The 9 Stages of the Healing Journey
The healing journey is unique for every individual. But there are some archetypal stages that tend to unfold more or less reliably for most people.
In this blog, I’d like to explore these stages, of which there are nine.
By understanding them, we can get used to the rhyme and rhythm of the path. We learn to become more trusting of its undulating flows, its contractions and expansions. Especially when we get stuck in the Trough of Disillusionment or the Crisis of Deepening (see what I mean below!).
(Note: the healing journey is messy and nonlinear - the path outlined below is high-level generalisation for contemplation, not a precise model!).
Any of these stages can last anywhere from days to an entire lifetime.
And it’s not ‘better’ to be ‘further along’. No one stage is any more important or superior to another. They are all necessary and valid.
This is partly because we can be on multiple journeys simultaneously, at different scales. So, at the macro level, we might go through the whole cycle over a number of years around a deep trauma. But we could cycle through the whole thing in a single day around a small trigger.
So far as I can tell what precipitates a shift from one to the next is a deep desire and intention to become more conscious. A drive to know, to grow, to be.
The fractal pattern that underpins the unfoldment of the path I like to call ‘Cosmic Squeezing’, which simply refers to a being-level process of contraction and expansion.
The cosmic squeeze comes in, compelling us to meet something challenging. As we do so, the squeeze relaxes and we move into more spaciousness. Rinse and repeat, deeper and deeper, ad infinitum (see stage 9: The Strange Loop).
Alright. Let’s jump into the 9 stages of the healing journey!
1) The Dawn of Awareness
The first stage is that we become painfully aware that something isn’t quite right, we’re fed up of feeling a certain way or that we have a problem that needs addressing. We may have been denying or avoiding it for a while but it finally becomes undeniable or unavoidable.
This can be anything, whether it’s a health issue, a relationship conflict, a vague sense of ennui or a deep depression.
Importantly, perhaps for the first time we feel motivation to get up and address the issue, where previously we may have just tried to avoid, numb out or distract from it.
At this point, we tend to only have a surface level understanding of the ‘problem’ and are often miles off in our appraisal of what the problem really is. (E.g. we think we “just need to drink less”, but haven’t quite grasped yet that we are drinking too much because of much deeper issues).
We don’t know what to do about it, however. So we set off on the healing journey!
2) The Brook of Dabbling
We set out to find a solution, but we don’t know what’s available so we try things that resonate with us pretty much at random! We’re dipping our toes into healing waters here and there trying to find our bearings.
With the first whiffs of consciousness raised, we start trying things out: maybe reading books, going to workshops, watching courses or finding practitioners to work with.
This is helpful for us to get a clearer sense of our issues (e.g. we might learn more about the mind or trauma or the nervous system) as well as what’s available in the vast world of therapy, healing and spirituality.
In this stage, however, we tend to dabble here and there, without going deep anywhere.
3) Circling the Pit
We find an approach or person that resonates, but (unconsciously) avoid going too deep, too quickly.
In this stage, we tend to ‘circle’ round the deep, root issues, attempting to find more light-touch approaches to feeling better that don’t involve us really meeting the parts of us that we don’t want to meet.
In short, we are trying to feel better without directly feeling how we are feeling.
Maybe we do some talk therapy, a bit of yoga or meditation, some journalling…that kind of thing. And these all help! But they don’t really address the root issue.
And this is understandable and necessary. Healing is a scary proposition that involves root-and-branch changes to our being and our survival styles. It doesn’t want to change!
This phase lets us slowly approach our pain in a way that feels manageable. It also allows us to develop critical skills and resources that may first be needed. Eventually we see for ourselves that we need to go deeper and meet ourselves more fully.
This can last years in some cases (again: necessary), while we accumulate the experience, skills, support, courage and resources to really meet ourselves.
4) The Dive Within
We start to meet ourselves directly, learning to feel our feelings; to embody our rage, sadness, grief; connecting to those frozen inner children and hearing what they have to say, learning to hold space for them in love and compassion.
After we have been ‘circling the pit’ for long enough, we realise that it isn’t quite working.
We realise that the only way out is through.
Rather than attempting to solve the pain without meeting the pain, we are ready to meet ourselves directly.
We have the experience, knowledge and support to start to approach the unconscious pockets of pain and trauma in the body that are the real root of our suffering.
Time is spent deep within, carefully being with the layers of stuck survival stress from the past, allowing them to come up and out.
Our life starts to become centred on this healing process, using triggers and events as opportunities to meet deeper and deeper layers.
This is where the core work is done.
5) The Trough of Disillusionment
As we open up to our ‘stuff’ it can feel like things are getting ‘worse’ for a time and we can start to feel disillusioned; we are working hard but we are just spinning their wheels or even getting stuck more deeply in the mud. It feels like it’s ‘not working’ or like we are backsliding or ‘doing it wrong’.
When we start diving deep, it can sometimes be like we’re opening Pandora’s Box.
We start to notice just how much ‘stuff’ is within us: deep shame, terrifying rage, ancient fear and raw vulnerability.
It can feel like things get worse for a time, before they start getting better. Only because we are now starting to really notice what we are carrying with us and are no longer numbing it out or distracting ourselves.
This is the most contracted point of the Cosmic Squeeze, where we can feel the most dark, dense, stuck. It can feel like it will last forever and you will never get out.
We can start to lose faith in the process!
At the macro level, this can look like a long period of confusion, doubt and even panic. We grasp externally for something to hold onto: buying more courses, venting to anyone who will listen, booking more workshops…!
At the micro level, this is when we are attempting to deal with a trigger but it’s ‘not working’ and we feel like we don’t know what to do. All our tricks have been exhausted! We can feel helpless and out of control.
6) The Meadows of Healing
This is the expansion phase of the Cosmic Squeeze, where the claustrophobic clench of the squeeze is released and we feel a joyous and blissful move into comparative spaciousness and freedom.
If the bold adventurer manages to stay the course through the Trough of Disillusionment they burst forth onto a new plane: The Meadows of Healing.
The hard work pays off and everything feels ‘right’ for a time. Like we have let go of a heavy burden, a scorching fire within us has been quenched or a thorn has been removed.
I always feel that this stage is like a ‘reward’ from the universe. A little treat to incentivise us to keep going on the healing journey.
Bask in that spaciousness!
Enjoying this stage is critical to help us feel like we’re on the right path and to strengthen the feedback loop between feeling the pain and healing the pain. This loop can be reinforced more and more until we find self-avoidance quite agonising.
Notice that the real fruits of our efforts come quite late in the game. Patience is required.
7) The Landing Place
Our ego adapts to what we have learned and the ways in which we have begun to open our deeper wounds. In order to stay safe, it will cunningly transform and disguise its psychological defences to hide behind whatever new strategies and techniques you have adopted.
The landing place is a kind of ‘new normal’ where we get comfortable. This often happens when we think we’ve found our ‘holy grail’: the one approach or teacher that we can just mindlessly follow and everything will be OK.
But your defences will adapt, and it will be once again challenging to explore further or deeper.
For example, maybe you’ve learned how to feel and contain difficult sensations in the body. And this is really powerful! But you start using your new capacities as a way of avoiding other (even more uncomfortable) feelings.
So you might want to speak more honestly but you feel frozen whenever you try. Rather than empowering yourself to speak up, you use your somatic skills to just accept the freeze response and avoid the discomfort of speaking up.
A landing place can be a comfortable place for a while. And there’s nothing wrong with it. But for those that wish to continue down the healing path, it’s helpful to keep a look out for them.
What techniques and approaches you need will have to change as you advance to stay one step ahead of the cunning survival strategies of your tricksy mind :).
Every key to our own being eventually becomes a lock to deeper levels for which we need a new key!
8) The Crisis of Deepening
Some kind of crisis (big or small) will manifest as a way of knocking us off our comfortable perch, disrupting our landing place and driving the whole process deeper.
We may find ourselves hanging out in the Meadows of Healing or find a comfortable Landing Place for a while. Maybe the rest of your life! And that’s great.
But…(for those that want it (or sometimes those that don’t))…there is more!
Often this stage starts to unfold when we (either consciously or unconsciously) set an intention or acknowledge a desire to go deeper.
A crisis then manifests. It can be big or small: health, money, family, death, love, sex, work…something will come along.
Typically, it will occur in exactly the way we don’t want it to (getting right to our deepest attachments). Often, it will be a revisiting of themes we have already addressed but at deeper levels.
We tend to strongly resist this stage as the crisis tends to blow up our comfy sense of having ‘made it’. We like to think we are beyond crises or certain triggers or issues.
Now, in my experience, if we are listening carefully, we can notice the crisis early and respond appropriately. Over time, we learn that if we pay attention, heed the message and take responsibility for whatever it is that is being asked of us, typically the less intense the crisis will be.
9) The Strange Loop
The last stage is that we return back to precisely where we started and begin the whole cycle of healing again.
s we come out of a phase of deepening, we suddenly start to become aware of more programming and conditioning that has now risen to the surface to be seen (and we’re back at the first stage: Dawn of Awareness).
The phenomenon of the ‘strange loop’ is fitting here, which is defined by Douglas Hofstadter as whenever, “by moving upwards (or downwards) through the levels of some hierarchical system, we unexpectedly find ourselves right back where we started” (Gödel, Escher, Bach; p.10).
Beautiful examples of strange loops exist in the paradoxical work of Dutch artist M.C. Escher. See his work ‘Waterfall’ below, which falls endlessly into itself.
Or it can be heard in the ‘Shepard tone’ which is a sound that seems to the listener to be endlessly rising or falling but never, in fact, changes pitch. It’s VERY weird and worth checking out (try this super-trippy link).
The healing journey never ends in any absolute sense, we dive deeper and deeper into ourselves, yet eventually always find ourselves back where we started: here and now!
Final Tips
What stage are you at on the healing path? How many times have you been there before?
Here are a few tips for successfully navigating the strange loop of healing :).
You MUST tailor your path to your uniqueness while having the wisdom not to use this as an avoidance or distraction
Watch out for holy grails and landing places: what you need and how you advance will change as you proceed
When you get complacent the universe will give you a nudge: the longer you ignore said nudges, the sharper they will be.
Maximum extraction from minimum contrast: which means that you want to learn to make the most of small triggers. You don’t need massive crises or catastrophes - just live your life and use everything that happens as grist to the healing mill
Healing is messy: there’s confusion and dead-ends and backsliding and not knowing what to do and working with people who aren’t aligned with you and getting worse before you get better and all this. This is normal 🙂
Good luck and godspeed!
