You have a great week. You’re journaling, setting boundaries, feeling strong. Then, out of nowhere, a trigger from the past surfaces. You feel that old familiar anxiety tighten in your chest, or you snap at a loved one over something small. The critical voice returns: “See? You haven’t made any progress. You’re back at square one.”
This painful experience—the feeling of taking two steps forward and one step back (or sometimes, one step forward and three steps back)—is not a sign you’re failing. It is the absolute, defining characteristic of healing. Healing is not a straight line from broken to fixed. It is a spiral. You circle back to familiar pains, but from a slightly higher, wiser perspective each time. The old stuff comes up not to torture you, but because you are finally strong enough to face it and release it for good.
We are sold a narrative of transformation that looks like an upward-trending graph. Real healing looks more like a heartbeat monitor—full of peaks, valleys, plateaus, and sudden spikes. The key to sustainable growth isn't avoiding the downs, but learning how to navigate them with self-compassion instead of self-abandonment.
This article is your guide through the non-linear reality of healing. We’ll dismantle the myth of linear progress, explore why the “downs” are actually essential, and give you practical tools to love yourself fiercely through every twist and turn, so you can trust the process even when you can’t see the path.
The Myth of Linear Healing and Why It Hurts Us
We love linear stories. The hero’s journey, the weight-loss transformation, the “30 days to a new you” program. These narratives are clean, simple, and marketable. But they set us up for immense frustration and self-criticism.
Real healing is messy because it involves:
- The Nervous System: Trauma and stress live in the body. Healing requires discharging this stored energy, which can feel like re-experiencing old emotions.
- Neural Pathways: You’re trying to walk new mental trails while the old, well-worn paths of negative thinking and behavior still exist. Under stress, your brain defaults to the familiar path.
- Life Triggers: The world doesn’t pause for your healing journey. New stressors can activate old wounds, testing your new skills in real-time.
Believing healing should be linear makes every setback feel like a personal failure. Embracing its non-linear nature transforms setbacks into data points and integration moments.
The Spiral of Healing: Understanding the "Downs"
When you find yourself in a “down” phase—feeling sad, angry, or regressing to old habits—it’s crucial to reframe what’s happening. You are not regressing. You are likely experiencing one of two things:
- A Healing Crisis: As you become safer and stronger, your subconscious feels it’s finally safe to bring up buried pain for processing. It’s like your inner self saying, “Okay, she’s ready. Let’s clear out this old stuff now.”
- Consolidation: After a period of intense growth or insight, your brain and body need time to integrate the new learning. This can feel like a plateau or even a slight backslide as your system downloads the updates.
The “down” is not the undoing of your work; it is often a deeper part of the work itself.
Your Toolkit for the Non-Linear Journey
How do you practice self-love when you feel like you’re sliding backwards? By shifting from judgment to curiosity and from fighting to holding.
1. Practice the “And” Statement: Hold Both Truths
The most powerful tool for non-linear healing is language that holds complexity. Replace “but” with “and.”
- Instead of: “I was doing so well, but now I feel anxious again.” (This cancels out your progress).
- Try: “I have made real progress, and I am feeling anxious today. Both are true.”
This simple shift acknowledges the difficulty without erasing your strength. It allows you to be a work in progress, not a failed project.
2. Become a Curious Observer, Not a Harsh Judge
When you hit a low point, your job is not to criticize. Your job is to get curious.
Ask yourself gentle, investigative questions:
- “What might this feeling be trying to tell me?”
- “What need of mine isn’t being met right now?”
- “Does this remind me of an older feeling from my past?”
- “What’s the kindest thing I can do for myself in this moment?”
This turns a “failure” into a research mission for your own well-being. You move from “What’s wrong with me?” to “What’s happening within me?”
3. Create a “Compassion First-Aid Kit” for Bad Days
Prepare for the downs by having a pre-made plan. Write this list when you’re feeling good.
Your kit might include:
- A go-to soothing activity: A specific cozy blanket, a playlist of calming songs, a favorite movie.
- A list of micro-actions: “Drink water,” “Step outside for one minute,” “Text my support person a pre-written emoji.”
- A short list of compassionate mantras: “This is a wave. It will pass.” “Healing is happening, even now.” “I am allowed to have hard days.”
When the down hits, you don’t have to decide what to do. You just open your kit and pick one thing. This is self-love in action.
4. Track Your Progress Differently: The “Seasons” Journal
Ditch the linear progress chart. Instead, journal about your healing in terms of seasons or weather.
- This week felt like… “Early spring: some muddy, rainy days where I felt stuck, but a few moments of new green shoots poking through.”
- This month has been a season of… “Digging: It’s been hard, exhausting work unearthing old roots, but I know it’s necessary for new growth.”
This metaphorical tracking honors the cyclical, organic nature of healing and helps you see the bigger picture.
5. Honor Your Body’s Wisdom: Rest is Part of the Work
In our “progress”-obsessed culture, rest can feel lazy. On a non-linear healing path, rest is integration. The “down” days are often when your body and mind are processing, repairing, and consolidating the insights from your “up” days.
Pushing through with forced positivity or relentless activity is like refusing to let cement dry. Give yourself radical permission to have a low-energy day. Say, “Today, my healing looks like resting.” That is still forward motion on the spiral.
The Gift of the Spiral: Deeper Wholeness
The beauty of non-linear healing is that every time you circle back to an old pain, you have new resources. The second time you face a trigger, you might have a boundary you didn’t have before. The fifth time you feel that shame, you might have a self-compassion phrase ready.
With each spiral, you integrate the pain more fully into your story, stripping it of its power to define you. You don’t erase the wound; you build wisdom and resilience around it. You become more textured, more empathetic, and more authentically whole.
Loving Yourself Is the Constant
Through the peaks and valleys, the only constant that needs to hold is your commitment to loving yourself. Not loving your “perfect” self, but loving your trying self, your struggling self, your “two-steps-back” self.
Your worth is not contingent on being on an upward trajectory every single day. Your worth is the unchanging ground upon which the entire messy, beautiful, non-linear journey unfolds.
Healing is the process of learning to be a gentle, loyal friend to yourself in every season of your becoming.
If you’re ready to embrace this compassionate, spiral path with a dedicated guide, my ebook, The Art of Self-Love, is your companion. It provides the framework and practices to navigate every phase of healing with kindness, build unshakable self-worth, and truly love yourself through all the ups and downs.
Selfaro