Why healing feels hard (and why that means it’s working)
[15 MIN LISTEN]
One of the most confusing parts of personal growth is when things start to feel harder instead of easier. You think personal growth isn’t working for you, but it’s actually going deeper.
You’re becoming more self-aware. You’re noticing your patterns. You’re doing the work.
And yet… it feels heavier.
If you’ve ever wondered why healing feels hard, this is for you.
Why growth feels hard before it feels better
Here’s the truth: Growth feels hard because you’re changing patterns that once protected you.
People-pleasing. Overworking. Avoiding conflict. Suppressing emotions.
These didn’t come out of nowhere. They helped you feel safe at one point.
So when you start to shift them, your system responds.
Awareness changes everything
Healing doesn’t start with ease.
It starts with awareness.
And awareness can feel uncomfortable.
You start noticing things you didn’t see before.
You feel emotions you used to push away.
You realize how hard you’ve been on yourself.
That’s not failure.
That’s progress.
Emotional discomfort is not a sign you’re doing it wrong
This is where so many people get stuck.
They assume that if it feels hard, something must be off.
But in reality, discomfort often means something is shifting.
The role of the nervous system
When your body doesn’t feel safe, everything feels more intense.
That’s why nervous system support is so important.
It allows you to:
stay present with your emotions
move through discomfort
build resilience over time
The work that actually changes your life
Real change isn’t dramatic.
It’s the practice of:
staying with yourself
feeling your emotions
choosing presence again and again
Over time, this builds self-trust.
You’re not back at the beginning.
Healing is not linear.
There are breakthroughs. Plateaus. Quiet seasons.
Moments where everything feels clear… and moments where it doesn’t.
That doesn’t mean you’ve failed.
It means you’re in it.
Where you go from here
This is exactly why I created my free workshop, Step Into Your Power.
Not to fix you but to support you as you move through this process in a steady, grounded way.
Episode transcript:
This is an auto-generated, unedited episode transcript. Please excuse any tyops.
Welcome to The Life with Liz Podcast, the place to be if you wanna go from invisible to vibrant in your life and embrace the power you didn't know you had inside of you. I'm your host, Liz Fleming, business owner, mom, military spouse, entrepreneur, founder, CEO, and life coach, who is passionate about helping ambitious women like you step into their power and their purpose on purpose so they can experience as much joy, success, satisfaction, and abundance as humanly possible. Now without further ado, let's dive right into this episode.
One of the most confusing moments on the whole personal growth journey thing happens when things start to feel harder instead of easier.
That’s one of the greatest tells that what you’re doing is working.
So, for example, say you’re becoming more self-aware. You’re picking up on your patterns, you’re noticing, you’re reflecting on your emotions, you’re doing what you can to evolve, to grow, to transform your life, and yet, somehow, it still feels difficult.
Sometimes, it even feels a lot more emotional than before. You might feel stuck, it might get weary, it might get weird, and when that happens, a lot of people start asking themselves a really painful question.
They’re like, am I doing this wrong? Why does healing feel so hard? Why does growth feel exhausting? Why do I struggle even though I’m trying so hard?
Here is something that helped me understand this process a lot better.
Inner work often feels difficult because you’re changing patterns that once protected you.
And I loosely mentioned this on the previous episode, so this is kind of a continuation, because I feel so called to share this, because, peeps, I have been there. It’s truly mind-boggling.
And if you’ve been there, you know this too.
Every behavior that we live, that we carry, developed for a reason. Even the ones we wish we could change.
The people-pleasing, avoiding conflict, overworking, suppressing emotions.
At some point in your life, those patterns helped you navigate stress, relationships, work, or uncertainty.
They helped you feel really safe, because that’s all you ever knew.
That is how you were conditioned to live your life based on your personal experience.
So when you begin doing this deeper, more personal growth work, you’re not just learning new things, new habits. You’re gently untangling patterns that your nervous system once relied on.
And that takes patience, my friend.
This work is not for the faint of heart. If you truly want to make a change in your life, you better get really comfy cozy with being uncomfortable.
Another misunderstanding about healing is the belief that growth should feel smooth, that if you’re doing it right, everything should just start getting easier quickly, and you’re gonna manifest a million dollars, and all of these goods are gonna come your way, right?
Yes, eventually, but growth first brings awareness. And it brings awareness to what needs releasing.
So, until you say yes to yourself about facing your negative emotions, your stuck energy, your past traumas, head on, and learning how to release them from your aura, you can’t expect to manifest anything positive that’s gonna stick.
You’re just gonna repeat old patterns until you learn the lesson, because, hi, hello, that’s how the universe works.
So, this growth journey that you’re on, it brings that awareness.
And awareness can feel really friggin’ uncomfortable at first.
You might notice reactions you didn’t see before.
Or feel emotions that you used to push away.
You might realize how hard you’ve been on yourself for years, and I know this was a big one for me. It was like, what, oh, that’s a trigger? Why?
And that, my friend, was the most uncomfortable to address, but it was the most transformational.
And that is what I’m the most passionate about in my work, is not just loading you up with all the fluffy crap, right? If you want that, just go on Instagram and read some quote posts, great, love it, feel good. Follow the alignment of the stars, love that for you.
But, dude, unless you are addressing your inner psyche and energy, heart first, soul first, head on, and allowing yourself to release what no longer serves you, you cannot expect to attract all of your desires and dreams.
The universe does not work that way.
Everything is energy, so what you put out is what you get back.
And the more you’re vibrating from this place of lack, and dread and discomfort, the more you’re gonna attract more uncomfortable situations.
But the beauty of release work is that once you release that crap, it’s gone, dude. It is not coming back.
Because that’s how energy works.
So, you might realize all this stuff, like how hard you’ve been on yourself, or your emotions might pivot a little. You might have new reactions to things.
I cried a lot more.
I was never a crier, and then all of a sudden, I’m like, okay, that really struck a nerve.
But I, in that awareness, reached a point where I was just letting it flow, letting it happen. I was like, I don’t even care if my kids see me weep.
That is a friggin’ power move, and I knew it was coming from that place of, oh, if it’s coming up for me, then it’s going. And it’s not coming back.
So, I’m there with you, my friend.
And I want you to know those moments, they can feel intense, but they’re also signs that something important is shifting.
Your awareness is expanding, and you’re becoming so much more powerful as a person.
And the real work of personal growth and self-love is not about avoiding those moments, which we’ve talked a lot about on the podcast.
It’s more about learning how to stay with yourself through them. Nurture yourself and love yourself. Cradle yourself like a little baby, if you have to.
Instead of interpreting that discomfort as failure.
So instead of doing that, you begin to recognize that it’s just part of the process, and it’s beautiful.
And I’ve said this on almost every episode.
Your emotions are not bad, they are information, and we are so freaking lucky to be able to experience each and every one.
So, the next time you’re feeling upset about something, I want you to just be in your awareness with it.
You don’t have to do anything about it, and just realize it’s a signal from your body.
And it is part of your unique personal growth journey to explore it, unpack it.
Because, my friends, growth, it rarely moves in a straight line.
There are beautiful moments of breakthroughs. There are plateaus. There are really quiet seasons of shedding, where you feel like nothing is happening, but everything is happening behind the scenes. The universe is always at work for you.
And then there are moments where everything feels so clear.
And moments where you feel like you’re back at the beginning.
That’s completely normal.
I wish I had someone to tell me those things when I first started my journey, because I was like, oh my god, I’m doing this all wrong. I can’t be doing this right. I feel like such crap.
And I’m not trying to say that to scare you away from this work. I’m here bearing my soul to remind you just how worth it it is to do this work.
Another reason why nervous system support becomes so important on this path, when your body feels safe, it becomes so much easier to move through emotional waves without becoming overwhelmed.
You learn to stay present with your experience, instead of fighting it or shame spiraling yourself.
And over time, that presence builds resilience. You get so much emotionally stronger.
Because you’re learning to love your emotions and using and seeing them as a gift instead of a curse.
So that builds a lot of self-trust, more than anything, and it builds compassion for the parts of yourself that are still very much learning.
So, again, that is why I’m a huge advocate for nervous system regulation. It’s something that I teach, and there’s so much value in it.
You can go into this kind of work and research and study blindly, and see what works for you, but as you start releasing and you start the actual journey, and those emotions come up, and you’re in this dread spiral about it, instead of just letting them flow, that’s when the nervous system tools come in really, really handy, because you’re training your brain and your whole body to live in a new way.
And that is powerful. That is the power of neuroplasticity.
And I wanna say, too, I have this unique program that I have been working on for all of these reasons.
If you’ve been listening to the podcast for the last two years, you know I’ve been working through stuff and sharing stuff as it comes up, but also marrying it with my expertise as a certified coach.
So there’s been a lot going on for you behind the scenes, and that’s why I created my signature program, The Self-Love Studio.
It was created with this exact reality in mind.
So if you’re feeling called to dig deeper here, and you want to know more of what I’m talking about, I want you to check the show notes for the link to learn more, because if you feel called to it, that’s a sign that you should explore it.
Obviously, no pressure, and not trying to prescribe anyone anything, but I want you to know it’s there.
I wish that I had this stuff, again, when I was going through all of this work.
And I created Self-Love Studio not as a place to fix yourself.
Y’all know that, you’re not broken, you don’t need fixing, you’re incredible exactly how you are, but you can be more incredible.
So, this is a place to support the ongoing process of reconnecting with yourself.
And it’s a place where you can return to practices that help you learn to regulate your nervous system, and rebuild that self-trust we were just talking about, and move through personal growth with steadiness.
So when it does get challenging, you’ve got peeps in your corner like me helping you out, but more than anything, you are the one that has your back, that knows how to help yourself, because at the end of the day, I love this program and the content that I create to help you all, but I never want you to be reliant on me.
My sole mission, my S-O-U-L purpose on this planet is to help you develop independence around your personal practices so that you can live the life that you truly dream of living.
And there is definitely a time to seek guidance and support, whether that’s with a life coach like me, or in an online program, or a book, or with a therapist, or a medical professional, or all of those things.
Raise your hand if that’s you. Yep, that’s me. Hi, clap.
So, I just want you to know that it’s there, but at the end of the day, you know you best, and it’s just a beautiful place to kind of get started if you feel called to listen to yourself a bit deeper.
So, anyway, sometimes the work, it always changes your life, I guess is what I’m trying to get at.
The work is what’s gonna change your life, but it’s not always this big, dramatic thing.
It’s about the simple practices that you decide to put into place every day, and the hard questions that you ask yourself and others when you need support.
So it’s most often simply the practice of just staying with yourself, and letting yourself feel and be in the now.
And experience what you need to experience for your unique journey, and doing that over and over and over and over again.
So, if you’re on this path too, whew, we can take water breaks together.
It can be intense, but more than anything, it is beautiful and so incredibly worth it.
I’m excited to hear what you all think of this episode, and of course, as always, if you have questions, you can drop me a line, a DM on Instagram, or send me an email.
I’m the one running the show, so I’ll always do my best to get right back to you.
And I’m here for you, girl.
Did that go by too fast? No worries. You can always find me over at elisabethfleming.com for more information about my programs, events, and how you can take your learning further with me. If you loved this episode, leave a review. It helps more than you know.
Thank you so much for tuning in. I'll catch you next time.
Connect with Liz:
Watch Liz's FREE Workshop, Step Into Your Power:
Learn how to trust yourself again so you can stop overthinking and start protecting your energy. Watch now at elisabethfleming.com/free-workshop
Read Liz's Book:
Discover Liz’s bestselling book, Powerhouse: 3 Steps to Thrive as the Incredible Woman You Already Are — A Framework for Self-Love and Expansion: elisabethfleming.com/book
Resources:
Website: elisabethfleming.com/welcome
Instagram: @mslizfleming
Podcast: The Life with Liz Podcast
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