Let’s talk healing
Healing is a very long process. If you have faced a traumatic experience in your life, you deserve to heal and put the work into doing so.
I think we need to normalize the fact that we can still hurt over something we healed from (or thought we healed from). Healing is not linear. It’s not as easy as “just forget about it and move on.” Healing is a back and forth process. It’s is messy, and it’s challenging, but it will help your overall emotional and mental health.
Do you ever wonder if healing from emotional wounds is really possible? Can someone really heal from trauma, rejection, depression, a broken heart?
When you feel so broken and defeated, the task of rebuilding or reinventing yourself and your life feels overwhelming. It’s natural to have doubts to wonder if emotional healing is really possible.
But yes. Emotional healing is possible.
I want to assure you that emotional healing is possible. From a licensed therapist, “I see people make remarkable recoveries, becoming healthy, happy, and more fully themselves often in ways they never imagined.”
8 Tips for healing from emotional wounds
Take baby steps. Trying to make too many changes all at once can backfire. You may become overwhelmed or feel like a failure if you set unrealistic expectations. And dramatic changes are often unsustainable. Making micro-changes small, manageable, incremental changes create feelings of success, hope, and encouragement that are important to carry you through your healing process.
Remember that you don’t have to heal 100% to improve the quality of your life. Many people mistakenly believe that emotional healing is all-or-nothing. Again, this belief can be discouraging and overwhelming. But most importantly, it’s not accurate. Any modest amount of healing will improve the quality of your life. Take it one step at a time and you will notice small improvements in your mood, ability to cope with triggers, relationships, self-esteem, and ability to complete your daily activities.
Be patient and persistent. Healing is a lot of work. We need to be patient and allow for the time needed to gain new insights and skills. And we need to be persistent and keep going even when it gets difficult, be willing to try new approaches, and challenge ourselves in new ways.
Set realistic expectations. Im a big believer in the importance of setting realistic expectations. When we don’t, we end up disappointed and frustrated often at ourselves, which doesn’t help us heal. One of the most common unrealistic expectations that I see is expecting progress to be consistently forward. Nobody just gets stronger and stronger, healthier and healthier. Progress is more likely to be two steps forward and one step backward. And, honestly, don’t be surprised if sometimes its two steps backward and one step forward. This isn’t a failure, it’s a reality. And realistic expectations coupled with patience, persistence, and self-compassion will lead to forward progress, it just may include a few detours and be slower than you’d like.
View setbacks as part of the process and learning opportunities. Not only are setbacks normal, but they’re also Often, we learn more from what doesn’t work than what does. So, instead of trying to avoid setbacks or relapses, accept that they are part of the process and challenge yourself to be curious about what you can learn that will help you move forward and toward greater healing and self-love.
Prioritize self-care and self-compassion. When you ask a lot of yourself, you need to give a lot to yourself. And working on emotional healing takes an awful lot of energy, time, and sometimes money. In order to keep going, you need to really pay attention to your feelings and your physical sensations in your body (such as tight muscles, headaches, fatigue, etc.) because this is your body’s way of telling you what it needs. Take the extra time to listen and take good care of yourself.
Be willing to process your feelings about the past. Trying to avoid whats happened in your past doesn’t work. Those feelings tend to stick around, sometimes lying dormant or numbed for a while, but they eventually burst back into our consciousness with a vengeance. This is why therapists so often talk about needing to feel your feelings. We need to feel them and give them space before they lose their power over us and truly become part of the past. You can slowly work on sitting quietly, allowing your feelings to surface, naming them, and exploring what they’re about. For many people, this is quite challenging and working with a therapist can be helpful.
Ask for help. Healing isn’t meant to be done in isolation. It isn’t easy to ask for help, especially if people have betrayed you in the past. But reaching out for help has so many benefits emotional support, guidance, and the ability to break down shame. And help can take many different forms depending on your needs, so I hope you’ll look at it as another form of self-care and ask for the kind of help that best meets your needs.
Healing Meditation
If you feel discouraged, a guided meditation or mantra can help you shift your thoughts towards a more hopeful, positive outlook. You can experiment with the short healing meditation using phrases I have collected from different resources below:
See which ones apply to you; Repeat each phrase, and take a deep breath before the next.
Emotional healing is possible.
I am learning to take it one day at a time.
I will remember that it’s not a race to the finish line.
I will be patient with myself and continue to take small steps forward.
And when I have a setback, I’ll use it as an opportunity to learn more about myself and how to heal my emotional wounds.
Emotional healing is a lot of work, so I will treat myself with loving care and remember to replenish my physical and emotional energy.
I will try to slow down and feel my feelings.
I will seek help from trusted people who can give me guidance, encouragement, and love along this journey.
I am healing one day at a time.
I am learning to trust myself and speak my truth.
I am learning to embrace my true self, imperfections and all.
I am learning to let go of what other people think and to honor what I think and feel.
I am learning about my interests, priorities, and values.
I am learning to make time for rest, fun, and pursuing my own goals.
I am learning to put myself on my to-do list.
I am learning to be ME.
I am healing one day at a time.
Life is not all sunshine and rainbows, Life involves the hard times.
There is no sugar-coating it. The hard times are awful.
We need the hard times though. Through the hard times, we can found out who we really are. More importantly, who we can be.
Do we run away from pain? Do we run away from the past? Or do we overcome them?
Do not bury your past, use it.
We cannot let yesterday hold us back from today. We need the focus of today to build a better tomorrow.
Remember these three sentences whenever your Past seems to distract you from today:
“Outgrow the Past. Act in the Present. Trust in the Future.”
Free yourself from suffering and build towards a happier and brighter tomorrow.
1. Allow Yourself to “Purge”
Feel your emotions. Accept your emotions.
Too often people bottle things up.
More often than not, when you bottle up your emotions, they are released in regrettable ways. You end up hurting yourself and others.
Distractions always do more harm than good.
Do not deny yourself to process your feelings and properly heal. Do not use band-aids on your wounds when you need to deep clean them.
Healing is a process.
Allow yourself to feel every emotion you are feeling. Allow your body and mind to expel all their energy. I call this, “purging.”
Purging is the act of exhausting your emotions.
Instead of relying on distractions, try this:
Find a place where you have complete privacy, either your room or your car.
Picked a place? Good.
Now any emotions you are feeling…feel it to the nth degree. Explode.
Feeling sad? Cry and cry HARD.
Feeling angry? Yell and yell LOUD.
Any emotion you are experiencing, feel it without holding back. Do not keep any ounce of your emotions in.
Never deny your feelings. You are feeling it for a reason.
When you deny your feelings, you are building up energy. All forms of energy cannot be contained, it needs to go somewhere…your emotions need to go somewhere.
With purging, you allow your body and mind to honestly express themselves. Being honest with yourself is the first step in healing.
Even if the emotions you’re feeling do not make sense, accept them. Whether it be anger, sadness, jealousy, hate, etc…feel it and feel it fully.
We cannot get over pain without processing pain. We cannot process pain if we keep avoiding pain.
There will be a time where you should vent to others, friends, family, etc. These people are important and necessary. However, to start the healing process…
The first to know and feel your emotions is yourself.
2. Accept and Choose Yourself
After purging, after going through all of your emotions, you need to make a decision. Accept the situation and choose yourself.
As much as it hurts to hear…
This situation, the painful past that is haunting you…it happened. You cannot do anything about it.
You cannot remove it, you cannot pretend it didn’t happen, you cannot hide from it.
If you think you can, the past has control over you.
Do not forget about your Past, live better because of your Past.
Look at the situation and acknowledge it’s reality.
As the classic saying goes, “to solve a problem, you must know there is a problem.”
So tell yourself,
“Yes, this happened…Yes, it was painful. Yes, I am choosing to no longer let this control me.”
We cannot progress our life if we refuse to accept reality. We will only be running in little circles and dangerously labeling it “progress.”
Instead, accept reality and decide for yourself:
Choose to move on.
Choose to no longer let this control you.
Choose to not be a victim anymore.
Choose to be MORE than your past.
You have the power to choose. So choose yourself.
3. Forgive Everyone Involved
Forgiveness is not forgetting what happened, it is the freedom from what happened.
Freedom from the pain caused by the past, freedom from the control it had over you.
Forgiveness = Strength
The weak cannot forgive; it is easy to stay angry and hurt forever. Only the strong can endure all the pain and stand tall because of it.
Forgive the person who hurt you. Forgive the situation that crashed into your life, but more importantly forgive yourself.
Without forgiveness, you cannot truly be free.
4. Discover the Lessons
Life is a collection of lessons. It is a matter of allowing yourself to see those lessons. Sometimes, those lessons involve pain.
I understand that your past may be dark and it hurts to have those memories taking up space in your mind.
It sucks and no one should tell you to feel otherwise.
However…
Pain can be blinding. Pain prevents you from seeing the bigger picture. Allow yourself to see through it.
Pain, on the surface, is perceived as negative or something to run away from. I ask you to dive deeper.
Ask yourself honest questions, “What is being presented to me?” What is the golden nugget I can discover here? What can I use here to make me better/stronger?”
It could be a lesson of forgiveness, a lesson of perseverance, a lesson of patience. Whatever the lessons, they are always valuable.
Use your past as a catalyst for something better.
Pain hurts so we can remember it. If we can remember it, we can learn from it.
There are lessons in pain, constantly seek them.
5. Take Action Today for Tomorrow
“Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do. “ — Bruce Lee
The tomorrow you so desperately desire is all based on the actions of the present. Not next week, not tomorrow, not in the next hour, the time is RIGHT NOW.
Positive change requires relentless ACTION.
We all want to live a good life. So be very cognizant of your actions; make sure your actions today benefit tomorrow.
Ask yourself these questions:
“Because of this painful situation…What can I do today that will make me better than yesterday?” and “What from my past can I learn that will make me better in the future?”
The tomorrow you want is a product of the choices that fill today.
