You can't hack your way to healing

But no-one gets rich by telling you that it just takes time.

I’ve been on bit of a healing journey recently. I know, what a cliche! Whoever heard of a middle-aged woman who suddenly started investigating chakras and energy cleansing? It’s so boring that I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I’m on that path. But, maybe there’s a reason middle-aged women start scrabbling about for answers. I’m not the first female writer in her fifites to express the view that mid-life is exhausting for women of our generation and I won’t be the last. The reasons are obvious. We’ve often been caring for children and ageing parents at the same time (or we’re grieving their loss), we’ve dedicated our lives to over-working and trying to have it all (as a generation whose partners have not necessarily stepped up alongside us) and then, as if we weren’t knackered enough, menopause hits and suddenly the life we’ve built for ourselves starts to feel like a prison and the coping mechanisms we’ve relied on (people-pleasing, self-sacrifice, over-doing it, alcohol, insert your own here…) just don’t cut it anymore.

I have my own particular reasons for needing to heal. I’m trying to heal from so many things that it’s almost farcical to try to list them: the deaths of two parents, the chronic illness of children, lone parenting, the pandemic, battling the failures of the education, family court, medical and mental health systems alone on behalf of my neurodivergent children, multiple legal battles, the traumatic loss of my partner and the failure of other attempts at relationships. Then there’s the realisation that I too am neurodivergent and that the masks I’ve been wearing don’t stay put anymore (thanks menopause) and that it’s not just neurodivergence that I’ve been masking but the chronic illnesses that I have pushed through and pushed aside for decades: hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, food intolerances, mast cell activation disorders - a whole conglomeration of nebulous symptoms which increasingly people are joining the dots between. And, while we’re at it, why not add in the trauma of being gaslit when I’ve tried to make these links myself and having my health weaponised against me to the point that, even now, I’m wary of publicly saying that I suffer from these conditions. It’s been a lot. Poor me!

But that’s not what I want to write about. I’ve already written enough sob stories. (Buy the book why don’t you?) What I want to write about is how hard it is to heal and how long it takes and how our fast-paced, capitalist culture, and specifically technology, is the enemy of people who want to get well. I’m not saying the internet isn’t helpful. If it hadn’t been for the internet, I might not have joined some of those dots. Reading articles about neurodivergence has helped me to understand myself through that lens and I’ve learned so much about trauma responses, nervous systems and c-ptsd from Instagram and Substack. Peer support is such a valuable tool for people who are suffering alone at home, confused by their symptoms and experiences. And we can access so many experts with so many opinions and so many solutions with just the touch of a button. So many. So many.

And therein lies the problem. Click on one article about trauma and the algorithm helpfully starts serving up a diet of trauma-healing content on a daily basis. And soon, not only are we being triggered constantly by more and more mentions of the trauma that we’re trying to heal from, but we’re being sold a plethora of solutions all of which claim to be the holy grail of an answer. If we can just pick the right one, we can be like the smiling celebrities and beautiful people who, by taking one particular course, or supplement or by eating a particular diet or imbibing a particular potion are suddenly thriving. And not only did they apparently only need one solution, they only needed a short injection of it (thirty days, three months, twenty-four weeks) before everything was fixed.

Reader, I’m sorry to tell you that I have purchased many of these solutions and even having had six months off work to recover, much of the time, I still feel like shit! I’m still menopausal with menopausal symptoms. My nervous system is not fully regulated. I’m still suffering from c-ptsd and can be triggered by a mutitude of things. I can still be derailed by grief with no warning. As for my health symptoms, I can go to bed feeling great and wake up randomly with tendonitis, or a massive migraine, or a pain in my ribs, or locked shoulders, or sinusitis, or gut problems, or, my latest, golfer’s elbow (WTF?) Sometimes it feels like I must have just inhaled a particular perfume or a pollen in order to kick off a whole range of symptoms. I eat a vegan diet free from gluten, eggs, dairy, peanuts and sesame. I don’t eat sugar or drink alochol. You’d think I should feel great but I don’t. Annoyingly, I do feel worse if I fall off the wagon, so I stick to my diet and I take a bucket load of supplements and I take my HRT even though I’m not sure that helps much either because I can’t risk stopping it and feeling worse. I’ve been going wild swimming regularly, I meditate twice a day, I’ve done courses to heal my vagus nerve, I journal and do art every day, I have a personal trainer, I go to a weekly breathwork class, I’ve had shiatsu and acupuncture, osteopathy and so much therapy. I’m sure it all helps a little. I have learned a lot and grown a lot. I am stronger and more self-aware and I have a toolbox of techniques I can use to help myself. But there has been no silver bullet, no epiphany, no permanent return to wellness. And the result of that? Just more anxiety and low mood. Because now I feel like I’m failing. These solutions seem to have worked for everyone else. What’s wrong with me? I’m working so hard at healing and I’m not getting better. I have always worked so hard.

And, then it strikes me that there I have it. The answer. The real silver bullet. Healing isn’t something you can work hard at. Which is a damn shame because striving is the only way I know. In fact, I’ve realised that striving is in itself a trauma response (of course it is!) Striving has been my way to deny that there’s anything wrong with me for decades, over-working and over-giving, just another way to push down my pain. Recently, despite allegedly being on sabbatical, I found myself reverting to my old ways and failing to say no. There was the retreat I’d already planned and the manuscript I’d promised to edit years ago, and the workshops with survivors of domestic abuse which is close to my heart, and the home renovation projects, all against the backdrop of the hideous things that are happening in the world. All of this coincided in June, and suddenly I was working until midnight again, back on a hamster wheel. Add in two family funerals and some other triggers and, guess what, the wheels came off again and all of my symptoms returned with a vengeance. It was a good learning experience because I’ve shown myself conclusively that I just do not have the capacity to work like that anymore. Not if I want to be well. Or as well as I can be. And I do want to be as well as I can be, even if it takes a while. Even if, what it actually takes is acceptance - that I will not ever be free of grief and some symptoms of trauma, that I will probably never be truly well again. Perhaps it’s ok to be as well as I can be and to have a toolkit to draw on and to know my limits?

It turns out that, regardless of what Instagram might say, there is no insta-healing. Healing isn’t something there’s a quick fix to. Especially when a nervous system has been under stress for so many years, I’m realising that what it actually needs is slowness and self-compassion and acceptance. It needs me to strive less and ‘be’ more. Whilever I’m rushing around trying to find quick fix solutions, my nervous system is still being activated; I’m still in crisis mode thinking that if I just spin enough plates fast enough, I will win at this healing malarkey. And that’s not how healing works.

Try telling that to the influencers who are pushing solutions in their three minute reels, preying on our frailities to make their millions. Social media it seems is actually designed to keep us dysregulated and under stress. And yet, it’s still a useful tool. Conundrums, conondrums.

I wrote a poem about it and put it on Instagram because, being a lone parent with all of my issues, getting out to spoken word nights is hard. I added it to the grid and was immediately told that Instagram wouldn’t recommend it because it was too long. Do we not have the attention-span any more for anything longer than three minutes? Even that seemed symbolic. I posted it anyway and it’s probably going to be the most liked thing I’ve ever written. It seems I’m not the only one feeling like this, which is reassuring in itself. Perhaps our failure to be well is not a personal shortcoming but a collective symptom of the world we’re living in? Anyway, the poem says it better than me. You can watch it if you have the attention span. As for your nervous system, have this gift from me. You’re doing fine. Given what you’re dealing with, it’s no wonder you feel crap sometimes. It’s ok not to be well. Relax. Fight capitalism and the patriarchy by letting your feet dangle in a stream or by lying in the grass (unless you react to grass like I do!) Probably the things that will heal us, like the best things in life, are free.