Over the years, I’ve had clients and energy-curious souls ask, “how do you know if the healing is working?”

Sometimes it can feel as though you are going over and over the same old ground and that nothing is changing. It’s important to remember that this is subtle work - and because of this it’s important to look for the subtle, the nuance, the small micro-shift that tells you things are in fact moving and changing.

While no one is ever fully healed (there is no perfection, only progress), there are clear signs that healing is happening. Let’s break down some of them:

Your Nervous System is Happy.

Most of the time, we need healing because some conditioning, limiting belief and/or trauma has gotten locked in our bodies causing our nervous system to locked in either fight/flight/fawn/freeze. This connects with your vagus nerve and creates responses of triggering. Depending on your go-to it could be fighting, avoiding, people-pleasing and numbing. There are others, but the main point is that your nervous system gets triggered a lot and can often misinterpret a threat creating one of these responses on a regular. When the healing is working, this happens less often. Also, when triggered you can return to calm and happy much more quickly and completely.

Basically, you begin to feel safe in your body, and can help your body understand the real difference between threats and automatic responses that might feel familiar because they’ve been there for so long but in actuality, aren’t real. Or helpful.

You have a Better Relationship with your Mind

Often when we need healing our inner dialogue is a mess. We might be overly critical, judgmental, disparaging, or even hateful. The mind can race creating anxiety, overthink, get overwhelmed and shut down, or fail to come up with creative and playful responses to the present moment. In short, your mind is not a safe place to hang out, so you might be going out of way not to be with it at all and spend all your time and energy on others.

When the healing is happening, this changes. There is more control over the direction of the thoughts, you are able to keep it nice and neutral, and be working your way to kind and loving. When the old harsh patterns flair, you can redirect and refocus with more mastery. You are willing to spend more time within and explore your thoughts and possibly even be looking for their origin stories. You are able to activate observer mode and recognize that your thoughts are not YOU. They are often old tapes and programs running, which you now realize you need to catch and reprogram. You know it takes time, effort and consciousness, but because you are seeing the results of being able to release negative thoughts, and feeling the benefits as in feeling better about yourself - you are willing to keep going.

Your Choices Change for the Better

I’m willing to bet that before healing, or even now, there are certain situations and people that you will throw yourself under the bus to please, or prevent from angering. That’s how conditioning and trauma work. We all have universal wounds, if you will - abandonment, rejection, not worthy or deserving, etc - and depending on which one(s) you are currently harboring without knowing it, you will engage knee-jerk reactions without thinking. This results in putting others before yourself, “helping” instead of supporting (doing it for someone else when no-one actually asked you too; you just thought it needed to be done), feeling like you need others to rely on you, tell you are worthwhile, ignore your own needs and desires, hide your true self to get along, etc Basically you will not be YOU in some cases and you might even have story about why it needs to be like this.

When the healing is working though, this all goes away or lessens. You might still want to support others and show up being a good person, but not if it means sabotaging or sacrificing yourself to do it. Basically, you no longer feel compelled to jump just because someone asked something of you. You might recognize that in the past you would have made choice X in a situation and now you are making choice Y, which feels way better to you. And there is no more guilt about it.

Also, you might stop eating and drinking certain things as you no longer align with that energy frequency. Other habits might change as well, as you align with a higher, healthy state of energy.

Caution for this: sometimes when this aspect of healing happens and you start creating boundaries for yourself, people who were benefiting from you not standing up for yourself get mad. In the past, this would have bothered you to no end. When the healing is happening, it’s not that you no longer care, it’s that you are more conscious (aware) of what is happening and KNOW you are okay with it, because you are taking care of yourself.

Taking Time for Yourself - and NOT Feeling Guilty

Healing takes time. Time for things to change, but also time for you to be with YOU, so you can know yourself better. Often when we need healing, being alone feels selfish, or the thing you’ll get to when you’re done serving everyone else - which of course never happens. There is never any time for you and what you might think of as time right now is scrolling through social media or playing with crystals and cards. Those are all lovely, but to develop a healthy (healing implied) relationship with yourself, you need to hang out with yourself. Sometimes a lot. And if you have any caretaker or people pleasing or even perfectionist imbalances, this might be challenging.

When the healing is working, this becomes a non-negotiable. Whether it’s a morning routine, or some other form of Sacred Space, only time alone can help you ground and recenter so you can show up in your everyday life as an aligned and empowered soul.

Relationships Become More Fluid

I also noticed with healing that relationships get cleaned up and the FLOW is more fluid. Communication becomes more productive as you are able to express your emotions and needs without all the pretense that might have gone in before. Pretense might include: blaming, excusing, apologizing, not exactly coming out and saying it or simply not saying it all. This all happens when we are coming from wounds and weaker states. If this is happening, that’s alright, just realize there is healing that needs to be done.

When healing is happening you can say things like, I am feeling like this, or this is happening in my body, or I’m telling myself this story, and but you recognize its not YOU, its how you are feeling in the moment. We are allowed to have our feelings, thoughts and emotions. They don’t have to be pretty all the time. The aren’t going to be pretty all the time, but the more emotionally honest and open we can be, the less likely they are to get trapped inside and connects with other wounded parts and then turns into Shadow, which becomes a whole thing that needs more healing.

Healing can take time and because it is not as fast as Tylenol can be for fixing a headache. We can often wonder - is this working? Reflection and observation, regular check-ins with your body, mind, and soul, and a commitment to developing your inner relationships will also help you know when the healing is working. But the best indicator of whether or not the healing is working is if you feel more like the YOU you always knew you were underneath.

If you would like support with your growth and healing, check out FLOW and GLOW an 8-week immersive program that gets you solidly on the path of your Growth Story.