possibly consume. If you started right now with the goal of learning everything there is to know, you would never be able to reach that goal because more and more is being discovered and shared every day.

And If you get any kind of information from YouTube or Instagram, they are only too happy to present you with the next video or reel and they never want you to leave, so it really never runs out. And the question is, is all this information a blessing or a curse? And the answer is, it’s entirely up to you. It depends on how you use it. It can be a tool for healing if you gain an insight that makes a difference in how you think or what you do, how you treat yourself, how you behave.

For example, if you learn that the coping methods that plague you now that seem just so self -sabotaging, if they had their origins when you were abandoned in your pain and fear and you had to numb yourself to survive as a child, then you might shift from self-judgment to self -compassion and you might start to be present with yourself when you’re craving something destructive and you might remind yourself that you’re not alone anymore because at the very least you have you when you’re present with yourself and you might start to actually feel your pain a little at a time instead of using coping methods that hurt you and that keep it all stuffed down and you might not have to run from it anymore. And that’s real healing. 

Now let’s say you learn about gaslighting and narcissistic abuse and that feels affirming to you and you see that what you experience really is something. You see how bad it really is and it explains why you feel the way you do. And you’re not making it up and you’re not making a big deal out of nothing. It’s bad and that’s why it feels bad. And you feel validated to make those kind of connections. And that can help you know you’re not alone and you’re not crazy. And it’s not you, it’s them. It was them all along. 

And yet, as beneficial as that is, what will you do with those insights? If you just consumed information and say, “Well, that was interesting. Next!,” and go from content to content, that’s a waste of your time. If you don’t act on the insights, if you don’t intentionally sit with them and adjust yourself to them, then they’re just going to slip away. You won’t remember them and they won’t do you any good. They’ll just be clutter to you. And that clutter is just stuff that is, it just lays around, it’s in the way. And we tend to think that this information is the way, but when it’s clutter, it’s just in the way.

So, a lot of survivors of abuse keep learning about healing and wonder why they still feel awful. And it isn’t that there’s something wrong with you. It doesn’t have anything to do with your ability to heal. It’s just that you haven’t been doing the things that will heal you. Will you sit with the feelings of grief? Will you be present in your pain? Will you allow the anger to rise up? The trap of all this information is that you can intellectualize your healing and stay in your head and that’s self-deceiving because logic can’t heal you.

Healing isn’t about what you know. Healing isn’t a matter of understanding in your head. Healing has to go deeper than that. As they say, “feeling is healing”, and you can’t heal what you refuse to feel. And information might actually be a coping method, and it’s the illusion of healing and work and progress, but it gains you nothing. And it can distract you from the actual work of healing. As long as you go from one thing to the next, it’s just entertainment. It’s a nice distraction from pain, a way to feel productive, but it’s actually avoidance.

So watch for if learning feels compulsive to you and it feels like you’re overdoing it. It can be just like anything else you overdo, over drinking, over spending, over eating, over working, over helping. And all of those things are a way that we distract ourselves from our emotions. And when you do it with information when you over inform yourself. It’s like clutter in your brain and instead of seeing things more clearly, it’s foggy and that’s what clutter does. And sometimes that’s the point of it to fog yourself up so that you don’t have to see things clearly. You might not be doing it consciously, but it just might dull your inner knowing. 

So, if you recognize that you’re doing that, you’re definitely not alone in using that coping method. Recognize that you’re avoiding and then have compassion for yourself. Recognize this is coming from fear and pain. And you might even imagine yourself among your other fellow humans, fellow survivors. We’ve survived all these thousands of years by avoiding pain. And so it’s definitely not just a trauma survivor thing. Congratulations, you’re human. 

And you can ask yourself, “What feels uncomfortable here? What feels threatening? Is it the healing process itself, like feeling the emotions, are you afraid of the memories, seeing the truth about what happened to you. Is it the general fear of facing the unknown?”

So it might be the healing process itself, but it could also be what healing will give you, the outcome of healing, the results of what you’ll experience if you do heal. And you might be asking, “Why in the world would I resist healing? My life would be so much better if I didn’t have to deal with the pain of the past, if I didn’t have to tap dance around symptoms all the time and avoid triggers. If I had my life back, that would be amazing!”

And yes, it would be amazing. And it would also be different. And the brain perceives different as a threat. It’s unfamiliar. It knows you can survive the present. It’s not ideal to survive, but you’ve been getting by day by day. And if you change what you’re doing, who knows? The brain doesn’t know if you can survive in different. And so it helps you by releasing hormones that trigger responses in your body that tell you that you’re going to die if you change. What a nice brain. It wants you to survive.

But you might also know, consciously or subconsciously, that your relationships will change. You’re not going to be the same person, you’ll value yourself more, you’ll make decisions that are good for you, you’ll say no more often and that’s an adjustment in any relationship and that’s going to rock the boat. And you might feel uncomfortable owning your power. 

Maybe you fear that having power is a bad thing because power was used against you and you associate power with something mean or evil or bad. And you might just simply fear the unknown of feeling empowered and free to pursue your future. The future. What’s that? I’ve never been free to pursue that. What would that amount of freedom feel like? So do you imagine yourself being able to finally fly and soar, or do you see the bottom dropping out?

And that’s something to really check in with yourself about that. If you’re not sure, take some time to imagine both of those, either the healing process itself and the outcome. And see yourself practicing being present and sitting with your emotions.

Now we’re talking about the healing process, recalling a memory. And so what comes up? Is that what you’re resisting? And do the same for the outcomes of healing. Imagine you’ve reached your healing goals. Imagine you’re this person who is empowered and you’re owning your life and actually see a scene from your life experiencing your healing success. Where are you? And who’s with you? What are you doing? What are they saying? And what do you notice in that? What comes up for you? So it’s important to understand what you’re feeling, but more than that, to actually feel it. Be with the fear; be with the pain. 

And remember, this isn’t an exercise in knowing but in feeling. And relax into how uncomfortable all of this feels. You know, healing is unfamiliar and there’s just no getting away from that if you want to grow and heal, which I know you do, that’s why you’re here. 

So getting back over to over-consuming information, It might not just be a neutral, but it might be working against you. It can exhaust you and overwhelm you and use up the mental and emotional capacity that healing requires. You’ve got to have some energy to heal. And when you keep researching all of the areas that were wounded and need to be changed, and that’s overwhelming, when you recognize, it’s all so much, “Oh, there’s so much damage. How am I ever going to heal all this?”

And in overwhelm, you don’t take action. You shut down instead of doing the work to actually change anything. But please, please understand that I’m not saying learning about healing is a bad thing. I love learning. And one of my favorite topics to learn about is healing and trauma. And hopefully you’re learning right now, listening to me share this. I am not against learning, but I’m making a distinction about being present and actually having insights that lead to change instead of using information as a way to stay dissociated. 

So one thing I’ll suggest is to make sure your nervous system is regulated before you pursue any kind of content, before you read a book, before you get online, before you take a class. To position yourself for learning, take it in and, you know, be positioned to take action. You need to be in a parasympathetic state, and that’s that regulated state. If you’re dysregulated, you’re not taking in anything. You have to be in a parasympathetic state to learn. And so that’s because learning is about preparing for the future. And there’s no capacity for any of that beyond survival of this very moment. You know, when you’re dysregulated, it’s like, “I’m not worried about the future. I’m worried about right now, will I survive past this moment?” So you’re not taking anything in in your prefrontal cortex, which is sometimes referred to as the executive functioning part of your brain. That’s responsible for the creativity and the imagination and that helps you to plan for your future. But you don’t have access to that. You’re not online when you’re in that dysregulated state. You’re just running on what can be compared to instinct and you’re not making a lot of choices right there. 

So something that I do to check in with myself is I ask myself, am I ready for this new content? And a lot of times I find that I’m not. I don’t want new content. I want to relax. And yet I want the feeling of making progress. So I just need to, “You know what, I’m not going to be making any progress if I’m too tired to take anything in right now.” Do I need to process the information that I already have? And sometimes when I’m reading one of my favorite authors, I actually have to absorb it in only one paragraph settings at a time and because it’s so deep and any faster would just lead to brain clutter. 

So check to see if you’re calm and ready before you take in content. And then check in with yourself as you go, you know, are you still present? Are you daydreaming? Are you thinking about something else? If you’re not present, then pause and either get re-regulated or just stop. And if you’re not sure how to regulate yourself, I recommend listening to episode 10, “Soothing the Pain While You Heal.” And in that episode, I make a distinction between coping methods where you respond to discomfort by disconnecting with yourself and self-soothing, which is different from coping methods, and that’s responding to discomfort in a conscious way that allows you to remain connected and present. So check in with yourself as you’re taking in that information. Are you still there? Are you zoning out? Because dissociation is your system’s way of saying “enough”. 

And notice if you feel compelled to keep going. Are you afraid of not healing? Are you in a hurry to get to this place called healed, because that effect of rush and worry is to dysregulate you, and then you aren’t prepared to absorb or benefit from any of it anyway, it’s just noise and more clutter.

And when you have information in front of you, here’s some ways of being intentional about moving forward in your healing. First, position yourself to receive from a powerful place, not in a passive place. So whatever state you’re in will determine what tools and resources internally you’ll have to create your future.

And I have a quick way to empower yourself. So working with the body is the most immediate and effective way of changing your emotional state. It’s the fastest way. You experience your emotions through your body so it makes sense that your breathing and your voice and your facial expression and your gestures and your posture and your movement and your actions are really powerful ways of impacting your emotions. So things like calming ways of moving your body could be like deeper breathing, slower breathing, slower movement, softer. And to elevate your mood you would do expanding motions and spread out and straighten up and take up space with your shoulders up and your arms out and your head back and your pace quickened. 

And so, here’s what we’re gonna do: the Superman Pose. So stand up straight with your shoulders back and your chin slightly up with your hands on your hips and your feet spread a little for stability. And this actually changes your biochemistry by holding this posture. And it does that if you stay in that position for two minutes. It’s really powerful. So that prepares you to be positioned to receive this and to take action on it. 

And to be active in your learning, you can ask yourself, “How does this new insight, perspective, tool, or instruction help me? How am I to use this to move forward? And what are some practical steps that I can take as a result of this?”

You need to be present with yourself today to get to where you want to be later. When you stop being all over the place and just slow down and be here with yourself now, that’s how you heal. This work is very uncomfortable. And when you practice being present, you experience everything you’ve been avoiding and distracting yourself from. It’s not easy. And if you can get to this place of just allowing the discomfort to be there, it passes out of you. It just leaves you when you feel through it. And again, bring in the self soothing, not the coping. So you’re able to be present with that. So yes, educate yourself and lean into this, not to be entertained, but to equip yourself and take action, because only doing something different will get you different results.

Well, thanks for joining me today. If you’re listening when this episode is published in the spring of 2025, I have a way for you to get off this clutter collecting cycle. It’s my free annual healing event of the year, where you don’t just learn about healing, you’re invited into the healing process. And I share The Five Pillars to Healing from beginning to end step-by-step. So to join that, go to overcomingsexualabuse.com/masterclass and join there. 

People tell me it’s better than paid programs they’ve done and it’s all free, so you don’t wanna miss it. I’m bringing you more on healing, boundaries, self-care, family dysfunction, and so much more, so be sure you’re subscribed to get all the yummy goodness.