This Is Not a Picnic: Staying With the Healing Journey

There is a story told by Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield about the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Trungpa was giving a talk in Berkeley to a room full of people who had come to hear him speak about the spiritual path. At one point, he asked how many people were just beginning their spiritual practice. Several people raised their hands. His response was surprising. He essentially told them to go home. He suggested they could get their money back and simply decide not to begin. The spiritual path, he warned them, was difficult, demanding, and far more challenging than they realized.

It was, in his words, “not a picnic.”

And then came the part that has stayed with me: “It is best not to begin. But if you do begin, it is best to finish.”

When I first heard this story, I felt validated, because despite the hours of meditation, therapy, self-help books, and more, I was still in some level of pain and making mistakes on the daily- I hadn’t found the easy, picnic version of life yet. Jack Kornfield has shared this story as a teaching about the nature of genuine spiritual practice. I think it is also a remarkably good description of psychotherapy and the healing journey.

Healing Isn't Always About Feeling Better

We often enter therapy because we want something to change, or we want to hurt less.

But something that isn't talked about quite as often is that becoming more aware of ourselves doesn't always feel better at first. Sometimes it feels harder. When we begin looking honestly at ourselves, we start seeing things we were previously able to avoid. We notice the ways we control when we are afraid or how quickly we move into over-functioning when something feels uncertain. We become aware of the places where we use food, work, achievement, relationships, substances, distraction, or perfectionism to move away from something more vulnerable underneath. And then we start to actually face some of what’s vulnerable underneath and that’s uncomfortable or painful. It’s disruptive to our peace, our relationships, or our functioning. It can be really disorienting as we try to figure out who we now, as we are changing. We get asked to be courageous and tolerate the unknown and take action that aligns with our new awarenesses. And then we regress, or enter a stressful life situation and the old patterns re-emerge. That’s when the rubber really meets the road, as we ask “how do I show up in a way that makes me proud, even when it’s gets most hard to do that or I feel like I’ve been running a marathon of a healing journey?”

I've been on my own healing journey since 2010. I wish I could tell you that after all these years, I no longer experience anxiety, control, over-functioning, a wonky relationship with my body, vices, irritability, or the impulse to avoid vulnerability. I can’t. I can also report that through my healing journey, my own capacity has increased, but this has not made things easier, really, because with greater capacity, comes greater responsibility.

I talk to my clients all the time about merging with vulnerability and embracing the unknown, and when I check in with myself, there are still so may layers of control and fear that make it tricky for me to do so myself consistently.

In fact, one of the things I have learned through years of therapy, psychoanalysis, somatic work, spiritual practice, and psychedelic experiences is that healing does not necessarily mean that our old patterns disappear. Some of them are so deeply embedded. Some painful patterns are hidden underneath other painful patterns and become revealed as we walk along our healing paths. We also circle back to things we thought we’ve healed, to understand it more or attend to a deeper layer of the dynamic. 

The difference now is not that wounds, shortcomings, or ineffective habits never show up. The difference is that I know them now. I can recognize them. I can feel them in my body. I can have a relationship with them. And increasingly, I can meet them with curiosity rather than shame. I also have access to new dimensions of myself that can help me show up to life in a more expansive or loving way, right along side my fear and pain. 

The Goal Isn't to Fix Yourself

This is one of the most valuable lessons I have taken from psychoanalytic thought and from the broader contemplative tradition: Perhaps the healing journey isn't actually a journey toward fixing ourselves at all. There is no final version of ourselves waiting at the end- no perfectly regulated person who has transcended the messiness that is inherent in being a human. 

Instead, the invitation is toward greater consciousness and greater capacity to be present with what is actually happening inside us. It is the processes of becoming more whole. The goal isn't necessarily to eliminate the parts of ourselves that are anxious, controlling, scared, angry, ashamed, protective, or overwhelmed. It is to know them, understand them, develop a relationship with them, and eventually, perhaps, to allow more and more of ourselves to belong.

That is a very different proposition than self-improvement. Self-improvement says: Something is wrong with me, and I need to become someone else. I think the therapy-journey should really ask: Can I become more deeply acquainted with who I already am?

So, Should You Begin?

Perhaps Trungpa was right. Maybe we should think carefully before beginning, because once you start looking honestly at yourself, it becomes increasingly difficult to return to unconsciousness. Once you recognize a pattern, you can't quite unknow it. When you discover a part of yourself that has been waiting to be heard, it becomes harder to abandon it, and once you begin asking deeper questions, the old answers may stop satisfying you.

It isn't always easy. It isn't linear. It isn't a guarantee that life will stop hurting. And it certainly isn't a promise that you will become a perfectly healed version of yourself.

It is not a picnic.

That being said, the hard road- the one of self-discovery, can be profoundly meaningful, and if you've already begun, you don't have to do it alone. At Wild Sunflower Counseling, we believe that healing is not about fixing what is broken in you. It is about creating enough safety, curiosity, compassion, and awareness to stay present with yourself as you become more fully who you are.  You don't have to know where the path ends. You just have to be willing to stay with the process.

And if you've already begun, we're here to walk with you!