cycles + metamorphosis

A theme I have noticed I bring up a lot (and if you ask some of my clients, constantly) in sessions is: Cycles.

I first began to notice this as I brought up the weather which is classic small talk in the first few moments of a session as we settle in. As we feel the closing of one season and transition into another, my client and I look out of the window in my office and reflect on those changes. We talk about the patterns that emerge over time that are connected with the changing of the seasons. People tend to become brighter, lighter when the first moments of Spring emerge from the frozen winter. Energies are highest as we flow into summer time and longer days. People feel the most grounded to me in the Fall, until we hit Scorpio season which is a whole other story. Then we hibernate in the winter time. Reflecting on the seasons was a very natural entry point to talk about cycles.

The next cycle I found myself mentioning came from my studies in astrology. Each year, we move through every sign and notice the themes and patterns that come with it. I won’t dive into all of the astrological cycles here, but keep an eye out for that future blog post.

And finally, the theme of cycles shows up most obviously in my sessions when clients talk to me about feeling as those they have fallen back, that they are “right back where they started”. Sitting across from these incredible clients I have, from my objective POV, my clients are not “right back where they started”. We all have natural returns that can feel like backwards movement, but I like to offer my clients a reframe of this feeling: to view it as a spiral staircase. As we move forward, we are ascending that staircase. We may feel dizzy, disoriented, but we also experience moments of clarity and upward momentum. It is a back and forth, give and take, over and over again, throughout our entire lives.

We may experience a return to familiar feelings, thoughts, behaviors, patterns, etc. However you are not the same. This idea can be demonstrated through this quote:

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.” -Heraclitus

With each moment of the clock that ticks by, we change, evolve, are formed and molded. However, we will always encounter moments of return throughout our lives. This return can look like many things: we start to re-engage in old coping/survival skills that aren’t productive or effective when life gets stressful, we engage in a relationship pattern that isn’t effective (“why do I always attract people like this??”), we encounter an experience that we have in the past and forget all of our skills for navigating said situation, etc.

When we arrive at a moment of return, we may feel defeated and that all our work has been for not. “How is this happening?? I’ve been working so hard and I’m right back to where I started”. No amount of work we do will ever change how life unfolds, but it will help us change how we react and respond.  I frame this as simply just a moment, almost a test from the universe, to see how we can apply the work we have spent time doing to a familiar situation. Most humans want this growth to feel black and white. That they have arrived at their final destination, completely and wholly. Unfortunately it is not that clean (of course not, that would be too easy!). It is a spectrum of growth and change, action and response.

For example: someone who is wanting to set better boundaries with a significant person in their life. With each session, we talk about boundaries and practice setting them. Then the time comes where they have to put down that boundary. They do it and it’s not perfect, it felt clunky and uncomfortable but they make it through. Then another moment comes to set another boundary and again, it was not perfect. We may feel defeat however it’s hard to conceptualize what could have happened. Even if we laid down 20% of a boundary, that’s far better than 0% but our brain really likes to focus on the tangible things. It’s hard to know what we avoided, but we do feel the imperfection of these skills when we first start practicing them.

With each turn of the spiral staircase, we are met with a mirror. We must look at ourselves and become aware of how we are going to respond in this moment and remember how we have responded in the past, all in just a moment of time. Responding 20% better during a return is far better than 0%, but we want it to feel like 100%, which it will. In time.

We will always have moments of growth, confidence and expansion. And inevitably something comes along and knocks us off kilter, sending us inward; we become quieter, more observant, perhaps engaging in some self imposed penance. We are the caterpillar moving into our chrysalis. But then, slowly, we open back up again, feeling the confidence and strength flow from us, and thus: the cycle continues and we are again a butterfly.

Cycles are the basic and fundamental element of life. They are indicative of metamorphosis. If we can let go and accept that we are forever engaged in a cycle, rather than anything resembling linear progression, we might experience more kindness and forgiveness towards ourselves. Even better, we might find the beauty and honor in experiencing this process that is as old as time itself.