Popcyclical

Healing isn’t linear—it’s messy, cyclical, paradoxical, and often feels like we’re back where we started. But what if we’re actually spiraling forward? In this episode of Rainbow After Dark, we explore the nature of cycles—how they show up in nature, our bodies, and our healing journeys. From the moon’s phases to the rewiring of old patterns, we’ll dive into why we revisit wounds, how our bodies process healing on their own timeline, and why self-compassion is essential when it feels like we’re ‘going in circles.’ Because sometimes, moving through is the only way forward.

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Transcript

Hello, hello! Welcome! If you don’t know, I’m Rainbow, and this is Rainbow After Dark.

Last time, we got friendly with the dark, and today we’re going to talk more about cycles.

When you think about cycles, what comes to mind?

For me, it’s the moon—I love the moon, and I love observing the way her cycles affect me personally, as well as humans collectively, and, y’know, all the nature-y sort of stuff—the tides and all that… animals, too, there’s a lot of different animals that are affected by the moon.

Maybe you think about life cycles, or the water cycle, or a washing machine, a bicycle, something like that. Those work, too.

I feel like as humans our brains often want to operate in a fairly linear fashion, and I don’t know, y’know this could be something that we’ve conditioned ourselves to do versus something that’s actually natural to us, but when it comes to healing we sometimes seem to think that progress and healing and growth are linear, but they’re not. Even if sometimes we wish they were.

If you think about nature, cycles are everywhere: the moon’s phases, the changing of the seasons, the way water moves through the earth and the atmosphere. There’s always a rhythm, a flow, even—the way things flow, it tends to come back around. It might be different each time that it does, but it still does it.

Spring this year might not be the same as Spring last year, but it’s similar enough for us to call it Spring, right? To denote on the calendar that we have an equinox for the Springtime and the Autumn, for the Summer and the Winter. To notice the phases of the moon as it waxes and wanes and becomes full or dark for the new moon.

When it comes to healing, just like nature, it works in sort of a cyclical-cyclical pattern. I don’t know why “cyclical” is such a hard word for me to say, but here we are. 

We revisit old wounds in new ways. Sometimes it feels like the way we’re revisiting these things, we’re ‘back at square one,’ or we’re regressing, or we haven’t made any progress at all… but in reality, we’re moving through them differently. We’ve gathered other experiences and perspectives that, y’know, help us level up. You can insert the Mario, Super Mario noises in here again if you would like.

When we experience trauma, y’know, any kind of trauma—big T trauma, little t trauma—if it’s wounding you, it’s trauma, you know? It can become something that cycles within us. I feel like a lot of the times we’ll experience the wounds externally in cycles, but it also is-it’s an internal process, right? We will revisit these wounds, both internally and externally, but each time it’s not exactly the same. It might feel really, really familiar—especially depending on circumstances, context, various variables—but it’s never exactly the same. I like to think of it like a spiral—you keep moving forward, even if it feels like you’re returning to the same place. But you’re not. You are shifting perspectives and you’re growing. Even if it’s just, you know, like a teeny tiny little bit, right? You’ve garnered some new information each time that will allow you to keep kind of moving in an upward sort of pattern. Moving through the different layers and, I wanna say it’s like distilling the distortion in a way—you’re moving through the distortion and seeing things with an increasing amount of clarity as you do it, if, hopefully you are growth oriented and doing your best to be aware of yourself and conscious of your patterns and behaviors and things like that. The way I think that—even if it’s not something that’s kind of like, in your conscious mindset, even if someone is deeply instilled in subconscious patterns, it’s probably something that’s still happening beneath the surface. It’s just, maybe, harder to see. 

You can find yourself facing old patterns, old triggers, or even emotions about things that you thought you already worked through. I know I’ve experienced this a lot where it’s like, “I thought—I thought we processed this. Like, I thought we—we did this already.” But it’s coming up with new layers and I feel like, especially when you’re really deep in the trenches of something, especially—especially—if something that you are now processing has been deeply suppressed and/or repressed, then you kind of like bring it up in little bits. But you have more information each time you do it. And sometimes too, it’ll come back up so that you can actually see that you’re not in the same space. But when you’re really deep in those trenches, especially if you’re dealing with stuff that has been really deeply embedded and really deeply repressed or suppressed… then it tends to take a lot more time and more visitations. And that can feel frustrating or discouraging, and you might feel like you’re ’back in the past’ or that you’re just doing—rehashing things over and over again… that you’re not actually making progress, or you’re even backsliding. But I feel like the key is understanding that it’s actually a part of the process.

Like I said, I’ve noticed this for my own process, my own journey.

One of the biggest things has been working through abandonment wounds from childhood, and they have just—it’s something that I’ve experienced over and over again as an adult in a myriad of ways. Both through self-abandonment as well as experiences within my relationships. And all kinds relationships—a lot of the time people think about how abandonment wounds affect romantic relationships, which I’ve absolutely experienced—and I’ve also experienced it, y’know, familially, obviously, given the childhood nature of the wounding… but friendships, and just, if it’s a type of relationship you can have I have I have probably had the abandonment wounding show up in some way at some point. 

So… there’s a lot of—there’s a lot of paradox in—there’s a lot of paradox in the whole healing process. It’s very cyclical, it’s nonlinear. It’s… yeah. Healing isn’t linear—it is messy, it is cyclical, it’s paradoxical. Sometimes we expect or hope for one big moment of transformation or like we’re, quote-unquote “fixing” it… but it is not like flipping a switch. At least not in my experience. It’s more like a slow rewiring process of, like, you know, the whole thing. And you can think about it like wiring a switch, too—y’know, if you have these really deeply ingrained patterns, these really, really deep wounds and you’re learning how to be in a different way? You’re learning how to operate and function in a completely new way… like it, it is a process of, like, revisiting and just unwiring and rewiring and going through all of that. And, like, if you think about how if somebody is wiring, y’know, a light switch or something… like, please forgive me, I know basically nothing about electrical—y’know, electrical stuff—but from my basic knowledge if you are to wire a light to a light switch you have to have the wires wired a certain way, otherwise, it doesn’t matter how many times you flip the switch, it’s not gonna turn on. It’s just not. And you might have to, like, move the wires around until you actually have the configuration that allows you to finally flip that switch and turn the light on. I don’t know if lights are the best example ‘cause I feel like, from the little I do know, they’re fairly, like, it’s usually just a couple of wires. But, it’s beyond me. Point is it’s a metaphor. Hopefully it makes sense to you. It’s something that’s kind of helped me to make sense of the whole process because I often felt like I should just… be… done with it or something? But you’re never—you’re never really done with it. You know? You’re always going to keep finding new layers and uncovering new information for you to integrate throughout the entire process of you being alive. And that’s just the nature of the human experience. 

Healing is very—it’s a, you know, it’s—you have seasons, like anything. Like nature, you have seasons, too. You know, sometimes it’s Spring and we’re full of growth, renewal, and… you know, all the—all the beautiful life that comes with what you think of Springtime. And then other times it’s winter, and you could feel dormant or lost or you might just need to hibernate.

Through the whole process, we’re gonna have setbacks. And… sometimes we might feel like those rest periods or setbacks or when we feel like regressing… is like a “bad” sign, but sometimes it—I feel like it’s actually a sign of progress. It’s like the ebb and flow of the tides—they come in and they go out, but they always return. What seems like regression might just be part of the rhythm. We go inward, reflect, and then come back out, and we have more clarity and understanding.

I feel like this is something I’ve noticed especially in regards to my body. Because as I’ve done a lot of internal work, I’ve definitely noticed that my body is not as badly “off”—it’s not… I, you know, I still have a lot of health challenges. This is, y’know, I’ve been dealing with chronic health conditions and things like that for basically my entire life, so it’s not a thing where I expect that I’m gonna wake up one day and just have everything be… y’know, what would be considered more “normal” or like a healthy person. If I did, like, that’d be amazing. But I’m content for the most part with where I’m at in this process because I do know that there has been a lot of progress and I’m not where I was a few years ago, or several years ago. But especially recently, I’ve gone through a lot of internal healing where I’ve really worked with a lot of my emotions in a, kind of a new way, and… while overall, I do feel better, both physically and, y’know, internally on like the emotional and mental level, there have been a lot of things that have been coming up physically and it’s kind of like they want to be, sort of fully processed out. Which I feel like makes sense if you think about the way energy works and you have more subtle energy levels like you’re emotions and your thoughts, and then you also have, like, the grosser energy levels that—that’s when you have stuff that’s in the physical, like your body. And that stuff is much denser—it’s much denser energy so it moves much slower and it takes a lot more time to process and so even though sometimes it can seem a little backwards, if you’ve gone through a lot of healing on an internal level, then you might actually have old—what seem like old symptoms cropping up physically because your body is finally processing out other layers, older layers, of this same energy.

I feel like one of the biggest things for me in this process, and something that feels really just kind of key for us as humans, is that you navigate cycles—these cycles of healing with self-compassion. When you recognize that it’s okay to revisit pain and discomfort, it’s not as uncomfortable. It doesn’t mean it’s gonna be comfortable, but, y’know, it doesn’t feel quite as overwhelming. We don’t have to judge ourselves or shame ourselves for feeling like we’re ‘going in circles.’ It’s like a dance. Sometimes you go in circles when you’re dancing. Sometimes you move in different ways. There’s tension and relaxation, there’s, y’know, an ebb and flow to dancing too, right? I would like to encourage you to embrace that ebb and flow—to embrace the rhythm of your own healing, just as you would embrace the rhythm of your breath. Right? 

Healing doesn’t have to be rushed. Sometimes, the best thing you can do is to slow down and embrace where you are in the cycle, even if that part of the cycle feels like you’re stuck. Something that I’ve been saying for a while is, y’know, they have, what is the saying? “Live fast and die young.” No, no. It’s “live slow and grow old.” If you so choose, right? Slow down, relax, don’t rush it. I find that for me personally if I’m rushing something, that is one of—it’s a big trigger for my nervous system. I tend to notice that it’s really dysregulating for me. So, as a general rule, unless it’s like, a life or death, really important kind of situation where I need to be rushing, you know, because it’s some sort of an emergency or something? I don’t rush. I do my best not to rush. I consciously choose to slow down. If I notice myself rushing—take a breath—you know? And I slow the heck down. So I would encourage you to do the same. If it feels right to you. 

All these cycles are necessary, for the whole process—it’s how you garner new insights, you learn new lessons, and that’s how you get into the depth of it. 

I suppose in some ways you could think of it like a drill, you know? Like you’re drilling into the depths of your human experience, and that’s… kind of a spiral sort of situation, too, right?

I don’t know engineering stuff. Hopefully my metaphors for these things make sense.

At the end of the day, cycles of trauma and healing do not mean failing. It means that you’re human. And if you are here, listening to me, I’m gonna assume you’re a human. And being human means experiencing being human. Through each of these cycles, we can closer to understanding ourselves and the healing process and… coming back to ourselves.

The time you feel like you’re ‘stuck’, or like you’re revisiting old wounds, remember that it is part of the dance. It’s part of the process. Do your best to let yourself flow with it. And remember that you’re not going in circles—it’s a spiral, and you’re moving forward. You’re leveling up. Just like Super Mario.

If you feel so called, you might take a moment to journal about the cycles you’ve noticed in your own journey. Where have you seen growth? Where have you seen reoccurring patterns? What are those cycles trying to share with you? And how can you practice more compassion for yourself if you’re feeling frustrated in those cycles? If you feel like you’re engaging in patterns that just aren’t shifting, or you aren’t able to engage with in a way that is ideal? There’s something there for you to look at—at least, that’s what I think. 

Thank you for being here, I will see you next time—we’ll continue to explore the dark, the light, everything in between. And until then, keep dancing with the cycles. And remember, that I love you.