The cocoon phase

It’s really important to reframe how we look at ourself while we are healing. We need to be careful not to put ourselves in a box under ‘chronic illness’, file ourself as ‘unwell’ or ‘permanently ill’. The more we define ourselves by any unfavourable state that we find our body is in, no matter how bad we are talking, the more we become enslaved to that way of being.

I’m not saying in any way, this is in our head, that we have a choice to unthink illness, this is about accessing and using every single benefit we can, every tool we have access to to change our narrative. And addressing that narrative is very important.

Take yourself out of any box that is to do with ‘chronic illness’, ‘any kind of narrative of being some warrior against what you are fighting. It is still defining you by this thing that you are trying to get away from.

Instead try and look at the process as being one of expansion. What am I expanding into? Not what am I getting away from. How am I growing? What am I shedding along the way? What am I letting go of? What am I growing towards?

The focus of the process of healing can be about who am I becoming, not what you are leaving behind. So see yourself not as curing yourself of anything, but expanding into something new. As if you’ve just been in a tight and limited box for a while and allowing yourself to let go of the emotions you need to allows that box to open so you can expand into a different you.

You are really just perfecting yourself even more, but you are already perfect. There is nothing you need to change, you just need room to expand. So whilst you’re not there yet, when you have an undesirable symptom, just think of it as not having fully shed your tight shell yet into the butterfly that you are becoming. There is nothing wrong with the larva in the cocoon just because it isn’t a butterfly yet. You aren’t broken, you are just in the process of your evolution.