Understanding Comes Later.

A phrase that I like to use with my clients when helping them escape their subconscious patterns is that ‘you can’t read the label from inside the bottle’, meaning that you can’t truly understand your patterns while you are still stuck in them.

Imagine that you’re a fly inside the bottle and you’re suffering inside the bottle because there’s not enough air in there. And, on the outside of the bottle is a label that says ‘childhood trauma’.

The way that most people are trying to heal is that they’re trying to figure out what’s written on the outside of that bottle, hoping that if they can figure out what the label on the outside of it is, that the bottle will magically open.

Firstly, that’s simply not going to work. Simply finding the root cause of your pain and putting a label on it does not - on its own - eliminate the pain. It can be nice, of course. Understanding the root can help you feel like it’s not your fault and labeling can help you understand that you’re not alone and that other people suffer in similar ways. But that’s not a solution.

But secondly (and more importantly), it’s IMPOSSIBLE to read the label while you are inside the bottle.

It will be far easier to skip over the analysis of what the label on that bottle is and move right to learning how to escape the bottle. THEN… once you’re out of the bottle… it will be super easy to look back and read what was written on the label.

This is how we heal our emotional trauma as well.

Simply understanding where it came from is not in itself a solution to the pain you’re in right now. But when you build the skills and tools to escape the subconscious cycles that perpetuate your pain in the moment, it will be much easier to look back at all of the times when you succumbed to that subconscious cycle and go “Oooohh…. THAT’S why I was doing it!”

Focus on healing first. Understanding the nitty gritty details will come later.

And besides… you don’t actually care if you understand the root cause… Do you?

The only reason you’re focused on understanding is because you think that if you understand, then the pain will go away (which it won’t).

But if you could escape your pain, would you really still be super concerned with figuring out where it came from?

No… you’d just be happy to finally feel good and you won’t care as much.

I mean… it will still be helpful so that you can avoid going back into that pain again in the future. But your real goal is to feel better. So, let’s just focus on that and let the rest happen naturally.

You don’t need to ruminate over your past in order to make your present more pleasant.