Mantra with Jemma Sbeg - I Give Myself Permission to Heal at My Own Pace

Episode Date: March 17, 2025

This week's mantra is I Give Myself Permission to Heal at My Own Pace. Healing is not a race—it’s a deeply personal journey that unfolds in its own time. In this episode of Mantra, we explore how to release the pressure to “move on” and instead honor where you are in the process. Giving yourself permission to heal means embracing patience, self-compassion, and the understanding that every step—no matter how small—is progress. This Mantra will encourage you to trust your unique path to healing and find peace in your own timing. For ad-free listening and early access to episodes, subscribe to OpenMind+ on Apple Podcasts. For more from OpenMind, follow us on Instagram @openmindstudios. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is Open Mind. Welcome back to a brand new week. Here is your mantra. I give myself permission to heal at my own pace. I'm your host, Gemma Speck, and I'm here to guide you toward a more centered and fulfilling life. Each week I share personal stories and insights that are focused on a specific mantra plus journal prompts and a weekly challenge for all of us to help put it into action. Think of mantra as your mental reset button, a way to stay centered as you juggle work, school, family and whatever else life throws at you.

Each mantra is a simple powerful phrase you can repeat to refocus your thoughts and bring a bit of calm into your day. It is a small tool with a big impact clearing your mind, lifting your mood and rooting you in the present. If you've listened to my other show, The Psychology of Your 20s, you know I'm all about those little nuggets of insight that make a big impact. So whether you're looking for some extra inspiration or you're trying to ground yourself amidst the chaos, you have come to the right place. At Open Mind we value your support, share your thoughts on social media and remember to rate, review

and follow Mantra to help others discover the show. For more exclusive content, monthly bonus episodes, early access and ad-free listening, join our Open Mind Plus community on Apple Podcasts. This week I get to catch you up on what's been going on in my life and then we'll dive into today's mantra. I give myself permission to heal at my own pace. We've got to remember healing isn't linear and this mantra reminds us that it's really okay to take the time we need to feel whole again. Stick around we'll be right back after this short pause. And we'll be right back after this short pause. Welcome back. We are going to get into this week's mantra in just a second. But before we do, it's time for my highs lows and who knows?

I hate to say it, I've got a low for you all this week. I've got a low. I have found mold in my house. Yeah, that's correct. Mold in my house, behind the paint, behind the walls. It seems the last person who lived here really liked to go heavy on with the paint over things that should probably be removed. So I had this incident the other day where I was in the bathroom and we have these like weird almost like stone tiles, I want to say. And I was like, ah, one of them, like I was cleaning them and I was like,

one of these is like falling off, like what the heck? And I like kind of touched it, kind of pulled at it. It came off and behind was all of this mold. Not only did a part of my house literally fall away, but I was like, oh my God. And then we peeled some of the paint off as well, just mold everywhere. So it seems like it's only really contained to like the bathroom and like a little bit of like this little like sun room we have at the back.

But if anyone has any tips, please let me know. I'd like bleached the whole area. I like just put vinegar on it, tried everything. But if you like have ever been to Sydney, you know that when it gets wet, everything just gets mildew and everything just gets really sweaty and sticky. So all like the mold experts, the mold experts, the people who hold society together are all booked and busy. So we have to wait for like another week and a half before anyone can come in and do it. So if you have any home remedies, should I be wearing a face mask? Um, I'm not too sure, but also to send your thoughts and prayers because my house has

been infested with mold and I have no idea what to do about it. So that is my low for the week. Okay, let's get into it. It's time for this week's mantra. I give myself permission to heal at my own pace. So let's start off with talking about this. What does healing at our own pace really look like and why is it so important? I think what healing at our own pace really encompasses is knowing that healing is not

a specific outcome and it's not an outcome you need to be racing towards. It's not a finish line, it's not a destination, although it may feel that way sometimes, it's a process, it's a journey of exploring why something has touched you so much, how it's affected you, figuring out how that's changed you, how you can adapt, how you can cope, finding new strategies. And it's also this very strange and sometimes cruel journey of feeling absolutely terrible one day and then the next day feeling better than you ever have before. That's why I like to say if we are going to measure healing by a specific outcome that should take a specific amount of time, there is no way of knowing when we actually get

there and there's no way of measuring our pace as we're on that journey. Some people say that healing is never over, whether you're healing from a past relationship, past trauma, past abuse, grief, any of those things. It's intertwined with what it means to be human. That's why it's never over. And sometimes that's really scary. I remember hearing this about grief, you know, that grief is something that never gets easier. But the more time you spend with something, the more your relationship to it changes.

The more I like to explain it as a piece of glass that gets smoothed over by the ocean. The edges become less sharp. The glass is still in your hand, it's still there. You still feel the grief, you still feel the pain, the betrayal, the upset, the fear. But slowly you start to find a way to maybe put it into your pocket every now and again,

to continue that metaphor. Basically, it finds a way to integrate with your life. The reason that I like to say and I like to think that healing is never over so no one can ever rush you to be completely healed is also because I think that way of seeing things allows us to give ourselves permission to just start, to just start unwrapping what we're feeling. If you feel like the moment you start going to therapy, you start putting in behaviours, you start really looking in the face of whatever it is you've been through, that now there is a ticking clock that says you have five years to deal with this, you have six months to deal with this.

You are never going to give yourself permission to heal. You are never going to say, okay, I'm ready, because the moment you say you're ready, you feel like you're at a start line and the gun has gone off. When we instead think about healing as something that takes time and that can evolve into becoming actually quite a beautiful part of who we are, it feels like a much easier step to take. I think self-compassion and patience play a really big role in this as well. I think the times that I felt most terrible about dealing with heartache, dealing with disappointment,

dealing with things from my childhood have been when I have led myself to believe that it was my fault or I have led myself to believe that if I was just stronger and if I just knew more and if I just had more spirit or gusto to me, like I would be fine. Look at that person online. Look at that person I know. She went through something like this.

He went through something like this and he is okay. I find it easier to deal with when we compare kind of emotional hurt and emotional healing with physical healing. Someone can have a broken arm and someone can have a broken leg. They're going to heal differently. It doesn't mean that the pain they experience from both of those things didn't hurt just as much, if that makes sense. There's no point in comparing your pain and therefore there's no point in comparing your healing. The unique experience of what has happened to you is something that someone else cannot know. And it's also something that you cannot lead yourself to believe anyone else would be more capable of moving through and overcoming or just managing on a day-to-day.

I also feel like the reason we feel such pressure to be over something, to feel better. Looking at our watch, it's been months, it's been years. How come this is still sitting over me? How come this is still hurting me? Is because society, and it's an inconvenient truth, society is not very good at seeing emotion and seeing hurt laid bare. We are told not to be an inconvenience, we are told to make others happy, good at seeing emotion and seeing hurt laid bare. We are told not to be an inconvenience,

we are told to make others happy, that we should put up a front. Because it's uncomfortable for other people who don't understand what we've been through. That's the other side of this coin, like only we can understand what we've experienced. It also means that people sometimes feel like we should be over it sooner than we need to be over it.

Everyone deals with things in their own time, but that doesn't feel acceptable when society is saying, oh, someone that you know passed away, you get six months. You've broken a bone, you get three months. Oh, you know, you have childhood trauma, maybe two years. It just feels like there is this appropriate timeline for dealing with what we're going through, when in fact, that completely ignores so much of the complexity to do with it.

I think giving yourself the grace to heal is one of the most powerful things you can offer yourself, and also kind of giving yourself grace to maybe make people uncomfortable. That's all right. They can deal with their discomfort. You're dealing with so much more. They can put that away. They can move through their life.

If that's the worst thing that's going to happen to them, seeing your grief or seeing your pain or seeing your heartache or whatever it is, they've got a pretty good deal. So give yourself permission to heal, but give yourself permission to heal out loud if that's appropriate. To say to people in your life, I can't do this right now. To say to family members, I'm sorry that's not appropriate.

To say to someone, this is something I'm trying to get over. This is something I'm trying to get better with. Please stay with me as I try. All right, coming up with me as I try. All right, coming up, let's get personal. I'll open up to you about how this mantra has really shown up in my own life and how I'm learning to truly give myself the grace to heal, the grace to maybe get better. Stay tuned after this brief pause. Now that we've looked at the meaning behind today's mantra and how I tend to approach it, it's time to get personal with you all, share some of my own insights and reflections

about this phrase. I give myself permission to heal at my own pace. I am someone who is quite sensitive. I don't think that's a negative trait by any means. I think it's a positive. I feel deeply. I get attached easily. I connect with others rapidly. But it also means when relationships end or hard things happen, it can feel like I am

the last to move on and that I'm kind of slowing down the procession. I'm holding up the healing and I feel guilty for coming out three months later or even years later and saying, I know this is inconvenient, but I'm actually still not over it. I can see this in a lot of things from the past for me. You know, it took me so much longer

to get over arguments in my family. I remember people being like, wow, you really hold a grudge. It's not that I'm holding a grudge, it's that these emotions, they still have me wrapped up in them. I wish I could get over them. I wish I could move on.

It's just not how I'm built. It took me longer to get over deaths in my family, to get over betrayals or hurts from friends, to get over breakups. When my last long-term relationship ended, and it ended rather poorly, I remember there being this huge delay in how upset I felt, probably like three, four months. So by the time I was fully realizing, oh, there were good parts about this person and they're no longer in my life anymore.

And there are parts of that which make me feel really sad. It honestly felt like my window for this unique kind of grief had closed. And bringing it up with people would have the reaction of a lot of them saying, you know, why are you still talking about this? That's old news. That's really what I convinced myself people were going to say. And I specifically remember a girls trip with my friends almost six months later. And I still hadn't really like expressed any sadness about it.

Cause I didn't want to make people uncomfortable. And I sat with one of my closest friends at a fish and ship shop and. Sobbed to her as if it had happened yesterday. It was probably one of the first times that I cried openly about it and I remember her saying to me like, oh my God, we were waiting for this to happen. Like, where's all this emotion been hiding? And it just made me cry more. She was so supportive.

And I'm sure that she would still be up to talking it through with me, even to this day, even though it was almost five years ago. She'd probably be like, this is a bit strange, but having people in your life who are understanding of the fluidity and the nuances of emotion, it is completely life-changing with how you in turn process and look at your own feelings. But knowing that I might get a different reaction from people it has caused me sometimes to make my grief more private because I was embarrassed.

I knew people had moved on and they wanted me to move on as well and I knew that they weren't in the same place as I was anymore and there was also this fear like maybe they're not mentally or emotionally prepared to have the conversations that I keep wanting to have because they're not in the same mindset. I feel like I'm still in that same place. So I kept those conversations I wanted to have to myself. Same goes for certain moments when I was a child or even a teenager that were really hurtful and harmful. I've only really had the emotional maturity to deal with them in the last six or seven

years. Some of those people that were involved in those moments aren't even in my life anymore. So it's kind of like who I talk about this with. Does it feel like drudging up the past? No. There is no rule book for your emotions. There is no rule book for how you deal with hard periods in your life. You know, that is not something that is promised. That is not something that is the same amongst everyone. I think the final element of why this is difficult and has been difficult for me to accept in the past is also the shame of not bouncing back quicker and what that said about me personally,

right? Was I weak? Was I not socially or emotionally advanced? You know, was this a a sign of some larger problem? And to be completely vulnerable, I can see how this has kind of had implications in other areas of my life where I don't bring things up in relationships. I don't bring up issues with friends because I don't want to be seen as dramatic or overreacting. But I am doing so much better with this now. I really want to say that to people and I really want to make that known if

you're struggling with healing in your own time. The thing about healing in your own time is when the healing really does start to take place, it makes you so much stronger and you're so much more prepared for it. Specifically something I really like to remind myself is it's okay to be more open with how something from the past is impacting you now and you won't be ashamed for it. In fact, there are people in your life who are hoping that you bring things up because it's a sign of love and commitment and respect that you want to heal with them.

My boyfriend said this to me recently. He was like, just give people the gift of getting to take care of you because they want to take care of you. Give them the gift of getting to know you more. You know, we've been together for two, three years now and there were things that I'd never told him about. And he was like, don't you see like I love you so much. I wish I knew this sooner. I wish I could see this part of you. So let them have that. Like they want to know you. Maybe very, very emotional at the time.

I think looking back now and hopefully applying this into the future, if I had to give my younger self some advice on how to heal at my own pace, and how to give myself permission to even feel those emotions in the first place, it would be healing comes faster when you talk about it sooner. You're also not protecting anyone by hurting yourself more, and these experiences are part of what it means to be human. Even when they are difficult, it is a wonderful thing sometimes to feel as deeply as you feel. It gives you a more rich human experience.

It makes you more empathetic. You feel more in touch with others, but you also feel more in touch with yourself when you look and you allow yourself to dissect how something has impacted you specifically. Even when it feels like that might make you a burden, that's not your shame to carry. Also, if you don't give yourself permission, if you don't say, okay, I'm going to be present with my pain no matter how long it takes, it can end up as avoidance.

You will keep delaying it to later and later and later in life until it consumes you. And I don't know, I feel like I've actually seen that in people before. Suppressing emotions is a much more insidious and larger societal problem with how we deal with pain and hurt. It ends up showing up in substance abuse, it ends up showing in self-sabotaging behaviors and really terrible habits. And I just sometimes think to myself, if we just had a microphone that everyone could come up to

and speak their pain and speak their hurt and be heard, how many of these problems that we have as a society would have been avoided with just more open acknowledgement that sometimes being human is actually not an easy thing and it shouldn't be made to seem effortless. With that in mind, I want to bring us to our deep thought of the day. Honestly, sometimes this is my favorite part of these episodes.

This quote that I have, it's actually no one really knows who said it, but I think that we can all relate to it. In a world that often glorifies quick fixes and instant results, it's important to remember that true healing takes time. This makes me think of therapy. I see a lot of examples of people who will say, you know, I started therapy and like it's just not working.

It's just not working. I don't feel any better. Actually I feel worse. And I'm like, well, that actually is the sign that it's working. It's trudging up all this stuff that you have previously suppressed. And you've got to remember, there are so many examples of instant gratification in our life these days, so that something is long term and sometimes challenging as therapy doesn't feel as rewarding, but it actually is just because it's not giving you the same dopamine

as, you know, feeling like you hate your wardrobe and buying clothes immediately, feeling like you hate what you look like so getting a haircut, feeling pain in your left elbow and your doctor gives you a pill. Therapy is one of those deep time commitments and energy commitments that you really only notice the progress in hindsight. Sometimes people will be in therapy for like a year or two years, and they'll say this isn't working and then their therapist will be like, okay, but this is who you were when you came in. This is gradual growth. This is consistent growth.

You are happier. It's just that small changes over time don't always make it seem so. That's the same thing with healing even on your own, although I would recommend therapy. For everyone I know it's really expensive and I know it's really sometimes inaccessible. So if you are implementing some of those therapeutic techniques at home, or if you're just trying to find healing in your own space, please don't compare yourself to a week ago, compare yourself to a couple of years ago. See the progress for the long haul that it is.

yourself to a couple of years ago, see the progress for the long haul that it is. Now, I'd like us to take a few moments to pause and really sit with this mantra. In just a moment, you'll hear our music track created to give you some much needed space to absorb today's insights. Feel like today's episode has been very, very dark in some ways. So hopefully, you can bring this mantra into your week and apply it positively and maybe even beyond by reflecting on what this means to you.

And of course, if this isn't your style, if this doesn't resonate with you, you can just skip ahead a minute. But as you settle in, I want you to really keep our mantra in mind. I give myself permission to heal at my own pace. What does that mean for you? Let it guide your thoughts as the music plays and give yourself a moment to really reflect and connect with all that it means. Beautiful. Up next, we're going to talk about how to put these insights into real action and bring

this mantra to life. I'll share some general prompts in our weekly challenge. Stick around for more after this short break. Hi, I'm Jessica Porter and I'm a hypnotherapist as well as a total relaxation nerd. If you're struggling to sleep at night, I'm here to help. Sleep Magic is my new podcast of relaxing hypnosis created to help you doze off tonight. With my episodes every Wednesday, I'm going to make suggestions that help you relax really, really deeply.

And hypnosis is not what you've seen on TV. There's no swinging pocket watch or clucking like a chicken. I promise. I'm just here to help you make friends with sleep again so you can get the rest you deserve. So search Sleep Magic on your favorite podcast app and I'll see you there. Welcome back. Let's talk about how to apply this week's mantra in a meaningful way in our everyday life, starting with our journal practice We do this every single week I love to give you guys a couple of journal prompts to really explore this deeper on your own terms

If you don't have your journal with you right now, that's totally okay Just think about your answers in your mind or you can come back to them later But here is what I have for you this week to help you gain some clarity and reflect on this mantra But here is what I have for you this week to help you gain some clarity and reflect on this mantra. First, what does healing at your own pace mean to you? And how does it differ from the expectations others may place on you? Secondly, how do you respond to setbacks in your healing journey? What would it look like to approach them with more radical self-compassion? And by radical self-compassion, I mean, I'm going to choose to love myself no matter how hard this is, no matter what mistakes I make. And finally,

what is one area of your life where you feel like you're still healing? What would it look like to fully honor your timeline? Okay, I've given you a lot to think about, but there's more in store. Every week, I like to give you guys a challenge that features our mantra. It's really about taking this whole thing to another level so that you can put what we talk about

into tangible, actionable steps for yourself. I also love doing these check-ins over on Instagram so that we hold ourselves accountable. So you can reach out to me at Martra Open Mind to let me know how the challenge is going. And next week, we of course do a recap on how things went. I might even share a few personal stories with your permission, of course,

to help encourage others to participate in the challenge in the future. And this is a two-way street, so I'll make sure to let you know how things are going with me too. us to participate in the challenge in the future. This is a two-way straight, so I'll make sure to let you know how things are going with me too. Let's talk about last week's challenge as a reminder. Our mantra last week was,

I trust myself to make the best decision with what I know now. The challenge I set for you all was to just ponder a decision that you have been putting off making, either a big decision or a small decision, and approach it very logically, make a pro-cons list, reflect on it, and try and take some step towards actioning that decision or making some choice.

I want to say, I actually did very well with this last week. I did all the admin tasks around a decision that I wanted to make, and I talked about it with the most important people in my life, and I'm not not gonna talk about what the decision actually is but we're definitely getting closer to, I don't know, it kind of blossoming, it kind of happening. I want to share some of the DMs that we got from listeners about last week's episode, this one from Ginger. How do you handle

regret when you look back and realize you made a decision that didn't work out as planned? Does trusting yourself mean letting go of what could have been? Whoa, very existential there, Ginger. Does trusting yourself mean letting go of what could have been? Yeah, I actually think it does. I think trusting yourself does involve a bit of loss sometimes, because the opposite of trusting yourself is just letting the world decide for you and therefore keeping a lot of doors open that aren't actually getting

you to a better place. But when you trust yourself, you intentionally close some of those doors. You intentionally make decisions that are calculated and deliberate. So maybe it is, but in terms of that earlier part, how do you handle regret? I'm going to repeat something I said in last week's episode, but I just think it's so powerful. And that is, if you look at your life right now and you can find even a couple of things that you care about and that you enjoy and that you love that are important to you, there is some decision in your past that you regret that was important to get you to where

you are. You would not have those things without a couple of bad decisions because they all brought you to here. I also want to say one more thing about that, which is that how do you know that what you see as a bad decision wasn't actually the best decision and that any other decision you made in that moment could actually have led to a worse possible outcome. There's no way of knowing. So I think surrendering and accepting and choosing to believe that this is the best

that could have happened is a really great mindset shift. All right, let's look at our next question. This one's from Raphael. What do you do when you feel pressured to make a decision quickly, but you're not sure if you've gathered enough information yet? Woof. That is a hard one. That is very, very difficult.

I think if the decision is one that other people are requiring from you, please try and advocate for a bit of a delay. Try and advocate for some time, some thinking time. Present it as if I'm going to make a better decision for you. I'm going to be more committed to my decision if you give me an extra day, if you give me an extra half an hour, if you give me an extra however much time you need. I actually think that shows a great degree of responsibility and accountability and respect for these other people.

There's also something to be said for just making the decision in the moment and realizing that you can go back and change it. Most decisions I think you can, or there is some way to course correct in the future. Other than that, go with your gut. Really sink into what your future self would be telling you to do in that moment. Your best future version of yourself, what are they saying and what are they encouraging you to do? That's always the kind of trick or tool that I use. And now it's time for this week's challenge. This week, I want you to say no to comparison.

Each time you catch yourself comparing your healing journey to someone else's, pause and reframe the thought. Remind yourself their path is theirs and mine is mine. We're all going to end up in the same place. All I want to do and all I want to have is a more human experience and one of more peace and one of more joy. What do I have to do to bring that about for me? At the end of the week or even at the end of each day,

just write down one thing that you're proud of about your own unique process. Maybe do a little check in. How am I feeling? Do I feel like I'm seeing things more clearly? Do I feel like I'm taking the pressure off? And as a reminder, reach out to us at Mantra Open Mind to share how this week's challenge is working for you. All right. As we wrap up this week's episode, I want to share a few final thoughts about this mantra. I give myself permission to heal at my own pace. We've talked about how healing looks very different for everyone, and I know this has been kind of a heavy episode.

So please take just listening to this episode as your healing exercise for today. I know I gave you a weekly challenge, I know I gave you some journal exercises, a lot to think about. It's alright if you are coming out of this feeling a little bit mentally exhausted. I'm sure there's been a lot of reflection, a lot of things coming up for you. To be honest there's been a lot coming up for me through this episode as well. So take the rest you need, take a pause, take a break. But please remember and keep this at the centre

of anything you do to make yourself feel more at peace, feel happier, feel more emotionally stable. If it works for you and if it makes you feel more aligned with yourself, no one else needs an explanation. But also, healing takes time. And anyone who is asking you to heal on their timeline is not someone who I think deserves to see the healed version of you.

It's not a race, it's a deeply personal journey, and you have the right to move at your own pace. So please be patient, honor the small steps, and trust that with time, you are going to find your way. Martra is hosted by me, Gemma Spagg, and is an Open Mind Original powered by Pave Studios. This episode was brought to life by the Mantra team, Max Cutler, Kristin Acevedo, Ron Shapiro, Stacey Warrincurr, Sarah Carroll, and Paul Lieberskind. Thank you for listening.