Healing Doesn't Mean Giving Every Trigger Immediate Access to You

There is a can of worms sitting in my life right now that keeps asking to be opened.

Not literally, although after spending most of today outside overhauling our front planter beds with Craig, there are probably plenty of actual worms out there too. We worked our asses off, we’re still not finished, but it looks great. My body is tired, my hands are dirty, and I spent the day beside someone I love making another little piece of our home better.

Meanwhile, something else remains unfinished.

I know it’s there and eventually I’ll deal with it. I’m not pretending it doesn’t exist or telling myself some bullshit story about being so healed that whatever is inside can’t affect me. In fact, I’m making this decision because I understand myself well enough to know that it might.

There was a time when that alone would have made me open it immediately. I would have needed to know, deal with it, figure it out, and get whatever information was waiting for me right fucking now.

Urgency used to feel like strength.

Face it. Handle it. Get the information. Solve the problem. Don’t leave anything sitting out there where you can’t see it.

These days, I understand some of that urgency differently.

When you’ve lived with trauma, uncertainty can feel a whole lot like danger. The nervous system learns to anticipate, scan, prepare, and gather information because knowing what is coming once helped create some sense of control. We understand enough about trauma now to know that the body doesn’t always make a neat distinction between what is happening in the present and what something in the present reminds it of.

For me, that has sometimes looked like needing to know.

If I know, I can prepare. Preparation means I’m less likely to be blindsided, and somewhere along the way, not being blindsided became synonymous with being safe.

That’s a hell of a thing to recognize about yourself.

The other thing I’ve learned is that opening something emotionally loaded doesn’t necessarily stay contained to the five minutes it takes to read it.

Sometimes you read the email and then your body reads it for the next three days.

A sentence follows you into the shower. Your shoulders tighten while you’re making dinner. Sleep gets a little weird. You find yourself replaying something while someone you love is sitting across from you talking about something completely unrelated. Before long, you’re preparing responses to conversations that haven’t even happened.

The event took five minutes.

Your nervous system didn’t get that memo.

That matters to me this weekend because I am moving into a week I will never get back. I turn 50 on Thursday. My son is coming in from another state, and I haven’t seen him in what feels like forever. Family will be together, my younger boys will be around for dinners and breakfasts even though they’re with their dad, and there are little celebrations planned throughout the week. Less than a month from now, I’m getting married.

There is so much goodness sitting directly in front of me.

I want to actually be here for it, not technically present while half of me is somewhere else investigating, analyzing, anticipating, or preparing for something that can wait.

So the can of worms can wait too.

An earlier version of me would have been uncomfortable even saying that because I would have immediately questioned whether I was avoiding something. After all, avoidance is real. It’s a recognized part of trauma, and we can absolutely organize our lives around not having to feel things we don’t want to feel.

We’ve also gotten incredibly good at dressing avoidance up in prettier language.

“Protecting my peace” can absolutely be avoidance wearing a cute outfit.

People avoid difficult conversations and call it protecting their peace. Accountability gets renamed as negativity. Cutting someone off becomes easier than learning to tolerate conflict. Grief, discomfort, responsibility, and anything else that activates us can get pushed aside under the umbrella of self-care.

That’s not always healing.

At the same time, healing doesn’t require giving every possible trigger unrestricted access to you the second it appears.

There is a middle ground, and I think that middle ground is discernment.

If I refused to open something because I couldn’t tolerate knowing what it said, then allowed it to sit there controlling me for the next three months, we’d probably need to have a different conversation. That’s not what I’m doing.

I’m deciding when I want to deal with it.

The question isn’t simply whether I’m avoiding something. A better question is whether I’m refusing to engage because I cannot tolerate what I might feel, or whether I know I can tolerate it and have decided I don’t need to do it today.

Those are two very different things.

One of the things I appreciate about Gabor Maté’s work is the distinction between what happened to us and what happened inside of us because of it. Sometimes the thing we’re managing years later isn’t the original wound anymore. It’s the adaptation we built around it.

For me, urgency can be one of those adaptations.

The need to know what’s happening, prepare for what might happen, anticipate other people’s behavior, and get ahead of whatever could be coming has served me well at different points in my life. Some of those instincts probably saved my ass.

They just don’t get to run my life anymore.

Healing has given me something I didn’t always have between activation and action: space. I can notice what my body is doing, ask whether something actually needs my attention today, and consider what opening that door might cost before I walk through it.

That space has also taught me that not every difficult thing needs to be handled at the exact moment it presents itself.

Sometimes we become so determined to prove we’re healed that we unnecessarily test ourselves. We poke the bruise to see whether it still hurts, reopen the conversation because surely we should be able to handle it now, read the message at midnight, check the account, look at the pictures, or ask the question we already know could change the entire emotional temperature of the day.

Then we’re surprised when our body responds like a body that remembers.

Maybe healing isn’t proving that nothing can affect you anymore. Maybe it’s knowing what affects you and becoming responsible for what you do with that information.

That includes recognizing when you’re hiding.

It also includes recognizing when you’re choosing.

Tonight, there is something waiting for me. I’m not pretending it isn’t there, and I’m not afraid that I won’t be able to handle it. I’m simply not handing it the next several days of my life.

Today I worked outside beside the man I’m about to marry. We got dirty, worked our asses off, and made another little piece of our home beautiful. Tomorrow begins the week leading into my 50th birthday. My son is coming home. My family will be together, and there are moments ahead of me that I will never get back.

I want to be where my feet are.

The truth won’t expire. Whatever needs to be dealt with will still need to be dealt with.

And that can of worms?

It’ll still be there Tuesday after next.

→Have you ever intentionally decided not to open the email, have the conversation, check the account, or deal with the thing because you knew what it might cost your nervous system that day?

There’s a difference between avoiding what needs to be faced and realizing you don’t have to face everything right now.

I’d love to know if you’ve learned that difference in your own healing.

As always loving and praying for you and our world,

Rene Schooler

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This post was previously published on medium.com.