Bent Progress

If you've ever dealt with any form of trauma, there is one mantra that therapists looove:

"Healing isn't linear"

Ugh. If you've been to therapy, you probably resent the saying as much as I do (even if you know it's true).

What's Nonlinear Healing?

You will have good and bad days. Days you feel you're taking steps forward and it's all coming together will be followed by days you get blown off your feet and shot back 20 steps.

And then you'll get up and do it all again.

All of this back and forth is in the hopes that eventually the good outweighs the bad. It's so one day, you begin to scar over those wounds. The scars might- in fact, it's likely they will-get ripped open, more than once. But then they heal again.

And overtime, the scars become a little more flexible. They hurt, but not as much. And instead of being shot 20 steps back, it's 10, then 5.

And then finally, though the scars will always be there, they may not always be felt.

Though the axe forgets, the tree remembers.

This twisted, Wonka-style process is nonlinear healing. It's frustrating and illogical to our brains. Wouldn't it be easier and more efficient to go from A to B? To hurt, hurt, hurt... then not hurt?

It would make our decisions, our trauma responses, our forgiveness, and our lives so much easier.

But instead we're gifted with nonlinear healing. But that term sounds technical, so I called something else: bent progress.

Our Reaction: Outrage

I've asked all the questions myself: why? How? When? To therapists, family members, friends... God.

As if healing isn't hard enough, now the place I'm in isn't steady? It's not determined? It's not guaranteed?

What we hear: I'm just as vulnerable as before?

And bingo!! There's the problem. When we want linear healing, we want to be done. We want "this once was a problem, but it's not anymore, and never will be again."

The premise of nonlinear healing doesn't guarantee that. It often beats to the rhythms of our hearts and souls-the parts of us that go back-and-forth. Which are as finicky and unreliable as the people who hurt us.

And sometimes that just pisses us off

It's angering and frustrating and leaves us feeling like nothing is happening.

It just plain pisses us off that we are doing all of the work to heal (which is very hard by the way) and for what? To battle daily with the same demons over and over? It can boil one's blood.

Worse, it can make you want to give up entirely.

Wait, But Is There Hope Still?

Like many therapy terms, "nonlinear healing" has been used so repeatedly that it sort of loses meaning and power. Which means it doesn't motivate us anymore.

Just because our healing is nonlinear doesn't mean we're not moving forward. It doesn't mean it's all for naught.

It doesn't mean that everyone we deviate from the "linear" course we have to hit rock bottom again.

This is where I introduce:

Bent Progress

Maybe a similar idea, but a different approach-a different state of mind.

One therapist I had said to me:

We're always making some sort of progress in our journeys [as long as we put in the work], just sometimes it's not the progress we can see, not the progress we've been looking for"

At its core, that's the difference between the 2 ideologies to me.

Nonlinear healing is "endgame" results. It's so focused on healing X. But as humans, we're notoriously fickle and X can look 5 feet away one day and 500 feet the next. Either way, there's a clear place we are striving towards. And it's the specific striving that gets us.

But the idea of "bent progress" flips the process on its head.

Instead of playing by the same rules (struggle to work towards and achieve a specific objective with laser-eyed focus on one thing), "bent progress" sees how we are constantly moving forward.

It may not be the ways we planned or always wanted. It may not even be ways we could have previously identify if we didn't change our perspective.

But bent progress reframes that we are improving, we are putting in the work, and results are burgeoning. Sometimes we just have to be okay with it not always being what we originally planned.

It's in those moments where we see ourselves grow and heal in ways we never expected-never thought possible. We become people we never thought we could be.

How Do I Apply This?

I graduated from college 2 years & 1 day ago. When this was brought to my attention yesterday, I was filled with grief and disappointment. All I could see was what I hadn't done in 2 years: healed from my illnesses, continued my education, moved out, found a significant other, etc.

Over and over, I just kept feeling like those last 2 years were ashes. They were lost dust in the wind, time I would never get back, time I did "nothing" with.

But, in a moment of self-loathing and self-pity, God (and my family) spoke to my heart, grabbed me by the shoulders, and pulled me out of the trenches of pity and self-hate, of disappointment.

Instead, they reminded me of all I have done. And I don't mean academic or career accomplishments. I don't mean life milestones. I don't mean things we look for.

Suddenly, times were pinpointed in my life when I was done; I couldn't go any further. But somehow I got up and I did. I was reminded of all the treatment I've sought (a trauma all its own), medications I've endured, mental/physical trauma healing, anxiety coping, spiritual de/reconstruction, etc. Those things are nothing to sneeze at.

As long as we are hurt, we never walk a straight road to being cured. Nonlinear healing exists. But I like to think of it as bent progress.

A little bruised, a little dented, and a little off course for what the world expects, but progress nonetheless.

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