Timelines for Unlearning

Originally Posted Nov 16, 2017

Its the season of Metal, a season of surrendering and letting go. Here in Calgary its hard to remember that in much of the northern hemisphere its fall and the leaves are losing their leaves and that its not yet winter and “water season” because its been snow and no leaves for weeks, its snowing as I write this, so its easy for me to feel like Metal is gone.

But the energetics of it is still very much alive and with it the opportunity as the Taoists would say “to reverse the handle of the stars and shine their light inward” for self discovery and reflection of our patterns and motivations to all of the things that we do, and allow for any unlearning that is ready to be surrendered.

When we are on a trajectory that takes us out of our comfort zone and potentially leads us to somewhere new; new job, new role, new whatever it is, as much as there is a learning of all of the things that will help you feel competent in this new sort of life, there is also an unlearning that happens, and I find its best to acknowledge that its there rather than ignore it and let it fester.

It really doesn’t matter the unlearning that is taking place.

Unlearning Corporate as you propel your life into Entrepreneurship.Unlearning the Maiden Archetype as you enter Motherhood.Unlearning the patriarchy, (this one can go, can it be gone already?!)

Each one and so many more, hold us within certain conditioning and patterning of behaviours that unravel layer by layer as we settle into our new roles and life. Quite often I see within my own clients and myself for that matter an unwillingness to accept that the time line in which this occurs is often longer than we would like to admit.

How long, naturally we can’t totally say, some of our childhood traumas, family constellation, societal conditioning is pretty set within our systems, and the ways that those patterns reveal themselves can be a bit random revealing themselves piece by piece with new circumstances.

Sometimes we have to play a bit of a reactionary defence and just have to deal with them as they come, but, hopefully this will help you out.

When a new patient walks into my clinic I often use the guidelines as a way to set expectations for them to relax and trust the healing process.

I set a timeline for them and for myself because we’re conditioned for medications and a quick turn around, and with everything from our health to the unlearning of an old pattern or role we’re impatient and we want it dealt with yesterday, so this is how I relax that expectation.

It your situation is acute, less treatments are required. Likely just a couple depending on the severity of what is happening. This can be anywhere between 1-6 treatments. Aside from the first couple of treatments you can expect that for every week that you have had the symptom you will need a treatment. 3 weeks likely 3-4 treatments. 6 weeks 6-7 treatments, if we start to get into multiple months that this pattern has persisted then we add an additional week of treatment onto this expectation.

When we get into chronic issues, chronic patterning of beliefs and symptoms this is where the treatment timeline starts to lengthen. For every year that your pattern has existed, this equals one month of weekly treatments. 5 years = 5 months of weekly treatment, 10 years, give yourself 10 months to establish new rhythms and routines etc..

That’s not to say that my clients don’t feel better way before we’ve reached the end of our timeline, they do in fact many of them experience relief after only a couple of treatments. But even if that’s happened, I encourage them to stick with the plan because unlearning happens in layers.

A few treatments in, we get a glimpse of what life can feel like with no pain, or a full night of sleep, but then something happens an unexpected deadline at work, a family emergency, a fall on the ice as you get to your car,sabotage, or a new way in which the same little voice that wants you to just go back to where it was all comfortable speaks up, my point being that healing doesn’t happen in a vacuum and while we are making strides in the right direction there will be moments when its feels like two steps forward one step back.

And rather than curse the skies and yell “why” to the heavens, if we allowed for these sorts of things to happen, if we set up our expectations that there may be bumps and feeling that may surface that are beyond our perfect vision in our head, our road to success or that shiny new life may soften enough for us to be able to see ourselves in the journey.

Maybe it will make the journey easier, I don’t know, like anything its all perspective and hindsight at times, but I’m holding hope that in some moments it doesn’t have to be, if we just allowed for ourselves just a little more time.

What I can say that I’ve seen time and time again that the time line rings true, but let me be really clear.  Relaxing your timeline and expectations isn't an invitation to stick your head in the sand and ignore the work.  This is an active unraveling.  I expect my clients to be doing their homework and coming in for sessions as we have laid them out.  The same goes for the self work required to free yourself from the chains of your conditioning.

Each day, make the intention to move the needle forward, each day attempt to put the one foot in front of the other, and cutting yourself some slack along the way when it doesn’t all go to plan.

Maybe just maybe, it’s happened exactly as it should and it ended up being better that you could have imagined it.

 XO Ashley