When Spiritual Growth Feels like Avoidance

🔥

Have you ever told yourself you’re “honouring your energy,” but deep down you know you’re just avoiding something uncomfortable?

It’s such a fine line, between resetting to regulate and hiding behind regulation so you don’t have to stretch. And honestly, it’s one I’ve had to look at closely myself.

When I started my healing journey, I swung hard into softness. I’d burnt out so badly that rest and regulation felt like the only way forward. I needed that season of gentleness. But somewhere along the way, I realised that “listening to my body” had started to become an excuse not to finish things.

I’d convince myself it was intuition, or that I needed more time to feel ready. But underneath it, it was fear, fear of pressure, fear of failure, even fear of success.

And that’s the thing no one talks about, avoidance can wear a spiritual disguise. It looks calm on the surface, but it’s still being driven by fear.

Over time I started to understand that regulation isn’t about removing effort, it’s about creating the capacity to handle it. Rest doesn’t replace challenge. It prepares you for it.

Running a business, raising a child, creating content, showing up, it all takes effort. Sometimes it takes showing up even when you don’t feel like it. That doesn’t mean abandoning your needs or pushing through pain. It just means recognising that growth often comes from those little moments where you’d rather not, but you do anyway.

Now, when I notice resistance, I pause and ask myself:

👉 Is this exhaustion, or avoidance?

👉 Is this pause refilling me, or shrinking me?

If it’s refilling me, I rest. If it’s shrinking me, I move, gently, but deliberately.

I’ve also been working on reframing productivity. For so long, my brain linked “productive” with “burnout.” If I was being productive, I must be pushing too hard. But that’s not true. Productivity is just how we channel our energy when we actually have it.

And real burnout doesn’t come from doing things, it comes from never switching off. From staying mentally stuck in our to-do list long after the work is done.

Now, I let myself give full focus to what I’m doing, and when I stop, I really stop. That’s what I call embodied productivity, doing the work and being present enough to know when to put it down.

It’s a balance I’m still refining, being spiritual, but also ambitious. Soft, but strong. Calm, but deeply committed. Because I don’t think spiritual growth is about doing less.

It’s about doing what’s aligned, with presence.

It’s about learning the difference between fear and wisdom, and choosing from love instead of avoidance.

0 comments