I’m supposed to be healing. Why am I feeling worse emotionally?
Regardless of the reason a client is seeing me, one of the things we talk about at the very beginning of therapy is that healing can sometimes be challenging emotionally. This is because we are focusing on issues that are often painful already, and then that focused attention can highlight that pain.
With dissociative systems, this is even more true because, by definition, healing will expose you to emotions, memories, needs, fears, or internal conflict that were previously pushed aside, dissociated, or suppressed in order to function and survive. It may be that healing has made it possible for you to be aware for the first time of parts who disagree with you or judge you, which can be distressing.
Feeling worse emotionally for a period of time is an expected experience in healing. Sometimes it reflects the system becoming more aware, more connected, and less dependent on emotional disconnection in order to cope.
This page is part of the Why Healing Can Feel So Hard section of the CommuniDID site, which explains why these experiences are common, including the role of protective parts, internal conflict, safety-based concerns, and external constraints.
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