Healing is seldom a linear process. This is as true for bodies as it is for minds, especially when healing requires rebuilding. When we build muscle, part of the process involves our bodies ripping apart the structures we already have in order to respond to the demands we've made on ourselves. This tends to hurt. Push too hard and you can end up - in the short term at least - able to do far less than you could. Push far too hard and you can damage yourself. Mind and body alike have limits, and while you can push to try and recover from pretty much anything, sometimes what's needed most is rest, and time.
When you're in the middle of it, telling the difference between breakdown and breakthrough is difficult. I've been around this one a few times. Dismantling a limiting belief, or an out of date coping mechanism can be messy. Dismantling the consequences of gaslighting is frankly a brutal process. I've gone a lot of rounds with that one over the years. It isn't the sort of thing you can unpick quickly.
There's been a lot of gaslighting at a national level here in the UK. A lot of saying that things we all saw happen did not happen. A lot of telling us that we are all to blame for the state of the economy, that it's all down to poor people not trying hard enough. Instead, this is a consequence of deliberate policy. Not internalising the blame is challenging, and I have no doubt that many people will end up feeling that the cold and hunger they experience this winter is their fault.
At some point there will have to be a collective squaring up to the impact of that gaslighting. There's going to be a lot of breaking down in order to be able to heal and rebuild. Not just on the individual level, either. If we're going to make it as a species we're going to need to break down some aspects of our civilization in order to heal and go forward. We may have to break down all kinds of assumptions, structures and systems because so much of what we have right now just doesn't work and is making life on this planet ever less viable. Inevitably this is going to be messy, but it is possible.
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