Because understanding it doesn’t always mean I’m done feeling it.
“Some days, I feel like I’m in the gym emotionally, trying to exercise muscles I didn’t even know existed.”
I’ve been realizing lately that I’m an incredibly impatient healer.
Not impatient with people.
Impatient with pain.
Impatient with uncertainty.
Impatient with discomfort.
If I understand the issue, understand the perspective, and understand the path forward, then my instinct is:
Okay.
Let’s get to work.
Let’s repair.
Let’s implement.
Let’s move toward the good part.
I don’t always understand why we need to sit in the hard part when the solution is right there.
Recently, I had an experience that challenged that part of me.
There was a rupture in one of my relationships. I felt like I understood the offense, acknowledged it, and was ready to begin repairing.
The other person wasn’t.
They wanted to sit in it.
To feel it.
To stay with it a little longer.
And honestly?
At first, I didn’t understand why.
We understood what happened.
We understood why it happened.
We understood each other’s perspectives.
Why couldn’t we just start moving forward?
But somewhere in that experience, I realized something:
There was healing in the sitting.
There was something important about not rushing past the hurt.
About letting the feelings breathe.
About allowing the experience to settle into our bodies instead of immediately trying to fix it.
Because understanding something intellectually doesn’t always mean you’ve emotionally caught up to it.
And knowing the next step doesn’t mean you’ve fully honored what happened.
“Understanding something isn’t the same thing as integrating it.”
The hard part about this for someone like me is that sitting in it can feel incredibly inefficient.
I can usually understand what happened pretty quickly.
I can often see the other person’s perspective.
I can identify my own.
I can usually tell you what I need, what I learned, and what I think the next step should be.
So my instinct is:
Let’s go.
Let’s repair.
Let’s move forward.
Let’s get to the good part.
I think I have a builder’s mindset when it comes to relationships.
Something broke?
Let’s understand it.
Let’s fix it.
Let’s build something better.
And to be honest, I don’t think that’s a bad thing.
I think it’s one of the ways I love people.
I believe in doing the work.
I believe in repair.
I believe in not staying stuck.
But lately, I’m learning something new.
Healing doesn’t always happen at the pace of my understanding.
Sometimes my mind gets there before my heart does.
Sometimes my body is still catching up to what my brain already knows.
Sometimes another person needs more time to feel something than I do.
“Sometimes my mind arrives long before my heart is ready to come with me.”
Sidebar:
This in itself is a struggle for me that I’m still trying to figure out how to manage.
Because sometimes it feels like I’m the only active participant while the other person is trying to figure their shit out.
And I’m over here like:
“Okay… are we processing? Are we repairing? Are we moving forward? What are we doing?”
It can feel like I’m standing in the waiting room of someone else’s emotional process, just waiting to exhale.
And if I’m honest, that’s hard for me.
Not because I don’t want people to take the time they need.
But because uncertainty has a way of making me feel suspended.
Like I can’t quite put my feet back on the ground until everyone else catches up.
I’m learning that their process doesn’t have to dictate mine.
And maybe part of this muscle is learning how to keep living, breathing, and caring for myself while someone else figures things out.
“I don’t have to hold my breath while someone else figures themselves out.”
Okay, back to the story.
And, truthfully, sometimes I need more time too.
I think when I rush toward repair, I sometimes miss something important.
I miss the grief.
The disappointment.
The anger.
The tenderness.
The opportunity to let the experience change me.
I move so quickly toward understanding that I don’t always give myself permission to fully experience being human.
Because if I’m honest, I don’t think my impatience with discomfort is actually about resilience.
I think it’s about relief.
“Maybe I’m not rushing toward healing. Maybe I’m rushing toward relief.”
Because if I stay there too long, I have to feel things I can’t fix.
I have to sit with uncertainty.
I have to acknowledge that there isn’t always an immediate answer.
I have to trust that healing is happening even when nothing appears to be happening.
And that’s hard for someone like me.
I’ve also been thinking a lot about the work I’ve been doing over the past year.
A year ago, I don’t think I could’ve named any of this.
I don’t think I could’ve told you where my anxieties come from, why uncertainty feels so activating, or why my instinct is to move quickly toward repair.
I just thought this was who I was.
Now, I can see it.
I can see the patterns.
I can see how my anxious attachment shows up.
I can see how I over-function.
I can see how I sometimes try to think, fix, or repair my way into safety.
And honestly?
That’s been healing in its own right.
But seeing it and changing it are two very different things.
“Awareness is the beginning of healing, not the completion of it.”
Because these muscles have been trained for years.
Some of them for decades.
And now I’m discovering that there are muscles I barely use.
Patience.
Trust.
Surrender.
Sitting with uncertainty.
Letting people meet me where I am.
Choosing myself without feeling guilty.
Some days, I feel like I’m in the gym emotionally, trying to exercise muscles I didn’t even know existed.
Other days, it feels like I’m trying to flex old and new muscles at the same time and, honestly, I’m not entirely sure if I’m doing it right.
“Growth often feels awkward because you’re asking parts of yourself to do things they’ve never had to do before.”
Maybe that’s what growth feels like.
Maybe it’s clumsy.
Maybe it’s trying something different before it feels natural.
Maybe it’s knowing exactly what you’re working on and still not being sure if you’re doing it right.
And maybe that’s okay.
Because I think healing is less about getting it right and more about being willing to practice.
I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to think my way through pain.
Trying to solve my way into safety.
Trying to repair my way out of discomfort.
Trying to understand things quickly so I can move on from them.
And maybe that’s served me in a lot of ways.
But I think life is teaching me another muscle.
The ability to stay.
To sit.
To feel.
To let things be unresolved for a little while.
To trust that not every discomfort needs an immediate solution.
“Not every feeling is asking to be fixed. Some feelings are asking to be felt.”
I know what the answers are most of the time.
What I’m learning is that knowing the answer and living it are two very different things.
Sometimes the work isn’t understanding.
Sometimes the work is allowing myself to experience what I already understand.
I’m beginning to understand that sitting in it isn’t passive.
It’s active in its own way.
It’s allowing yourself to fully experience the weight of something before trying to put it down.
It’s giving your body permission to catch up to what your mind already knows.
It’s honoring the fact that some things need time to land.
“Healing sometimes happens when we stop trying to get ahead of ourselves and simply allow ourselves to arrive.”
And maybe that’s why it’s been so hard for me.
Because sitting in it requires everything I’m still learning:
Patience.
Trust.
Surrender.
The willingness to believe that I don’t have to solve everything tonight.
I’m not there yet.
I still want answers.
I still want clarity.
I still want to understand and move forward as quickly as possible.
I still feel the urge to fix, solve, and repair.
But maybe healing isn’t becoming a completely different person.
Maybe it’s building new muscles.
And right now, the muscle I’m trying to build is this:
The ability to stay with discomfort long enough for it to do its work.
The ability to trust that healing can still be happening even when nothing appears to be changing.
“I used to think strength meant moving on quickly. I’m learning that sometimes strength looks like staying with myself a little longer.”
And maybe that’s all growth really is.
Not mastering the muscle.
Just being willing to keep showing up to train it.
Because for someone like me, this might be one of the hardest muscles I’ve ever had to build.
Changing Perspectives 
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