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The Spiral Healing Process of Transformation

Personal healing and transformation follows a simple, spiral path of awareness. For any behavior pattern, habitual reaction or set of events that keep on repeating, the way to transform and heal is through awareness.
Certain events, situations or comments can elicit a reaction from us that is habitual and typically unconscious. It can often be a reaction that we are not best pleased with and that we'd rather change. These can often be habitual response of anger, frustration, freezing, overwhelm or fear.
In changing habitual behaviors, we can address problem events that repeat and with every repetition we can go deeper with our awareness until we can choose a different and positive response to the same situation. So unlike going around in the same painful circle of events, were actually going in a spiral that leads to us deeper into healing our reactions to the event.

The very first step is to become aware of the problem itself.
Notice when you're uncomfortable physically or emotionally. Now there is "something" going on.
The first step in awareness is by noticing the problem in the past. It may be a year ago, a month ago, a week ago or even last night. Fabulous. Now we have noticed the situation and we recognize how we reacted to it.

Simply being aware of the issue is a great and very necessary first step. Next when the situation repeats we will notice it - again.
Don't worry, this is still progress. It can take a number of repeitions for us to be more fully aware of the situation. At this stage we will always be noticing it after the situation has passed.
And as we continue to look back at this problem situation, we can observe more detail every time. Things we are watching out for are our own reactions, the environment around us and the people around us.
Typical questions we can ask ourselves are;
- When was my first awareness of the situation this time?
- How was I feeling in my physical body?
- What emotion was I feeling, if any?
- What most triggered my habitual reaction?

As we experience the same problem situation again and again, our awareness of this repeating event gets closer and closer to the actual time it is happening. As we do this observation closer to the event, we can start to consider how we might do it differently next time.
- What do we need in the moment of that event? - reassurance, love, understanding, space, acknowledment, grounding, speaking up?

For example: When my boss starts criticising me, I feel over-whelmed and I freeze, and this means I'm unable to explain my decisions to him and I feel frustrated. This is the repeated situation.
What I notice about my needs are that at that moment I'd really like a little time for myself and some space for me to gather my thoughts. I need to remind myself that I'm a good person and had good intentions behind my work decisions. I also need to feel safe in the face of this angry energy, so I need to do some grounding and self-soothing exersizes.

As we further notice the problem event, we get better and better at spotting the tell-tale signs that the situation is developing again. We begin to recognize the repeating situation earlier and earlier.
And in this recognition, we can start to do what we need for ourselves. because we have identified this a a problem situation that repeats, we know what our needs are in such situations and we can put a plan in place. "This is how I can cope with the situation".

In the above example, I may have noticed this repeating situation with my angry boss, and that evening I may do some grounding exercises and some self-soothing and reassuring. This helps me to recover my sense of balance and sense of self. It also gives myself the message that I can actually help myself get through this difficult situation.

As the situation repeats again, I notice that it's happening again while its actually happening. I know what I need, and now I can see about doing it a little differently. I may excuse myself for a few minutes, go to the bathroom or outside for some fresh air and again do some grounding and self-soothing.
Then I can go back to the situation when I am feeling more centered and confident and I'm less likely to react in the same habitual way of feeling over-whelmed and freezing up.

Eventually we are able to spot the situation starting up again before it actually happens, and take care of our needs and this time, in the moment, respond in a different way rather than react in the habitual way we have in the past. This gives us the ability to respond to events and gives a tremendous freedom because we are able to take care of our needs leaving us the choice of what to do or say next.

This is the essence of healing our past traumas where they show up as habitual reactions in current events. It is a spiral taking us down deeper into our self knowledge and every time we are able to meet our needs more and choose a way of responding that we can feel good about.