Is It Normal To Hate Self-Growth?

At least that’s what I think.

Though I don’t like the self-help gurus anymore, I used to listen to them a lot. One of the quotes that stuck with me for years was when Lisa Nichols said, ‘why won’t people do it? Because it is lonely’. She was referring to self-growth and was spot on with this comment. It is lonely and it gets lonelier the more you work on yourself.

Doing the inner work is extremely difficult. There are many things at stake. You have to be willing to go through the dark door to find what’s on the other side. Once you are in it, you can’t really take it all back too, so you have to move forward. The more you learn more about yourself, the more you feel scared and bitter.

Self-work can and will leave you powerless at first. The idea of yourself you had for many years will shatter. You’ll find many more events to blame on your parents. You’ll understand why you acted the way you acted before and you’ll wanna take back time. While the missed opportunities will haunt you, sorrow and regret will be your pals for a while.

Once the painful phase ends, you’ll however look at life altogether from a very different perspective. Soon, your ride-or-die friends will seem a bit toxic, your beloved boyfriend might reveal himself to be abusive, even your favorite parent would be less desired after facing the wounds of childhood. When the truth comes out, it is harder to be ignorant anymore. They don’t say ignorance is bliss for no reason.

Even at the times, your BFF or parent is still rock solid, you might find yourself not engaging as before as you came to peace with your own being. Maybe you won’t feel the need to leave the house every time you feel down and will choose to stay and deal with emotions.

Whatever the outcome is, when and whilst going through self-healing, your life as you know it will come to end and chances are it will get lonelier.

If it does though, that’s when you know, you did the right work.

It is supposed to get lonelier as it’s between you and you. The whole idea is to connect and expect your being as much as you possibly can. It is like peeling an onion, as my therapist would say, layer by layer you face with your demons, layer by layer you try to reach the magical core. Once you are peeling off the onion, a.k.a. your actual self, you leave the layers behind, feeling naked and lonely without them.

When I started going through the onion phase, I hated it. It was weird to go through emotions and forgotten memories only to come to terms with what happened in the past years ago. I was in therapy to deal with my current self, yet with every dreadful session, I would feel disconnected from my present. It takes a lot of time and energy to be okay with peeling yourself off. even when I got the hang of things, I still hang on to some layers as they were familiar to me. Sometimes peeling off one layer took months.

It is completely normal to hate self-help, |I mean who wants to dig their wounds only to feel lonely right?

It is a sign to know you are on the right path and that you should keep going though, not a discouragement.

With much love,
April Moons.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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