Healing Should Feel Like Freedom

Alexandria 0:00

Healing is supposed to make you feel free. It's not to make you feel afraid to live. At some point, the question starts being, what happened to me? and starts being, who am I becoming? I was making decisions with the wrong intentions because I never fully investigated or interrogated how I was feeling. If you've been doing them for years and you're still triggered by the same people, still running the same pattern, still feeling like something isn't quite right, then I want you to consider that maybe the tools aren't the problem. Maybe you've been using them to go around the thing instead of through it.

Welcome And The Healing Trap

Alexandria 0:36

Welcome to Renovating the Soul. I'm your host, Alexandria Robinson, and this is a podcast about the real unglamorous work of becoming. The work that actually requires something from you. Hard questions, honest answers, and the willingness to look at the foundation you were handed and decide what you want to build on it. That's what we do here. So wherever you're coming from today, I'm glad you're in it with me. Let's get into today's conversation.

Tools Aren’t The Problem

Alexandria 1:09

Therapy, yoga, meditation, shock recessions, journaling, prayer, church, all of it. We live in a culture obsessed with the healing journey, and yet so many people are still the same person they were five years ago. And I want y'all to hear me. This isn't an attack on the tools. The tools aren't the problem. The problem is what we're using them to avoid. You can go to therapy every week, journal every morning, pray every night, and still be triggered by the same people, still running the same pattern, still the same old person. Because none of that requires you to critically look at yourself. Welcome to another episode of Renovating the Soul. This episode is all about always healing but never healed. I'm excited to go on this journey with you all, and I hope that you'll stick

Defining Healing As A Process

Alexandria 1:58

with me. In true renovating the soul fashion, we're gonna start with defining our terms. So let's start with defining healing. Healing is the process of becoming sound or healthy again. It is also to cause an undesirable condition to be overcome. In Webster, they had this example that I really liked, and it said the troubles had not been forgotten, but they had been healed. But the key word that I want us to focus on in that first definition I gave is process, because a process is a series of action, steps, or changes taken to achieve a particular goal or result. And so there's a difference between healing things and healing. When we're saying healing things, we're not saying like healing people or healing animals. I'm talking about like doing the healing things. And so let's liken this to the healing process within our bodies, um, you know, where that would look like we're being free from injury or disease. So if you get a cut, then it needs to be treated and bandaged and it takes time to heal. But all of this depends on how deep the cut is, because not all cuts require the same attention. About a year ago, when I got my wisdom teeth removed, my mouth needed to heal. I like this example because when my mouth healed, it wasn't the same. Something was missing despite it being healed. When the doctors went and they looked inside of my mouth, you they or the dentist, they can visibly see that, oh, something has changed here. So even though the wisdom teeth are no longer there, my mouth is healed. It's functionally and visibly not the same. And when I got my wisdom teeth fulled, there were a set of instructions, there were medications, there were follow-ups, there were things that I needed to do on my end to aid in the healing process. I forgot what the specialists are called to remove your wisdom teeth, but we'll just use dentist as a general saying. But the dentist removes the wisdom teeth, but it's not the dentist's responsibility to help you in your healing process. And now you have to play your part. And so my part was again following those instructions, making sure that I was icing it, making sure that I was taking my medication, making sure that I, you know, was careful with what I ate and try to remember all the things that I had to do, right? You can't drink out of a straw. Like I had to be careful because if I didn't follow the instructions carefully, then I would avail myself to infection or to slowing the healing process. And so, in that same vein, and in preparation for this episode, I did some research on how wounds heal and my suspicions were confirmed. Your skin and anatomy are not the same after a cut heals. While the body effectively repairs the damage to restore protection, the healed area or the scar tissue is functionally and structurally different from the original uninjured skin. And there are several elements that affect that. You can Google it. I'm not a medical professional, but they're just different things that would affect that healing process. But the point is that your body is designed to protect you from infection. And that's what the scabs are for, and that's why the healing process happens the way that it does. And so, although we're talking about emotional, mental, and ultimately soul healing, we can take cues from how our bodies heal and the role that we play in

When Helpful Tools Become Harmful

Alexandria 5:20

that process. And this healing journey, it'll look different for each of us because continuing again, stick with me with this analogy because the size and depth of our individual wounds they vary. The thing that I want us to bring our attention to is that we can't ignore the wounds. It's quite the opposite. We have to pay close attention, we have to tend to it and take the proper care in order for it to heal. The band-aid itself, so if you get a cut, you know, my my kids think that every time something happens to them, they need a band-aid. And I keep trying to tell them, brother, that little scrape, the band-aid's not gonna do anything. It's just gonna make you feel like you're something's happening, but really your skin just kind of has to repair over time. But the band-aid itself is not the healer, it is a tool, but it can also become a weapon. Because if you leave a band-aid on, let's say you are bleeding and you leave it on too long and you never change it, then what happens? You can get infected, you can get boils, like something something's going to happen if you leave a bandage on that was not meant to stay on there too long. Same thing if we go back to the wisdom tooth analogy. When I first left, I had gauze in my mouth. That gauze got super bloody. I can't leave that gauze in for a long time, or else again, I open myself up to something more damaging. So the same tools that can aid can also hurt and damage and lead to infection if not used properly. And that's the same when we use the healing tools, but never actually do the work to heal. So let's talk a little more about some signs that, you know, you may be stuck in this healing trap, you know, kind of in this cycle of exactly what we're talking about, where, you know, you're always healing but never healed, or, you know, using the tools, but not really seeing any progress for

Signs You’re Stuck In Healing

Alexandria 7:03

them. So some of them are you're always learning more, but never actually changing your actions. So you're always analyzing but never applying. Um, another one is that you think you need to be fully healed before you can live or love or move forward. So you keep saying, I'm not ready yet, but then that becomes an indefinite saying and it becomes an identity instead of just a season. Um, you may overanalyze every situation instead of actually experiencing it. You can't even be in a moment without turning it into a therapy session, right? Like instead of just being there at the water or being with family, it's like, oh my gosh, that water, look at me. No, just sit down and enjoy life, just experience it, right? Stop overanalyzing things. Um, another one is you diagnose everyone around you, but you never turn the lens on yourself. If your healing has led you to believe that everyone else is the problem, then that's also a sign. Another one is that you feel better when you're far from the thing and then you call that healed. But proximity and distance from something doesn't mean that you're better or you're healed from it. It just means that it's not around you. You don't have to deal with it. Healing is supposed to make you feel free. It's not to make you feel afraid to live. It's not to give you another reason to look down on others, and it's not to keep you circling the same rooms forever.

When Healing Turns Into Performance

Alexandria 8:28

So we're gonna talk about two traps. And I've already listed, you know, those those other traps, but we're gonna focus on two traps that I just wanted to kind of unravel a little bit more. So the first one is when healing becomes performance. And this first one is less about avoiding growth and more about performing it. I'm sure you've seen it, right? The person who flexes their therapy as a reason to look down on others, the one who thinks they're the only one who's awake or progressing, the one who polices everybody else's growth like they're a certified expert in someone else's healing. For this person, or maybe for you, healing becomes a status symbol. It's a way to feel superior. It's another form of ego feeding, dressed up in the language of growth. And the problem is if your healing journey has made you think that you're better than other people, then you didn't heal. You just found a new way to be arrogant. Because real healing actually makes you more compassionate, not more critical, more humble, not more elevated. If you're using your growth to shame people who aren't where you are, that's not healing. That's just a new wound that you're carrying that's wearing this wellness outfit. The second trap is more about some of the systems and the things that we do that have the same flaw, right?

Therapy Spirituality And Religion Traps

Alexandria 9:47

Let's talk about therapy first. You can go through therapist after therapist, spend thousands of dollars, and still not get to the root, especially if the therapist is just managing symptoms or prescribing medication without doing the deeper work or even encouraging you to do the deeper work. Next is spirituality. And I separated spirituality from religion. So, first we're gonna talk about spirituality and then we're gonna come to religion. So, spirituality is more like what I mentioned in the beginning: chakras, meditation, energy work. All of it can come, can become a way to access the feeling of peace without doing the actual work of becoming peaceful. Spirituality just becomes a feeling more than it actually helps to get to the roots or to what's really happening within you. You you then you start to crave the feeling of it, but it doesn't really lead you anywhere if you don't let it. The next one, and this is big for me, and y'all are gonna be like, that's a no-brainer, is religion, church, prayer, worship. Okay, as a girl, I I'm a pew baby. I've said that to y'all. Pew baby means that I was born in church, not like my mom literally gave birth in the church, but like born in church, when you you come to church when you're what, I don't know how long they used to keep them back home, but like maybe a month later, you come to church, and then from there on, you're in church for all of your life. Every Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, right? So I know this all too well is that you can go to church and you can pray, you can worship, you can lead. You can be the pastor, you can be the first lady, you can be the music director, you can read your Bible, you can shout, you can do whatever you want. But none of it actually requires internal transformation. You can praise on Sunday and be the same person Monday through Saturday. I know it all too well because I was it. I'm not gonna get too ahead of myself, but I also know it all too well because I've seen it. And, you know, journaling is great, right? Journaling, venting, crying, screaming, they're cathartic, yes, but healing like not on their own. And I want to make sure that you all hear me. I'm not knocking these things. I'm just saying that all of these things more so require an outward expression. But none of them requires you to become a different person. And that's the trap. You can perform healing without ever actually healing. I hope that's making sense. Like, I don't, I'm not saying don't do the therapy. I'm not saying don't go to church. I'm not, I'm not saying you can't journal or cry or scream. But if we go back to, and we're gonna keep using this analogy, when I got my wisdom tea pulled, I needed the dentist. He's the only one qualified that can do it. I can't pull out my own wisdom tea. He's the expert in this situation who knows how to remove the tea safely, give me the healing steps that I need. But when I left and I went home, he's not in the house with me. Your therapist isn't at home with you, your pastor's not at home with you, the journal doesn't come alive. Like they're tools, yes, they're experts, yes, they can help you, yes, but it can't stop there. And that's what we're trying to, well, that's what we're really trying to address here,

From What Happened To Who I’m Becoming

Alexandria 12:46

right? And because of this, most healing journeys are outward facing. I I hear it a lot. You go to therapy because my parents did this, my spouse or my ex did that, my childhood was this, my pain come from came from there. And those things may be true. People do wound us, circumstances do shape us, but the healing journey that changes you is the inward one. You have to start asking yourself, who am I? What have I done? What patterns am I running? What have I done to myself and to others? Recognizing a wound is not the same as healing it. Talking about it is not the same as moving beyond it. The work has to go deeper than awareness. You can tell your story over and over again and still not be healed from it. At some point, the question starts being, what happened to me, and starts being, who am I becoming?

The Broken Engagement And The Fast

Alexandria 13:36

Y'all know your girl doesn't ever come to this podcast without some sort of experience in this. I was praying. I was in church, as I just mentioned, I was journaling, kept a diary throughout middle school to high school, and then a little bit of college. And I was processing and I was trying to grow. And this specific example that I'm gonna give y'all, I think it's more about performing healing rather than actually being healed. And I didn't recognize this at the time. So 40 Days with Jesus, that this is just one of many examples of me trying to heal without actually confronting the real root issues. So I mentioned that Quincy had broke up with me. We, and like I said, he has to defend himself from that lingo. So we're gonna keep calling it broke up, okay? Uh he dumped me. Um, and we were engaged, and you know, the Clark Atlanta, like a lot of my friends knew, campus knew because, you know, Instagram, and I had always shown him on Instagram, and so people were so excited for me. And so then he dumped me, and I have 40 days left until graduation. So I was supposed to go to Portland from Atlanta for a wedding for Quincy's friend. And when I was in Atlanta, senior year was one of the best years. One of my last year, there was like one of the best years. I I formed just relationships with people that we just laughed all the time. Shout out to Shelby, Daryl, Kirier, Harold. Like that became my little crew. I did a pageant. I did a short film with Kirier and Hampton, and I just felt like, oh my gosh, I'm finding myself. And to think about having to leave Atlanta and move to Portland was daunting. But on the plane to Portland, I was praying and I was coaching myself through it. And I'm like, okay, you know what? This is what you signed up for. You signed up to be a wife, you signed up to be with this man, and you do love him. So you're gonna have to, you know, put those feelings to the side and leave Atlanta where Atlanta is and kind of move on. And so I accepted that, right? Y'all, I land, let me tell you, there's always signs, okay? I land in Portland. And this man was acting so weird. And I was like, no, honey, I know I didn't just miss my last homecoming as a student at Clark E Land University. For you to be acting like this, I just knew something was off. Takes me to my favorite restaurant and calls off the engagement. And y'all wanted to do a movie scene so bad where I ripped the ring off and I throw it at him. But I did take the ring off, but I put it on the table. And I think I walked out. I didn't even get to finish that chicken and then that restaurant closed. Isn't that so rude? Oh my gosh. But I put the ring down. I think I walked out. I can't remember if I walked out or if I cried. Anyways, I was just, it was just a it was just a whirlwind of emotions, something that I wasn't expecting. We hadn't been engaged that long, and to me, there seemingly was no problem. So it kind of felt like it came out of left field, and everything he was telling me didn't make sense. I didn't, I just didn't believe him. And I remember we were driving in what we call his red puppets. It was a little red car. I can't even remember, I think it was like a little Ford, but we called it the red puppet. And we were driving, and I had this horrible thought to take, he was, he was driving, and I was sitting in the front seat, and I had this horrible thought to take the wheel and drive us out the road. And I knew then that I didn't want to stay there. I was like, whoa, that was scary. But what I did in response to that was more like taking a Tylenol for pain, knowing that I need surgery. I was more so managing the symptoms while ignoring the diagnosis. And so what that looked like for me was I did not admit that I was hurt by Quincy. I was trying to bounce back. I was worrying more about how people perceived me than I worried about my internal health. Uh, because like I said, I was a chaplin assistant. A lot of people knew that I had got engaged. And so I just was like, oh my gosh, what are they gonna think of me? Like, I got dumped. And then there were some people that were, that have been saying throughout my time when I was at Clark Atlanta that, like, you know, he's up in Portland cheating on you, you know he's doing this, you know it's doing this. I'm like, oh my gosh, yeah, even though that that's not what happened, it still felt like I was going to it's vindicate. I think, I think vindicate's the right word. Like I was gonna vindicate them, make them feel like they were right. And so I just had all of these unnecessary things, most of it focusing on how people perceived me and what it looked like. Then it was about Alexandria. I made up new theories of why he broke up with me instead of just accepting what he said. So then I started, oh, you you know how girls do. I started making up all kinds of stuff. I had my girlfriends all mad over us over some over a theory that actually never happened. It didn't even exist, but that was how I needed to cope. And it was also really bad because I should say, how it showed up for me was bad because a lot of my friends, like that group that I was saying that I was hanging out with, those names I just mentioned, we were very close. Like we spent multiple days together throughout the week. And when I got back to campus, that was still the same. We were together. I didn't even have the courage to be able to tell them directly that Quincy and I have broke up. What happened was we were, I think we were all together at an event. And I can't, it's hard to explain this to you. If you went to an HBCU, you'll know what I'm talking about. If you didn't, I I don't remember what it's called, but it's this thing where, because you can't auction people off. That sounds so bad. But we would, you would, they would bring, they would hold a dessert and you would you would auction, like, you know, you would do the money, and then you're buying the dessert, but you're getting the person. I know that sounds but that's what they did. Don't come for me. That's what that's what the schools did. Oh, and I forget what it's called, Pie Walk. I don't remember, but that's what the event was. And there was this guy that I I I remember names so well that I try so hard not to say their names on thing. But there was this guy, and he was super cute. I was the one that got him to come, and I started bidding on him. And well, on the cake, you know, whatever. I started bidding, and my friends were like, they're looking like, what is this girl doing? And I kid you not, y'all. As the bidding is happening and I'm winning, because your girl's winning, I'm winning, right? My friends are looking and they're whispering and they're going, Oh my gosh, do I have a ring on? Oh my gosh, like I was so embarrassed by having to tell some of my closest friends that I didn't. I just bitted on this man. They figured out that I liked him and that I was, I don't know, I was going cuckoo for coca puss. And I go on a date with him, but but it, but I'm just saying, like, that's how it showed up. Like this avoidance of what had actually happened to me showed up in this ways. And I want to make that practical so y'all can see, like, yeah, it shows up in very regular, everyday interactions. It's not this, I don't know, grand moment, right? But I was also slapping God on it like it was a rite of passage. I was like, oh, God's gonna take me through. Oh, God, put me through this, oh God, put me in. And it's like, well, maybe, but at the same time, that's not an excuse, and it can't be an excuse for not facing whatever you did. So let's get back to 40 days with Jesus. So for those 40 days, what I decided to do was a fast of sorts where I separated from certain people, I stopped listening to any music that wasn't gospel. That did help me get rid of like music that degraded women, and I still don't have those playlists to this day. Um, I got off social media, I stopped watching certain TV shows, all with the hopes of hearing from God and understanding what I was supposed to do. So this part's a little harder for me because when I was doing this preparation and I was reflecting on that time of my life, I realized that the following year of doing 40 days with Jesus was one of the years, probably the only year of my life that I that I regret. It was like one of the biggest regrets of my life. And I and I laugh at that only because of the irony of it all. Like you go on a 40-day fast, the whole point of it is to hear from God and get this word or whatever it is, but you end up in just like, oh my gosh, just a cycle of things. And again, I've I've mentioned this to you all and more recently in this season, too. That like when I look back on that, I was making decisions with the wrong intentions because I never fully investigated or interrogated how I was feeling. I journaled, I listened to music, I prayed, I went out with friends, I went on dates, I went to parties, I prayed some more, I wrote daily, I read scriptures, I was just doing All of these things, but because I had given myself the 40 days, I thought that I should be healed and over the hurt by then. I thought that an almost five-year relationship and a broken engagement should have been emotionally resolved in 40 days, which is crazy, right? 40 days to be emotionally resolved from something that was that emotionally hard and that just like publicly painful, which is the reality of it. Because it wasn't just the campus, it was Facebook too. I had to take all those pictures down. I had to change my Facebook status from engaged to something else. Remember those little statuses used to pop up? But it's just like all of these things, right? But when I tell y'all, I've already I've already mentioned getting into the relationship, but it's it's more than that in that in that year, that that that year that I regret. It's it was bigger than that. By the end of that year, I was having anxiety and panic attacks. So bad that I had to pull my car over and sit in parking lots and wait. I went to the doctor. I had to leave work one time to go to the doctor because my chest was just hurting so bad. And I actually have a funny story about that. I'm gonna tell it really quick because it's really funny, and I don't want to tell it. But the there was a nurse, there was a male nurse, and he was super cute and he's super buff. And in the functional health episode, I told y'all I do not take medicine and I can't swallow pills, and I don't like liquid medicine, so I do not like the taste. And this male nurse was beautiful, buff. He was just gorgeous. And I was like, oh my gosh, well, they needed to give me this little white thick medicine to see my heart because they wanted to make sure there was nothing wrong with my heart. Do y'all know that your girl chugged that thing down like I had never chugged anything before? I said, This man, this fine man is not gonna see me gag on this medicine. And I took that medicine like a champ. He was my guardian angel. I need to find him again. No, I'm just kidding, I'm just kidding. No, but anyway, so so yeah, so in that time, so yes, having the anxiety attacks, chest pain so bad that I had to go to the doctor. I wasn't talking to anyone about like what was actually happening in me. Some of my most fond relationships in my family, I got in this big blow-up argument because I was so emotionally going through it that I just I put myself into something that wasn't necessarily mine to get in. And that severed the relationship that I had with one of my favorite aunts. And then that was just a ripple effect on relationships at that time. So again, it wasn't just being in a toxic relationship, which that was enough. It was that. It was um the family, it was the anxiety attacks, the fear, the stress, just everything that was happening to me. And then I look back and I regret that I didn't stay in Atlanta. I look back and I regret that I didn't at least stay in California, that I'm chasing someone, or I'm trying to make, I'm trying to help heal someone else, but I'm not healed. Like that's crazy to me. When I say that after 40 days with Jesus, that following year was one of the biggest regrets of my life, that's why. And I believe, looking back now, that it all comes from this idea that I had to hurry up and be healed. And much of my understanding of healing is from my religion. You're healed by faith. If you keep praying, then it'll happen. And if it doesn't, then you just pretend that it worked. That moments of getting prayer or worship were healing, but none of it lasted for me. The 40 days with Jesus was great. I don't regret it, but it didn't last for me. I'm I ended up in a worse place than where I was because I'm almost running from myself. I'm even thinking that God wants me to be healed in 40 days. I'm I'm thinking, like, no, he's like, girl, you gotta hurry this up. You can't be down forever, right? That was my mentality, but it's just like that was not right. And I like I was saying, I don't fault myself for 40 days with Jesus. The kicker is that I put it in my last sermon at Clark Atlanta University, which is still up on YouTube. Um, as a student, I that was as a chaplain assistant. That was my last sermon, and people heard it. I just mentioned that I did this 40 Days with Jesus like fasting. And then people wanted it. And I made it a an actual PDF and I sent it to over 100 people. And so I was selling this healing story, which no, I won't say selling, I didn't make any money off of it. I was freely giving it to people, just a little PDF document. But I was fully convicted by it. I believed in it at that moment. But then I would see myself, like I said, getting triggered by the same people or the same situations, or just the anxiety attacks and the panic attacks, the stress, like it just wasn't making any sense. If I've made so much progress and if I've gone so far, like why am I still here? But now I'm realizing that I was never really healed, that a lot of my growth or my healing was and sometimes is based on things that others did or didn't do. But what did I do? Where's my accountability? What role did I play? And then, like I said, part of my healing journey or part of the excuse of why I couldn't heal was because I needed to help someone else heal. Or I need to be an anchor for this other person, but that wasn't my responsibility either. I'm my responsibility. How can I give from an empty place? So now we'll

Root Causes That Keep You Cycling

Alexandria 27:16

move on. That's my my little personal story, but I want to talk about some of the root causes, and I'm sure you could hear some of mine, but I just want to make them very clear so that we so that we can say out loud, like name it out loud, what these some of these root causes can be. Obviously, this is not an exhaustive list by any means, but it's just a few that may be a little more common. So, first is unhealed shame. And I've already suggested this book to y'all, but why emotions matter is such a good book, and they have a chapter on shame. I was gonna add it in here, but this episode would be too long if I did. So just read the book on why emotions matter and read that chapter on shame. It's so good. But the unhealed shame, this is the belief that something is fundamentally wrong with you. And how this shows up is perfectionism, overexplaining, people pleasing, or shrinking. The healing activities that mask it, performing goodness, spiritual achievement, being the together one in the room, so needing to be bring people together. The next one is fear of abandonment. This is the another root cause. This is the belief that if people really knew you, they'd leave. This shows up as clinginess, again, people pleasing, anger when needs go unmet, self-sabotaging in relationships, and the healing activities that mask this are seeking constant validation, therapist hopping when things get too real. The next one is control and self-protection. This root cause is the belief that vulnerability will get you hurt. This shows up as emotional walls, criticism of others, rigidity, inability to receive feedback, and the healing activities that mask this one are intellectualizing your emotions, staying in your head, or calling detachment peace. And then I think this is one of our last ones is that unprocessed grief. This is the loss that was never actually mourned. This shows up as numbness, depression that comes and goes, sudden emotional flooding, and the healing activities that mass this one are staying busy, reframing everything into a lesson before filling it. And I'm I'm not saying that these rude things they they go away or that they even should, but you have to do something with them. They're in you, they're happening to you, they're signals, they're manifesting through your actions and your behaviors. Don't ignore them. If I want us to go back to some of these body examples because they're so good and they're just so easy to understand how this all works. If you have a broken leg, you can start to feel better, but the bone has to fuse. It has to be strong enough to support you again. Feeling better is not the same as being whole. The antibiotic, they always tell you to finish the full course even when you feel fine. Why? Because the infection isn't gone just because the symptoms are. And then if we bring it back to renovating, the house under construction, it looks solid from the outside. You walk up and you see wood framing, uh structure taking shape. But when you zoom in, the nails are faulty, the joints are weak. It'll hold for a while, but it won't last. And I remember I was on Instagram and there was a gentleman who was showing, he's getting his house built, and he was showing the work that was being done on his house. Oh my gosh, it was a nightmare. The the nails were like not all the way in, and they were bent over on the outside of the wood framing. There were like cords hanging down, just the actual structure of what was supposed to be done was atrocious, right? And the frame, like, sure, it would have lasted for a little while, but the way that they were doing the work on this gentleman's house in the near future, we're talking maybe five so years, which is, you know, that's a short amount of time when you're building a brand new house, right? In the near future, they would have had to do new work or they would have seen things happening within their home that they probably didn't have an explanation for. That's how bad the structural damage was. That's how lazy and sloppy the work was, right? But the man he was showing this to tell people like me who want to build a house one day that you have to be on site every day to see and correct the work. And yeah, because those people doing the work, they don't care what happens to that house after they leave. They're gonna slap paint on it, put the, put the um, the drywall, they're gonna put this stuff up on the house and they're gonna walk away. They don't have to live in that home. They aren't paying for it. They're they're they're getting paid actually. And why? It's it's not their job to care. It is their job to do the work properly, but they don't have the same care for that house as the man does, as the as the person whose home it is going to be. Because for that man who was recording, it's his money. It's his home, it's his legacy on the line, it's his children and wife and family that's gonna have to come and live in this home. It's his responsibility to check that the folks that are working on his home are doing it right. And I wonder if we would take that same level of ownership with our own healing, that this house, this soul, all of who I am, I'm responsible for at the end of the day. I have the therapist, I have the pastor, I have the friend, I have the spouse. They're wonderful. They give me great advice, but I'm the only one who can really check on what's happening within me. And this might sound kind of random, but I want us to think about this too, because as a parent, we tell people who have other children to keep their children home until they're fully well. And why? Because a child who seems fine but isn't can make others sick too. And it's the same with unhealed people who appear healed. They become some of the most damaging people in the room. And it's not out of malice, but because they're at a war inside and within themselves. They're at a war inside and they're performing peace on the outside. And that's the same thing, right? Again, you are responsible. That person is responsible for what is happening here. Don't allow this healing process or this healing journey or whatever that looks like for you to become an excuse to treat others bad, to become an excuse to be so angry, to become an excuse to be so upset. Oh, because they're doing it wrong, right? Or they're not, or this therapist, I didn't like this person, or this person, no, they didn't say the right thing, or this. It's not their responsibility at the end of the day. Your therapist is getting paid. They're getting the money at the end of the day. What are you, what are you supposed to be getting from it, right? What's but what responsibility are you going to take? Because I'm not saying therapists are bad. I believe they give people real work. But I think that sometimes people stop at therapy because you've done an hour of crying and getting it all out on the table. But, and that's good. We're not gonna knock that. That's good. It is emotionally damaging. But when you're rested and you're well and you're ready, come back to the work that needs to happen on the inside. And I want to say this if you've been doing all these things and you're still feeling stuck, right? I'm not here to take away whatever it is you need, therapist, your meditation, whatever it is. But if you've been doing them for years and you're still triggered by the same people, still running the same pattern, still feeling like something isn't quite right, then I want you to consider that maybe the tools aren't the problem. Maybe you've been using them to go around the thing instead of through it, right? So let's talk about a few things that can help.

Confrontation And Real Character Work

Alexandria 34:35

Honest self-examination. I'm always gonna preach this to y'all. Not just what happened to me, but who have I been and what have I chosen and what am I still choosing? Not what you want to feel, where you want to be, but where are you right now? That is such a healthy distinction. We all have places we want to be. I want to be there, but do not pretend like you are there because that's how that war gets created. You start to battle between how I want to appear and who I really am. And it's sometimes it's just not a battle worth fighting. Sometimes it's better to just sit in the ugliness and the uncomfortableness of like, I'm not where I want to be right now, but I'm still here. I'm still a person and I'm still gonna work through it, right? Like, don't fight where you are now just to get to where you want to be. Next is character work. So, and this this is identifying the specific patterns and being willing to call them what they are, not explain them away. It's sitting in the discomfort instead of reaching for a tool to make it stop. It's distinguishing between distance and healing. Like I said earlier, just because something doesn't bother you when you're far from it doesn't mean you've healed it. And I, to bring it back to me and use myself as an example for y'all, recently I've seen that healing for me has not come through the things. Like I said, I had the journal, I've used different tools, you know, whatever that's looked like, right? Running to the Bible or running to a friend, venting. Venting's a big one for me. I'll be thinking that, okay, because I vented to my to my to my cousin sister, that uh I feel and I feel better that okay, I got it out until it comes up again. And recently I found that my healing has come through confrontation, through actually saying the things that I've been holding within to the person that needed to hear it, and even the things that I need to say to myself. It's through actually expressing myself without becoming angry or too emotional. Being able to say what I needed to say and stay in my body while I said it, that's been healing for me. Not again, this is not just with other people, but even with myself. I ran from confrontation. I made excuses or even downplayed my own experiences just to keep the peace, but that only kept me in this kind of trap that we've been talking about, this cycle that we've been talking about. And I was just telling one of my younger cousins uh yesterday that when Quincy and I, she was asking a question about Quincy and I's marriage if we had always had the dynamic that we have. And I was like, oh, you know, no, we we've always got along. We're we're we were naturally friends. That that wasn't the that wasn't hard. But when we got married, I was shut down. Any little sight of him being upset or us leaning in to have a difficult conversation, I would go in the bathroom, I would lock the door, I would take my ring off and be like, Well, that's it. It's over. And he's so patient. And he's just like, no, it's not. But also, it's because he had gone through conflict in his life. So then he became almost like my teacher. He became a tool. So again, the tools aren't bad. What happened though is that I wasn't adopting what he was trying to help me see. I kept doing it my way, thinking that the way that I was doing it was better. But again, it's keeping me in this cycle until I finally started saying the hard things out loud to myself, to him. When I'm uncomfortable or something's bothering me, he's gonna know it now. Ain't no shutting down. I'm gonna let you know, even if it's small. And I found a way to say it that's not angry or blowing up or overly emotional, like I just mentioned, but to just say it calmly and to just say it honestly, and to also acknowledge that even though I'm feeling something, doesn't mean that it's actually uh coming from a legitimate experience that's really happening, as we talked about with the spider example. I see the spider, I'm scared of the spider, but it doesn't mean that something's gonna happen to me if the spider touches me or, you know, you know, it means I'm bigger than the spider, I can kill it. That's the facts, right? But it doesn't stop the feeling. So I acknowledge the feeling, but I also acknowledge that I could be wrong in this feeling, but I'm still gonna say it out loud because saying it out loud for me again became my healing. I also I wanted to stop repeating the same struggles. That was a big wake-up call for me. Was I started asking myself, why do you still feel this way? Why are you still upset with this person? Why are you still upset about that? And in preparation for this episode, you know, I have all these articles and resources for you guys in the description, but I found something that I just really fell in love with.

Stop Waiting To Be Finished

Alexandria 39:13

And I hope you all fall in love with this idea as I did. It was a blog post by Slager Redner, and she titled this The Myth of Being Fully Healed. Seeing healing in this way of coming through something that I needed confrontation, speaking my mind, saying the hard parts out loud. It this blog post really came full circle for me. That though it's taken me a long time, you know, part of that is because I stalled, part of that is because I ignored, right? But that healing in and of itself is a journey. It really is. And this is what some of the things that she says in this article. She says, I think we've been conditioned by many industries to think we have to be fully healed before we can live. And some of us are chasing healing for that reason. It almost feels like you can't move on until you're better. You can't get married, you can't move states. But healing is a process, not a conclusion. She continues in her post by saying that we want to rush past the pain, get over the hurt fast, or be ready to move on, but that's just not life. Healing doesn't have a finish line, but we've made it a destination rather than a process. She says it's as if with enough insight, therapy, mindfulness, or even self-work, what we talk about, we'd eventually arrive at a stable, unshakable state where nothing triggers us anymore, and life flows smoothly from there. That expectation quietly turns healing into another performance metric, another way to measure ourselves, another place where we're not quite there yet. Then she says, and I love this a healed person isn't someone who never struggles. It's someone who doesn't abandon themselves when they do. It's someone who shows up compassionately when they're challenged, someone who can say this is hard, but I'm still here. Someone who allows discomfort without interpreting it as regression, someone who trusts their capacity to meet life even when it's messy. And she ends the blog post by saying this. There's a particular kind of freedom that comes when you stop waiting to be finished. When you allow yourself to love while still learning how to stay present, when you take risks while still feeling afraid, when you make changes without needing certainty that you'll never struggle again. This doesn't mean ignoring pain or bypassing growth. It means recognizing that life isn't something you earn after healing. It's the terrain where healing unfolds. There may be no final version of you who was done healing, but there is a version right now who is capable of living honestly and perfectly and with self-respect. And that might be the point. Woof. I mean, let's clap it up for Slotcha. Hopefully I said her name right too. But my goodness. The idea is that we don't ignore it, we accept where we're at. Because the beauty of being human is being able to learn, grow, heal, and continuing to heal, continuing to learn, continuing to question, and to be open to new or different answers. So that when the memories come back, when emotions resurface, when something you thought you were over shows up again, that it's not regression, that it's not proof that you haven't done the work, but that it's just a journey continuing. And the only wrong response is to abandon yourself when it does. And sometimes, what exactly what we've been talking about, the abandonment comes by taking the things, taking the tools and replacing them with actually living, with actually doing, with actually trying. And so our blueprint for this episode is that a finished house is not an abandoned house. You don't complete a renovation and walk away forever. You move in. And living in it means things shift or change. A pipe needs attention, a floor needs refinishing, walls need new paint, or carpet needs to be replaced. That's not the renovation failing. You don't look back and say, man, this house. That's what's actually happening when you lived in a ho in a house. When I first when we first moved in our home, we had two little boys. And y'all, there's so many dents, and they didn't got those crowns and they stressed me out about how that house looks. But at the same time, it's also a sign that we've lived there, that we've done things, that we have memories. That though it's kind of, you know, the dents aren't cute and the color, the the it's not Picasso, okay? The little crown marks. But it shows that look, I remember that phase of my kids or that memory or whatever. And that's the point that I'm trying to make. The renovation was never supposed to just produce a house that you never touch again. It was supposed to produce a house worth living in, a house you care for because you love what it's becoming. We've been treating healing like a construction project with a completion date, finished by this year, finished by those 40 days, done by the time I'm this age, ready to move in when everything is perfect. But a home that is never lived in while it's being built is just a building. The living is the point. And as Slaja said, there is no final version of you who was done healing, but there is a version right now capable of living honestly and perfectly with self-respect who was worth showing up for. So stop waiting to be finished. Move into the life that's already yours. Keep tending the house. That's what it means to make your soul a place that you want to live. And a couple questions that I want you to sit with. First one is where have I been waiting to be fully healed before I allowed myself to move forward? And what does that cost me? What does healing actually look like in my real life? Not the version I imagined or even what I've been shown or told. What has it felt like when it's genuinely happened? When someone resurfaces a memory, an emotion, an old wound, can I stay with myself instead of abandoning myself in the moment? I appreciate y'all. I love y'all. I thank y'all for being here. And as always, I hope that you hear my heart, and I hope that you hear a girl who thought that she was healing by doing all of these things, but was only keeping herself stuck and realized that true healing came from doing the things that I kind of loathed the m the most. That and and and honestly, I had an idea early on, but I ran from it. I knew that confrontation could get me to express myself, but I ran from it. I knew what I was feeling. I even knew sometimes that I was valid and feeling that, but I ran from it. And I'm just hoping that someone listening to this will stop running from themselves, but would love themselves where they're at and understand that your healing is a journey. But it's your journey, it's your responsibility, it's yours to take care of. I hope you all enjoyed this episode. Until next time, let's keep doing the work to renovate the soul.