Let’s imagine you are on a path of healing and/or growth. You may also be in psychotherapy. Either way, you are working on yourself, or grieving a loss, or healing from a trauma or pain of some sort and are trying to make lemonade out of the lemons. Inevitably, there will come a time where you will be frustrated with your progress. You find yourself in an old pattern or with old familiar feelings and it seems like you are cycling through the same yuck on a new day.  You thought you’d be farther along by now. You thought you were making progress. What if you are making progress and it just doesn’t feel like it?  What if the process of healing and growth and change is a helix?

What is a helix and what does it have to do with personal healing and growth? What does geometry have to do with psychology? A helix is a geometric shape that looks like a stretched out coil or slinky toy (TM). I find it a great visual image of the change process. Each coil represents you cycling through the same stuff over and over again. However, each time you go through a cycle, or coil in the loop, you move forward a bit. Each time you work through the issue, the feelings, the dynamic, with intentional effort to make slight adjustments (in perspective, thoughts, behavior, soothing/ release/ witnessing of the feelings), you move forward. The loop feels and looks the same, but your place along the continuum of your healing journey has moved forward.

The helix is how I envision the growth and healing process. Cycling through the coils of old familiar territory over and over again. As you cycle through, you apply something new to the old feelings and patterns. With each cycle, the new small thing you did differently helps you move forward through that familiar loop with more healing and growth.

What are some things you can apply while in “the loop” that helps you move forward along the coil of the helix?

  • you can deal with your feelings: that might look like naming the feelings, having a release, soothing yourself, or seeking comfort or attunement and empathy from others
  • you can consider a new perspective about the old issue.
  • you can challenge an old narrative or a distorted thought and consider a new way to think about it
  • you can do something different
  • you can seek support instead of hold it in

Adding a new ingredient to the old familiar loop propels you forward in your growth and development.

And sometimes stuck is just stuck and you are applying old thoughts and behaviors to old feelings and patterns. When that happens, you stay in the same loop in the coil without advancing. And other times, you are doing something different that propels you forward, but is just feels old and familiar because the issues are the same. Sometimes, going through things repeatedly is part of the growth process. Learning and adapting is rarely a one and done process. Growth and learning involves consistent practice of a new skill. With consistent efforts applied to the same thing in repetition comes the healing, skill mastery, and growth.

So next time you feel stuck, consider whether in fact you are moving forward, just in a helix sort of way rather than a straight line. We are complicated creatures. Growth and healing is hardly as one-dimensional as a straight line!  Give yourself some grace, and some credit for moving through the helix that is your growth process.