Why You Always Quit Right Before Healing Works

Have you ever started a healing journey feeling so excited you couldn't wait to invest in it, only to lose motivation the moment things got real?

In this solocast, Dawn unpacks the unconscious relationship patterns we bring into every healing container, whether we're the client or the practitioner. She walks through a striking Harvard brain-imaging study that reveals what actually predicts whether healing works, shares the six patterns she sees over and over in her own practice (you'll likely recognize yourself in at least one), and breaks down how your attachment style — secure, anxious, avoidant, or disorganized — is already quietly showing up in how you relate to your practitioner, your process, and your own resistance.

This one gets personal, including a moment from Dawn's own therapy journey where her nervous system got so flooded she had to stop the session. If you've ever wondered why you pull away right when healing starts working, this episode will change how you see that moment completely.

The All Within podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. The conversations, stories, and modalities shared by our guests are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any condition, and should not be taken as medical or therapeutic advice. 

Always consult a qualified healthcare professional before making changes to your health or wellness routine. The views expressed are those of the individual guests and do not represent All Within or its founders.

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About Dawn Elle Davis:

Dawn Elle Davis is a channel, healer, oracle, and transformational mentor with nearly 25 years of experience helping people come home to themselves. She is the co-founder of All Within and the creator of Eternal Self Embodiment™ — a methodology that goes beyond the mind to unlock the deepest layers of who you really are. Dawn is devoted to demystifying the world of healing and making it accessible, real, and deeply human.

https://www.instagram.com/dawnelledavis?igsh=ZDJtNjBidHF4cXdj&utm_source=qr

Transcript

Welcome + today's topic

0:01

What if healing looked nothing like you were taught? Welcome to All Within. I'm Dawn Elle Davis, and every episode I'm sitting down with the healers, the seekers, and the ones who found their way back to wholeness through roads you might not expect. Their stories, their modalities, and their hard-won wisdom. This is where healing gets real. Let's begin. Hello, welcome back and I'm so excited to be with you today with one more solo cast before I have new guest coming back starting next week. I'm so excited about these guests, you guys. You're gonna love them. And today, I literally channel this topic because I think it's gonna really speak to anybody that's on the healing journey, and it's really going to help you. Understand your own process when you're moving through working

The pattern: excited to start, then suddenly you quit

1:00

with a healer or if you are a healer. So it's gonna serve both audiences. And so it came up for me because I started to see it in my practice, and I'm so curious, have you ever started a healing journey feeling so excited? Where you're like, I can't wait to hand over the money. I can't wait to invest in this, or I can't wait to just work with this practitioner only to suddenly lose motivation. Stop showing up or convince yourself you didn't need it anymore. And what if that wasn't laziness or failure? What if it's a pattern? A pattern that is. Really unconscious that you can't see that something about this container provides the perfect impetus for this pattern to be seen. And that's a really good thing because most of the time the reason you're going to A healer or you're in this journey is

The Harvard study on practitioner-patient brain synchrony

2:11

because you want to shift something and it's so challenging. There's so many patterns that we operate from that are so deeply embedded in our unconscious. So today I really wanna explore something I've seen over the years of working with my clients. We don't just bring our wounds into healing, we bring our relationship patterns. And as you know, healing doesn't happen in isolation. It happens within relationship with ourselves, with a practitioner, and with the process itself, and it's really fascinating. There is a study that just came out, at Harvard. With Vitaly Napdow, what they did is they wanted to see how the relationship between a practitioner and the patient, how it works and the study. So it was simultaneous brain imaging of a clinician and their patient and I believe was acupuncture and they were in separate MRI machines and they were connected by live video at the exact moment of treatment, they're videoing what is happening, and the team found that the pairs whose brains showed the strongest synchrony achieved the greatest pain relief. So it was the connection itself was one of the biggest parts of what was healing them. So I wanted to just like put that out there. That there is a study showing that your relationship with a practitioner can really be such a healing force. And I actually listened to a podcast called Phenomena, so I'll mention that one. It's one of their recent episodes where they unpacked this whole idea, but I wanna take it into a different pathway. And first just say, I love that. I love when you find a practitioner that you're like, oh my gosh, I just feel some resonance. I feel so excited about this person. I can't wait. Like you just know that this person is gonna take you far. And so that's really fun because what this study is basically showing is that. you will go further with somebody that you feel that you have some resonance with and that there is mirroring that happens in the session like from facial expressions, body language. It's really fascinating, but something I want you to consider that I've really been sitting with this week is healing isn't just about resolving symptoms, it's about becoming aware of how you relate to yourself. The support that you can receive

What a "healing container" actually is

5:01

being vulnerable, your ability to receive, to trust the process, to be in uncertainty, and to being witnessed. The healing container. I've always seen this becomes a mirror. I have seen this time in and again, People enter these containers, and when I say a container, if you're listening to those, you're like, what the heck is a container? Well, a container is a set amount of time that you and a practitioner are working together. So whether it's three months, six months, a year, there is a set time that you are in this. And when you set out this container and outline and say, okay, yeah, we're doing this work for six months. There is this incredible thing that happens where I like to say the macro becomes the micro. So what's happening in your world starts to happen within this container. So the way that you are working with, let's just say your vulnerability. I saw this at a retreat I hosted years ago in Maui. And we had a bunch

The Maui retreat story: when the shadow shows up in the room

6:15

of women come together and there was a big deep sisterhood wound that came up and it was so, so crazy where everybody was getting along for the first few days and then irritation started to set in. And then there was this mean girl thing happening where people were talking behind each other's backs It was a shadow that exists in the macro, right, in the collective. Like there's plenty of women out there who talked, behind other women's backs and do that kind of thing. And when it was happening in the retreat, I was like, this is where we get to evolve. This is showing up as a shadow because it's something that each and every single one of us. gets to work on. And so it became ironically a theme of the retreat of like, how do you handle, when you don't feel supported? how do you work through your vulnerability or trust these other women when you don't know them or don't like them? Because that's a real thing that can come up at retreats. So the macro of what happens in the world shows up in these containers. Because it's something that is supposed to be looked at. There is such a divine intelligence, to how the field responds. So the field, what I'm talking about is the quantum field. It's responding to what needs to be looked at when you're on a retreat or when you're working with somebody. So going back to this thought, the healing container often becomes a mirror. And you know what's funny is it's not always fun or pretty to look at, right? I mean, the women in the container in Maui, I don't think it was fun for them to have to address that, but it was actually something that was very

Reframing resistance: what is it protecting?

8:00

healing for everybody involved. So recently I noticed a client that was beginning to pull away just as the work started to deepen. And instead of asking myself like, why is this person avoiding me? I want you to reframe that and ask what might this resistance be protecting? Because resistance is often, and think about it, if you are the one who's been on a healing journey and you pulled away from your practitioner, and maybe it was very unconscious, maybe you're just like. I don't wanna do this anymore. This doesn't feel good, or I don't like this, or this person's bugging me, or whatever it may be. The resistance is often a protective strategy, or it can be a nervous system response. It's definitely information. It's not a failure, but sometimes healing gets so close to something that the nervous system has never learned to feel safe in. I really want you to hear that again. 'cause healing gets, it's, it's almost like you're, you're touching the stove top, right? Like, you know, it's like, oh my gosh. You put your hand near the stove or near a fire, you know, it's so hot. It'll sear right. And you're afraid of getting burned. And that is sometimes how healing it gets close to something that the nervous system has never learned to feel safe with. And so when I've had a couple different instances, where, and this is the thing, I'm a truth teller. I literally had one of my clients recently just say to me, oh, I'm afraid to bring this up to you because I know you're gonna tell me the truth. And I found that so interesting. Because sometimes I guess the truth, it's like there is something inside of us that knows that the truth can maybe sting, but we want it, right? Because we know that it without the truth that we're not getting a clear reflection. Right. So when these, I've had two different clients in the last year. One of them in particular, she just couldn't do the work. Like she, she made up all these stories about how difficult it was going to be, and we hadn't even really gone too deeply into it. But as soon as we started getting closer to this whole energy of needing to slow down and really look at things and, and kind of digest. What had been sitting in her field for years in her energy field, she had massive, massive resistance. So I wanna talk about some of the common

Six healing patterns, starting with the Avoider

11:01

healing patterns that I have seen. Maybe you'll see yourself in it, and maybe as a practitioner, you'll recognize some of the clients that you've worked with over the years that you're like, oh yeah, I've seen that. And I'm not, this isn't like I'm saying it to call somebody out. I'm actually doing this because I think for both angles, I've even sat in this seat before myself where there was a point where I was doing therapy and it was getting so close to some things that were so uncomfortable for me that I recognized that I was going to show up for my therapy session. And I was dreading it. I was like, oh, I don't wanna do this today. I don't want to disrupt my equilibrium because it would be like things would settle in my life and feel good, and all of a sudden we'd bring up this topic and it was the truth. It was not like she was bringing up something that was a lie or false or anything. It was so true that it hurt and it was a truth that I'd been avoiding and I could feel my nervous system. There's a couple times even in the session that I said to her, I go, oh my God, I feel my nervous system becoming so flooded right now and flooded for me was like tears and I couldn't think straight. And so I told her, I'm like, can we slow down? I need to take some time to be with this. 'cause it's very overwhelming for me. And it was material that I'd never taken the time to work with in my life. That as we know, energy never goes away. It doesn't just deplete right. it stays until it's dealt with. So anyways, some common healing patterns that I have noticed is the avoider for one. this is a pretty popular one where that type of person pulls away when things get really vulnerable. You might see this in your friendships. They are so good at intellectualizing their emotions. They may miss sessions. They get busy and they decide they're fine. These are very high functioning people. I noticed that they're the ones, sometimes even running companies because they're so good at staying in their mind and their brain, and they're like, as long as I stay here, I'm safe. But when it gets to the tender territory of their heart and soul and how that is keeping them stuck in their lives, they get real busy and they don't want to deal with taking the time and being with it to really start to feel.

The Pleaser

13:41

So for those type of people, for the avoiders distance can feel safer than actual transformation This isn't a slight on them, but just it's, it's an observation. And then there's the pleaser. They wanna be the perfect client. They do everything right. They don't voice discomfort, and they look externally for validation. it's really important on your journey when you're working with a practitioner. That you question, and of course you're gonna, you wanna trust them. You hired them for a reason. Hopefully they're an expert in their field, and if they say something to you that feels wildly against, what your intuition is telling you, or just feels so outta sorts, like that's okay. I work with this one coach and she always says I wanna be wrong. Like, I want you to disagree with me. And I love that about her because she's not saying believe everything I say. She's trying to disrupt the way somebody thinks. And so when you're working with somebody, you don't have to please the practitioner. It's okay to say this is making, like I said to my therapist, I'm feeling really flooded right now. We need to like slow this down because i'm getting really triggered and it was hard for me to say that, but it's more important for me to honor the truth of what's happening inside of me. 'cause that's the healing. She's witnessing me, she's holding space for me. I'm starting to see like, oh my God, look at me going to fight or flight right now. I'm getting hijacked by my lizard brain. You know, all these things were like very important for me to see in real time. So the pleaser. these clients are so fun in some ways because in the beginning, like they're the ones that are in a container. I've done so many group containers, and they're the ones that are like the a plus student for a while. They're the ones that are like, you give them homework and they're like, oh, I did the homework and I did this extra whole thing on it. And you're like, wow, that's really impressive. And sometimes that's just Their modus operandi of how they are. And other times it's, they're being the pleaser. So I've learned to kind of be more discerning. But I always tell people when they work with me in my group containers, if you have an issue, please don't hesitate to bring it up to me. And the looking externally for validation is an important one. 'cause if you're working with an intuitive, for instance, I can't tell you how many times I've had people ask me and it's very confusing. Right. You go to an intuitive 'cause you wanna know like. Oh my gosh, am I gonna make money in this business or am I going to meet my person? And one of the questions I always ask back to clients, and it may frustrate them, is, do you believe that this is possible? And they get so perplexed by that question, and I ask that question for a very specific reason. 'cause if you don't believe that it's possible. That is the first place to start, right? It's not me. I can tell you till I'm blue in the face. I've done this with clients over the years where I'll say, oh yeah, I see you finding a relationship, but here's a few things that you need to work on. Let's just say, and that's great. But if they don't even believe that that's possible, that they'll meet their person. If all their programming is oh, it's so hard to meet somebody, and I never find the right person, and nobody ever likes me well. Then it doesn't matter how much validation I'm giving them. So it's really important when you are in this situation that you understand why you're asking these questions. 'cause maybe you need the practitioner's faith, right? But if you're looking to the practitioner to tell you something, 'cause you don't even believe it yourself, that's, a moment for you to reflect and ask deeper questions and get really curious. But when somebody's being the pleaser, whether you're being the pleaser with your friends or at work or with your healing practitioner, something that I want you to reflect on is

The Seeker (chasing the next breakthrough)

17:40

healing is not about pleasing your practitioner, it's about becoming honest with yourself. That is the fricking truth. Be honest with yourself, and the more honest you can be in that container, the more healing you will receive. So another one that I see a lot is the seeker. this is rampant in the spiritual communities right now, so they're always chasing the next breakthrough. They're always looking for the next new healer. They're always looking for the next new modality, the new program, the next ayahuasca ceremony. The next medicine journey. It's like, what is it? What is the hit, the high that I can get? What's the next breakthrough that I'm going to find? And I will never forget you guys when I went to one of my first Ayahuasca weekends and I met some people and they were like going to these weekend retreats over and over again. And I did my first Ayahuasca journey in 2017 and it was three days worth of Ayahuasca and it took me three years after that to go sit again. I went in 2020 right before the world had shut down. And it was so fascinating to me that these people were saying, oh, I go every weekend, every month. And I'm like, why? Like, how do you even distill down these huge lessons that you're learning and integrate it into your life? Because it took me three years to integrate one three day journey. And really let the medicine move through my life. And so I could go back and be ready to learn again. I'm not saying there has to be like a specific timeframe, but you'll know. So the seeker is always believing that there's, they have shiny object syndrome. It's like the next big thing is gonna be the thing that's gonna be for me. And the truth is, sometimes depth comes from staying not searching. And so if you find yourself thinking, oh, this next person is gonna be the person that really gets me or heals me, and you're constantly moving at that clip, then your medicine is not going to journey after journey. It's to integrate and to ask yourself why you keep needing the next thing. Because without integration, there really isn't sustainable transformation. That's the gosh dang truth. And I know that might be hard to hear, but it's, it's exactly what I see with people is if they don't take the time to metabolize the journey that they're on and the big breakthroughs that they're having, and the journey could be a medicine journey, it could be just a journey working through a container with somebody, then they're not really getting it. And something to consider you guys is, If you're 40 years old, let's just say, and you're just starting your healing work and you're, you're working on yourself. You've had 40 years for these patterns to become worn grooves within your life and within your brain and how your neural pathways work. And if you wanna shift, then it's not gonna take just three months. I mean, I'm not saying there has to be a specific timeframe. I don't like to like adhere always to linear timing. But most people who are doing the work, and I'm saying that in air quotes, like any type of healing work, it takes

The Skeptic

21:00

time to rewire your neural pathways. I know for me, when I stopped drinking, and I became sober, it took a good nine months for me to rewire my neural pathways for my brain to reset. For new ways of thinking to come online, and that is just because I sat still and I had to be in it. So I just want you to think about the duration and the time you've been operating in these patterns and programs and the fact that it does take time to rewire. And sometimes you may have the breakthrough if you're in a six month container. You may have the breakthrough in the first month, but you need the remaining five months to learn how to live in that energy and how to have it integrate. Okay, so another type of person that I see in healing containers is a skeptic. The skeptics are, oh my God, I can't tell you how many times I've seen skeptics, especially when

The Fixer and the trap of "optimizing" healing

22:00

wives send their husbands to me. Oh my gosh. They question everything. They want proof. They protect themselves through certainty, and they don't have to. They're like skeptics about intuitive work, maybe they need the science to back something up. They want to have proof that what you're saying is real, that energy work is real, whatever it may be. So for those types of skeptics, I always say that, curiosity and discernment can co-exist. You don't have to have all the answers in order for something to work. And then the other one I see a lot is the fixer. They turn healing into another achievement. It's all about constant optimization and always trying to improve. How much do we see of this one online? The biohacking? What's the guy? Oh gosh, I wish I knew his name right now. The ultimate biohacker guy who spent millions of dollars optimizing himself only to find out he has, some gatric issue. my mom has it and I can't think of it right now. My brain's going blank, but he is trying to turn back the clock and do all these things only to find out that he has this issue. And so it's, it's just so crazy because there's just, the world is trying to biohack everything. And I, I know I love my aura ring and all these things, but the truth is healing isn't another project. A lot of times it's just learning to soften and love yourself and come home to yourself. So it's not about always trying to improve. And I tell my clients because I often speak, I teach about futuring and futuring is about becoming the embodiment of your future self. Not waiting till you get to the end result, but deciding that you're gonna live from that energy now. And so that can

How attachment styles show up in healing containers

24:00

often in the manifesting world look like, act as if be this way. And sometimes there's spiritual bypassing in that. And the truth is, when it comes to becoming your future self, you cannot bypass the lessons. There's the divine curriculum that are allowing you to soften and change in real time. It's not gonna feel like optimization when you're going through the challenges. It's not gonna feel like an improvement until you hit your next road bump and you realize that you're not the same person. 'cause you don't react in the same way. So what's led me in this whole discussion today is that our attachment styles really show up in healing. If you've never read the book attached, I I highly recommend it. And I'm not here to label people, but just to create awareness. And if you don't know anything about the attachment styles, I, I find them to be wildly

Secure attachment

25:00

helpful because not only did I wanna learn it for myself and how I show up in relationship, but when I was dating and all that kind of stuff. And it's, it's, it's so helpful to know how your partner is. So we all know about secure attachment, right? They can tolerate uncertainty, they can build trust, they allow healing to unfold. So in a healing container, a secure attachment is where there are gonna be moments. And I always tell people, when you're in a six month container or year container, around month two or three is when you're gonna feel the most resistance to the work. You're gonna feel like, I don't wanna do this. I wanna quit. This is hard, this sucks. And that is when the rubber meets the road, and you have to see it through and trust the original intent of your soul to wanna hire this person. The deeper connection, and I'm not saying if if you're a client and the healer practitioner was being abusive or doing something that is unethical, well of course then that's not part of this conversation. That's a whole different thing. but if you're just feeling resistance and you're like, I don't wanna do the work, like I described with my therapist where I was like, oh, I don't wanna show up for this call today. It's gonna be hard. But I showed up anyways and over time it got so much easier. It was just

Anxious attachment

26:15

like a bump. Like I was hitting like this kind of bump in the road where it was a little bit harder 'cause I was in new territory with my nervous system. So when you're securely attached within yourself, then you're gonna show up more securely attached with a practitioner and you'll see it play out in different ways. Now, a lot of people are anxious. They are going to need reassurance. They worry about, am I doing this correctly? They look outside themselves for certainty, and it's not to say that that's bad, but it's important to recognize that because that will show up in the container. Maybe you want your practitioner to let you know that you're doing a really good job. Maybe you're looking at them to give you unconsciously

Avoidant attachment

27:00

what you never received from mom or dad, because where did you get your anxious attachment stuff? Your parents, right? And then there's the avoidant. They pull away when intimacy grows. They leave when things become emotionally vulnerable and they confuse independence with safety. And it is tough because with avoidance, if you're showing up and you're avoiding becoming emotionally vulnerable, that is where the treasure is, is in your avoidance. It's it's learning like, okay, can I let my practitioner know that I'm starting to feel overwhelmed because we're going into new territory? Can I give words to this? Can I let them know I feel vulnerable? All those things would be wildly helpful for the practitioner because a lot of times avoidants like to ghost, they just don't show up. They'll miss the appointment. they'll just be like, oh, I, I can't do this right now. I need to take a break,

Disorganized attachment

28:00

or whatever it may be, and it's fine. But communication and slowly, slowly opening up and letting the practitioner know is gonna be vitally important because that's how you are gonna rewire your neural pathways if you're an avoidant. And then last but not least, there's the disorganized, they long for connection. Then they might even retreat from it. They move between closeness and distance. And this is somebody that's been highly traumatized in their early childhood years. So disorganized is, you know, they're probably gonna work through the therapy or the social work path first before they even go work with maybe a coach or something. Or if they're gonna work with a healer. their nervous systems are gonna need a lot of support so that they can even, start to really receive. So a really powerful reframe with everything I'm sharing is why am I stopping? Like, if you have been

The real reframe: what part of me is trying to stay safe?

29:00

on a healing journey in the past, or you're currently in one and you notice your resistance and ask yourself, why do I keep stopping instead of asking that? I want you to ask yourself what part of me is trying to stay safe? Your nervous system doesn't want for you to sabotage. It's simply trying to protect you. And awareness creates so much choice. And here's the thing, healing happens in relationship, and the whole reason that you're in the container is because you are trying to heal at a core root level, and the reason I bring up these attachment styles and the different ways that people may show up in healing containers is because this is very unconscious work. Like I said in the beginning, it's not something that's discussed. it's most of the time when you enter into the healing relationship, you are wanting

Healing happens in relationship — the mother wound

30:00

to have something taken care of, like you have a physical ailment. Or you're emotionally bereft, or you're going through grief or whatever it may be. So you go into it wanting relief or you go into it because you wanna improve your life, right? Because you know that there's something bigger and better waiting for you on the other side, you know that if you could have, let's say, hypnotherapy to move through some of your blocks, that you could get the promotion, But when you work with somebody over time, The attachment styles will start to show up when you're working with somebody over time and things get vulnerable and your nervous system is in its expansion. So it is such a great misconception that healing is something that we do alone. Many, many of our deepest wounds happened in relationship, in your relationship with your mom she's your first ever relationship. She is how you learn intimacy and attunement. The way that she responded to you as a baby is how you respond in relationship as well. And it's not a blame game, but it is important to recognize. So most of the deepest repair that we can have. Happen in relationship too, because healing's gonna ask you to trust, to receive, to be seen by your practitioner, to stay present and to remain connected when it feels uncomfortable. So I wanna invite you guys maybe just to journal and reflect on this, if this really resonated for you, because this Doesn't have to just be with a healer. It could be with your doctor, it could be with your therapist, it could be in a relationship that you have at work or your romantic relationship. All these things can be showing up. So I want you to think about how do you relate to

Journal prompts to reflect on your own pattern

32:00

healing? What tends to happen when you begin to make real progress? Do you lean in or do you tend to pull away and have you noticed if you need a lot of reassurance in that relationship? And do you have the tendency to constantly search for something new like you don't feel settled enough with a path that you've chosen and let that path come to completion before you start a new path? 'cause there's nothing wrong with, wanna try out different modalities, but if you're not even finishing what you started, that's a good sign that you are in this energy of searching for the next big hit. And I want you to think about this one. What feels hardest for you? Is it trusting, receiving, or staying? And lastly, what might your resistance be trying to protect. So healing isn't about becoming someone else. It's about becoming aware of the unconscious patterns that have quietly been running your life. And when you can observe those patterns with compassion and love instead of judgment. You really stop asking questions like, what's wrong with me? And you start to begin asking questions like, what is this part of me trying to protect? How is my nervous system in response to this catalyst that's showing up in my life? Because awareness isn't the finish line. It is the beginning of real transformation, and as I said earlier,

Closing + join the Ask A Healer community

34:00

the way you relate to healing often will mirror the way you relate to life. That's why I wanted to really share this episode because when you begin changing the relationship, not just the symptoms, you create the conditions for deeper, more sustainable healing. Resistance isn't the opposite of healing. Sometimes it's the doorway into it. And I know that if you can find the way to soften a bit and reflect on these things, it will help you in many, many different parts of your life. I've really enjoyed spending time with you guys. I'd love to hear in the comments how this landed, and if you really enjoyed this, please share this. We really are all about creating community. Go to all within.com, create your user profile, and I'd love for you to go into the Ask A Healer and I will be in that community all week and you can ask me questions about anything that I've done in the last two podcasts, whether it was a podcast last week, where I spoke about forgiveness as being one of the quickest ways to heal, or this week and the topics that we discussed. Please, I will be in in the Ask A Healer community. Create your profile. Ask me a question. I'd love to connect with you, learn more about you, and answer any questions that you have, and I will see you guys again next week. Thank you for being here and for being a part of a movement that's revolutionizing what's possible with healing. You being here matters. Share this episode with someone who's ready. Subscribe so you never miss what's next, and come find your people at all within.com. Until then, stay curious and trust what's unfolding