Do you have analysis paralysis?

Something that I'm certain many of us have experienced on our healing journeys that is also a major roadblock is perhaps an unexpected one - 

Intellectualizing.

It's an interesting phenomenon, one that I've grappled with in my own life and have witnessed in many of the folks I work with.

So what exactly does this mean, and how does it show up?

When we are intellectualizing the healing process, it means that we are often in a process of gathering lots and lots of information:

• We are learning all that we can about our illness
• We are researching lots of different healing modalities
• We are reading about what worked and what didn't work for others who have our symptoms
• We are understand what needs to be done in order to move forward

And while none of this is inherently wrong or  bad... the issue lies in the fact that it's not enough to simply acquire information about how to heal.

True healing lies in the actions we take: We must embody our acquired knowledge and integrate it into our lives in a way that moves us towards true healing.

Sometimes we get caught in a cycle of constantly learning as a coping mechanism.

If you think about it, it makes sense:

When we are in a state of perpetual intellectualizing, it can be used as a way to avoid diving deeper into the emotions and experiences stored in our bodies.

When we become all-consumed with acquiring knowledge about our condition, therapy, or different healing modalities, without integrating it into our lived experience, it hinders the healing progress.

It's a way of keeping the healing process at arm's length, staying in the mind and disconnecting from the body, which contains everything that is needed to progress down the healing path.

Another way this can show up, which is sneakier but still a form of intellectualizing, is by engaging with treatment modalities in a very strict, regimented way.

Let me explain this with an example:

A client of mine recently shared her personal experience of how she initially approached her healing journey by focusing on external factors, such as strict dietary plans and wellness practices.

These practices required a lot of intellectual planning, measuring, and effort:

• How much to eat and when. 
• How many hours to engage in exercise routines.
• Counting macros and other food measurements.
• When to schedule certain activities and how to fit them into her schedule.

And so forth.

In other words - these activities were so much that they took her out of her body and kept her more in her mind than anything else. 

They kept her busy and focused on external things like measuring and scheduling. And so while technically she was engaging in healing activities, she wasn't actually embodying them.

She wasn't feeling how they impacted her, or if maybe they needed to be tweaked and readjusted to better suit her needs.

They were one-size fits all approaches, based on other people's successes and advice, that she blindly applied to her own healing process.

Is this familiar to you? If so, you might be wondering how to work with this pattern.

The first step, as always, is compassion. There's a reason you are uncomfortable moving from the mind into the body, and we want to honor that reason and move at a pace that feels safe to you.

The next step is awareness. Recognizing when intellectualizing becomes a barrier to our healing journey is the first step in breaking free from this cycle.

As mentioned: There is nothing inherently wrong with learning about your body, illness, and how to take care of it. However, there is a threshold where learning ceases to be helpful and begins to interfere, and it is awareness of this line that is essential to breaking this pattern.

Awareness allows us to acknowledge when the learning has turned from being helpful to being protective, and knowing when to shift from understanding to actively engaging in the work.

In order to heal, at some point we must move beyond intellectualizing and into feeling, integrating, and embodying our healing journey.

It's a paradigm shift, as I like to call it, where we start to trust our inner wisdom and intuition, tuning into our bodies and following that guidance towards our path to healing.

In essence, we need to bridge the gap between intellectual understanding and experiential integration.

It's not about discarding the knowledge we've gained, but about weaving it into our lived experiences, forging a deeper connection between mind and body on our path to healing.

Until next time!

Dr. Erin