Why Things Go Wrong When Things Start to Go Right

I've spoken to people who, when their lives take a turn for the better after a period of stress, suddenly find they start to struggle rather than finding that things become easier.  I'm talking about fears, barriers that come up, unpleasant feelings, all happening when things start to improve.

So, why does this happen and what is going on?

Well, when we've been struggling with whatever challenge we've been facing, whether it caused stress or made you feel unsafe, we start to put up our barriers.  If we feel we need protection, we will do this to the exclusion of everything else.  Issues that we faced along the way may not have been processed, but instead filed away until we were in a better place emotionally to deal with them.

When things start to go right in our lives, we relax. We no longer need to be on red alert all the time.   We finally feel safer and we start to open up.

And guess what?  All that stuff we buried when we weren't feeling so great comes up.  As human beings, we have an innate draw towards healing ourselves, so as soon as it's safe to do so, this instinct takes over.

However, because we're often not versed in the ways of emotional healing, we can find this a bit overwhelming.  When unresolved issues come up, they don't have a flag attached saying "emotional residue from that time when I felt hurt by my ex" or similar.  Oh no.  We just get an unpleasant feeling.  We may feel upset, we may feel angry, or any other emotion might come up.

The most logical assumption is that the present situation is causing you to feel that emotion.  This will either cause internal conflict as you try to work out why you're crying when your current situation is so great or you will find problems in your current situation to match the emotions, where there really aren't any.

The good news is that these things have come up because we're feeling safe enough to deal with them.  So, if you are experiencing this, life is probably going well for you and you are in a place where you feel supported.

It is, however, important to process these issues and let them go in order to move forwards with our lives.  We don't need to understand them, but often a memory of where they came from will also surface which might give us some clarity we need.  Then once we've let them go, we're free to carry on enjoying the good times that life has brought us.