Why Stubborn Issues are a Gift in Disguise

Have you been on your path of self-healing, personal development, spiritual discovery for a long time, feeling much calmer and happier in general but still got one, or perhaps a few areas, that persist in showing up and dragging you down?

It’s hard not to focus on them isn’t it?

We are likely to reactively push away and demonise these persistent issues, asking ourselves why can’t we stay connected to feelings of love, peace and light? Why is life still difficult? It seems all our hard work to ‘fix’ ourselves isn’t working, or has failed. Our thinking about ourselves becomes judgemental here, it’s something we want to get rid of, a wrongness we want to exorcise, a huge problem that takes up a lot of thinking time and energy.

Is it that you have a perfectly healthy diet, but get thrown off balance at family gatherings or when you feel low and then find cake, coffee, pizza, crisps, chocolate, wine etc completely irresistible?

Perhaps your attention is drawn to a part of your body you feel is wrong, a recurring health niggle, or someone else’s behaviour that gets to you, and never fails to make you feel frustrated?

Issues as a Channel of Communication & Teacher

Sometimes even when we’ve worked on an issue for a long time it can come back or persist - my understanding is that it’s only because it still has a message to give, more related blocks to clear. It’s as if the issue is a communication channel to highlight to your conscious mind that there is more work to be done here, and certainly not that you have failed.

Negative issues can at times need to unravel in layers, which can seem slow and frustrating. If that’s the case it could well be one of your greatest personal teachers. In re-framing stubborn issues (relating to food, relationships, bad moods, anything really!) in this way you will be more open to come to full understanding and the issue can truly dissolve, the reward being more joy, life just flows more easily, you accept and love yourself genuinely and more deeply. Your inner being/higher self loves you, and any self-sabotage not sinister and immovable as you may secretly believe.

Nugget of Gold inside Understanding the Issue

As a practitioner of PSYCH-K and Kinesiology and for myself personally, I am always interested in the messages or teachings behind such negative, unwanted thoughts, feelings and experiences, that is where the gold is I often say to clients. In coming to understand these behind-the-curtain aspects to presenting issues and come to a neutral, easier attitude towards them, they can dissolve - once the resistance passes, once the blocks are cleared. We can then see them for the internal warning system they are, warning you that something is amiss still – perhaps you are reacting to something that is going on, but the symptoms need to emerge to prompt you to see it clearly.

For me personally I have found a strong appetite for chocolate to be an unexpected teacher, and as a diet and health-focused person it is something I have wanted to hide! I have spent a lot of time having mean thoughts about myself and my seeming inability to control cravings at times. But there have been so many valuable lessons for me to realise and process out of this – to understand buried feelings relating to grief and love, to accept and forgive myself and others. It has been frustrating at times, but I have come to see it as a channel of communication to flag up that there is more to work on, talking to me in a way I pay attention to because of the undesirable presenting symptoms the messages piggyback.

An approach to stubborn issues I have found to be helpful is to stay calm and patient yet determined to keep finding ways to release them, and curious. Curiosity is a very useful feeling here because it softens the hardness of wanting rid of the issue, creating an opening to new angles to that release, layer by layer if necessary. Remembering it is your teacher, you can’t rush learning, can’t do a university degree in a week.

Keeping in mind that you will be fine, this issue does not define you has certainly helped me in times of feeling stuck. Now is a really good time to start or get back into a daily meditation practice, drop into the present moment and know that right now there is nothing wrong.

As we come to feel easier and more neutral, a sense of detachment helps create the space to transform it. From neutrality comes insight and inspiration as to what the right next step is – be it a new form of therapy with a practitioner you are drawn to, an author, yoga, qi gong, kinesiology, journaling etc.

Remember it Takes Courage to Look Within & Heal

Thankfully there will also be a lot of issues, stresses, memories of past traumas and health challenges that are far easier to release on your journey. The sense of confidence, positive energy, lightness etc that you slowly gain and acclimatise to is very much worth it, as are qualities of patience and greater tolerance and understanding where you observe the same patterns in others around you.

In a culture that encourages desires for distraction and immediate, no-effort wins coupled with glumly or even gleefully (?!) accepting personal limitations as set in stone, your persistence to reach your goals of genuine happiness and peace is even more admirable. You are an example to those around you, keep going! The results are worth it, and you have come much further already than you realise. Remember the decision and courage it took to embark on this self-healing journey in the first place, you made changes, explored new ways of thinking – don’t forget that you are still just as courageous now.