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Personal growth isn't linear.

When past issues resurface, we can turn setbacks into opportunities for growth.

Staying the course leads to success.

We often think that the journey to reaching a goal—getting in shape, making new friends, advancing in a career, or healing from trauma—is linear. When we’re in personal hell, we might envision climbing up a ladder to better days. But if you’ve ever lived through difficult times, you know the climb isn’t straight up.

If you’ve ever been in therapy, you might’ve heard about the “spiral staircase” as a metaphor for personal growth. With the spiral staircase, we may find ourselves facing a past problem, habit, or negative belief that we thought we "put to bed," or perhaps it's one that we’ve struggled to overcome for years. Climbing the spiral staircase, we're not circling the same level—we're advancing upward.

In 2020, I adopted Beau, a rescue dog with severe separation anxiety. I didn’t know he had an anxiety disorder, and neither did the rescue that found him as a stray puppy in Mississippi. A first-time dog owner, I didn't know the difference between clinical separation anxiety and normal puppy adjustment issues and figured that with a little bit of time the problem would resolve. What I'd learn over the........

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