Dark Night of the Soul Healing versus Happy Healing

by Caroline van Kimmenade

Most of us start learning about healing when life gets really painful, right? When you’re in your dark night of the soul.

You’re looking around for a light at the end of the tunnel, and at some point you’re willing to pretty much try anything. Including things you would have thought were ridiculous not that long ago.

When you’re in a dark night of the soul you have to work on healing. If you don’t, you’re stuck in an awful place, maybe for the rest of your life. As awful as that is, it provides a lot of incentive to do difficult healing work. Yes, the healing work might be tough but not doing anything is clearly worse!

But there’s another kind of healing too, let’s call it happy healing.

What is Happy Healing?

Happy healing is the kind of healing you need to do when life gives you an upgrade.

Like exceptional customer service, or someone offering to do something amazing for you…

… and your first instinct is to say: “so kind, but not necessary”.

You have a lot of good reasons not to accept the extra goodness of course.

It’s just a small issue. Surely people have more important things to do. You don’t REALLY need it, etc etc etc.

Why Happy Healing can be Painful

It might be surprising to hear that getting more than you bargained for can be painful. But it can.

It can push your right up against your own feelings of worthlessness and guilt, and beliefs about not deserving amazing things. That’s painful!

When something is painful, there are a million ways for the mind to shut it down on autopilot. Before you know it, you’ve rejected the possibility, pushed it out of your mind and are moving on like you don’t have a choice. This is for sure a comfortable way to go about it, but it’s also a surefire way to miss out on more good stuff.

In that way, allowing more goodness in can take a little healing effort:

“Oh, wait a minute! Was I about to reject more good stuff??!!

What is THAT about??”

This is the kind of healing work that starts to pop up once you’re out of the dark night of the soul.

You’ve survived the really bad things and are doing o.k. again.

The question is, are you going to stop there?

Why it’s Easy to Overlook Happy Healing

When the worst is over, it can seem logical to ditch any and all healing, because you are o.k.!

But o.k. is not the same as happy. Or inspired. Or full of life.

It’s o.k. to be open to more.

It doesn’t mean you have to become unappreciative, stuck up or rejecting all that is not the absolute best of the best.

It just means that when good things come your way, you learn to recognize how YOU are shutting it down.

Yes you!

It’s important to say YES to more good stuff. And not say, “thanks, but I don’t need it”.

You’re teaching others how to treat you!

But what if there IS no more good stuff at all?

If you’re convinced that there is absolutely no more good stuff to be had in your life, I can guarantee you… you’re shutting it down yourself (sorry!). You’re automatically rejecting it before you’ve had time to consider that it might be a good option for you.

The mind is very quick to shut things down that might cause pain or discomfort. If you have little practice “catching yourself” in the midst of that process, it can look like the world just doesn’t have anything more to offer.

Conversely, the mind can be quick to accept and condone the same old same old – not because it’s good for you, but because it feels familiar.

Do you see how healing to find better opportunities, is in this way very different from rescueing yourself from the swamp of the dark night of the soul?

In a swamp, you may not know how to go about getting out, but you know you need to get out!

Yet, in Happy Healing, you’re in a perfectly adequate field with some grass and a few hedges. It doesn’t make you jump for joy, but it’s definitely not a swamp! So there is no big urgency to make changes and you can end up picking the same old same old, believing that’s all there is for you.

How to get to your next happier place

Does life feel o.k.-ish but a little meh too? Do you want a short cut to inviting more good stuff into your life? I share techniques to do just that inside the Happy Sensitive Library.

The Library is where I share detailed insights and step by step action plans to lessen overwhelm, understand different kinds of energy sensitivity, be more creative and less stuck, get more good stuff in your life and much much more.

All designed for Highly Sensitive People. Because… many things work a little (or a lot) differently when you’re a Highly Sensitive Person.

photo of library
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