I don’t know who came up with this metaphor, so I can’t give credit, but I find it is an excellent way to sum up the process of healing.
Imagine you are hiking up a mountain. We’re not rock climbing, so we aren’t going straight up. In this case, we’re always moving upward, but we’re circling the mountain in a spiral. Every time we go around the mountain, we’re a little higher up and closer to the peak. What this means, then, is that we are seeing the same scenes as we circle around the mountain, but from different heights. This is often how psychological healing is. We tend to circle around the issue or issues repeatedly, but from different aspects or, in this metaphor, from different heights. The approach is not exactly the same because we’re in a slightly different place due to the work we’ve already done. And then eventually, we find ourselves at the top of the mountain with no more climbing to do, no more healing needed, and we can see the view below and see how very far we’ve come. Of course, you don’t have to reach the summit. You might decide you’ve climbed high enough when you are three quarters of the way to the top, and that’s fine! You can still look down and appreciate how far you’ve come and how much climbing, how much work, it took for you to get there.
If you’d like some companions and support in your hike up the healing mountain, I invite you to join us inside CommuniDID.