Today a student had a question about healing in today's Homework Hours (a live call I offer my students in the Heal Your Codependency Membership).

It inspired this dialog about the "layers of the onion" metaphor often used in healing work. 

What are these layers actually?

I've found they tend to be three things:

1) The coping mechanisms that we've used to tolerate and live with the pain and meaning we carry 

2) The meaning we've created about why something has happened and what it may mean about ourselves and who we are

3) The two pains: The pain we feel when we believe the meaning and the pain of the events we've experienced 

Knowing this can help you begin to understand what is showing up for you and help you better navigate it.

Here's a starting point for this:

1) For coping mechanisms, I recommend starting with pausing, acknowledging, and observing the impulse those mechanisms have. Allow yourself to get to know its features, its message, and what it is trying to do for you

2) For meaning, I recommend pausing, acknowledge, and observing the meaning for a little while (like a week or so), and then begin to shift your relationship to the experience by describing it as an experience. For example: "I am alone because I'm not lovable" is a meaning. Shifting this to an experience viewpoint will show up as, "I feel unlovable because I've been alone so much. It hurts so much not to be included. I'm really sad."

Notice the difference in how that feels. It can open your mind and body up to deep healing when we view our pain through the lens of it being an experience rather than a defining event.

3) For the two pains, we start with pause, acknowledge, observe, and then move into legitimizing that pain and real, valid, and welcome. Then we let it take up space and be known in short bursts of exposure. This helps the pain reduce in intensity and duration. 

This is why healing typically feels very layered, complex, and a bit of a mess. There is a lot happening in the body and mind as we turn towards our pain and build warmth and safe-enoughness for it to begin processing and integrating.