Are you ready?

Most people delay healing because they imagine it requires the reconstruction of their entire existence. They think in the utmost of totalities like- “I have to fix my childhood,” “I have to solve my relationships,” “I must undo my patterns,” “I must heal my trauma,” “I have to become different.” The sheer scale of this imagined task shuts down the very system needed to do it. Your soma. But the mind cannot handle this. The psychological load is too big. And so the nervous system freezes under the weight of all this mental jargon.

But healing doesn’t happen in totality. Because totality overwhelms the organism. Not in biology, not in psychology, not in spirituality. Life has never evolved by fixing everything at once. Life repairs itself through sequence, triage, and readiness. And the body knows what the mind often tends to forget and that is that wholeness is achieved by what is ready now and not by force.

Biologically healing has a sequence. For example, healing of a wound in the thigh does not ask the body to regenerate bone, form scar tissue and remodel collagen all at once. It starts with one priority- stop the bleeding first. Only after that does inflammation moves in and tissue tarts to regrow. And then there is a scar that fades over time slowly. If the body was forced to repair everything at once, you would kill it.

Our nervous systems use the same logic. The brain does not flood you with every traumatic memory all at once. It does not release every emotion at once. It doesn’t update or identify every pattern at once. It gives you what you can metabolize without being fragmented. This is the innate intelligence of the human body. We know trauma is something that exceeded our capacity to process what was once unprocessable. Resilience and capacity are built through readiness. And readiness is built through pacing oneself. This is why you do not get to choose the order in which your psyche will open its emotional bank of files. Your body knows what it can handle before your mind does. This is called psychology of sequence.

Psychologically, we do not heal or need to heal our entire childhood. We heal that piece of childhood that is currently pressing against the present moment. The attachment wound that shows up in our relationships. The abandonment pattern that repeats in adult intimacy. The fear that rises when we try to set a boundary. The somatic contraction that activates when someone raises their voice. The human psych reveals itself in layers because it wants to protect you. And the layers reveal themselves through repetition. What returns is that which is ready- the same argument with a partner, the same fight with a parent, the same exhaustion in care- giving, the same shame after setting a boundary, the same freeze when facing a disappointment. This repetition is readiness taping on the door.

For most people repetition means-“Nothing is changing. I am in the same old pattern”. But clinically, this repetition is one of the best indicators that the system is prepared to re- organize. The wound has moved from being buried to surfacing and this wound is asking you to heal only that bit which has revealed itself in repetition. You are shown only what you are strong enough to integrate. And so, the goal is to stay in a relationship with what is here now.

Our nervous systems decide what is ready before the mind. It shows readiness through emotional intensity, somatic disturbances, intrusive thoughts, dreams and imagery, relational conflict, repeating choices, persistent grief, sudden disgust, spontaneous memory burst followed by agitation, sudden clarity, sudden exhaustion. These are not symptoms of malfunction but thresholds which mark where the next layer of healing is needed. And the human system is smart enough to know that a layer cannot be activated unless there is enough resource to touch it.

The myth that one must fix your entire life keeps many people from healing. It turns healing into a project instead of a biological one. Healing is an unfolding and not a renovation. Healing is also fractal. When one aspect is healed, the others follow. And the whole system configures around it. Heal an attachment wound and boundaries become easier. Heal a freeze response and autonomy returns. Heal chronic shame and intimacy revives. Heal fear and creativity awakens and thrives. No one heals everything. Heal what is ready right now and the rest will re- arrange itself. This is how Mother Nature works. So, are you ready?

“If unpleasant things have happened in your life, you must become wise and not wounded.”- Sadhguru Jagi Vasudev