Why Healing “Strategies” Don’t Work

A fellow spiritual traveler, Mike, wrote this in our community forum:

On another matter, I have so many ‘hurt,’ ‘angry’ or ‘need-to-control’ responses to the world around me. They are reactive energies that have kept me ‘safe’…and isolated. These days I’m better at gritting my teeth, but I want more than that.

I really want to move beyond the mindset – the behaviors – I created as my response to trauma.

Is this even possible?

Of course we want more than just gritting our teeth. Gritting your teeth is a strategy. Strategies don’t work when it comes to healing. 

Strategies are the mind’s way of managing what it tells you is pain. If trauma has some value in helping you fulfill your life’s purpose, then pain shouldn’t automatically equal bad. 

Pain is a name but it’s really just an experience. If we allow the experience rather than tolerating it until it’s over (e.g. gritting your teeth), then life is more than a strategy. Life can then become creative, more than finding just one answer or any answer to life’s challenges. 

Life is exciting because we get to choose every moment. We get to be creative and that means being in relationship with whatever is happening in the moment. If it were simply about applying a formula, where would the power, excitement and satisfaction be? 

Strategies don’t work because they come from the realm of the mind. 

You are so much more than what you think!

• You are a heart longing for union with your creator.
• You are seeking meaning
• You have dreams and desires that are deep and profound.

Gritting your teeth doesn’t do anything for your dream. 

And Mike, YES of course it’s possible! I wouldn’t bother writing these newsletters or spending my whole adult life helping people if I didn’t know that it’s possible and didn’t experience that possibility.

Most of all, I have experienced the possibility because my suffering is what drove me to do this work.