- Are you on a self healing journey from deep struggles? Ever wonder whether it is even possible to heal from emotional wounds?
- Any things get in the way of your healing journey? Maybe you have been hurting for too long, feel it’s too late to change, or you’ve tried so many different things but still feel stuck?
- How would you promote your own healing? What are important to learn to heal from your past and thrive in the life you want to live?
You may be struggling from depression or anxiety, been in a trauma, feeling rejected, or having a broken heart, When things are so overwhelming, it’s natural to feel defeated. No wonder you would doubt about the emotional healing process – I can barely survive this. How could it be possible to feel happy again and move on in my life?
However, healing is absolutely possible when you are determined to recover and rebuild yourself. A healing journey is a transformative time in someone’s life. It requires work to make changes, including your behaviors, your thoughts, and consequently your feelings.
Who Need To Start a Healing Journey?
People with Trauma or PTSD
Many people in this world have unfortunately experienced traumatic events. As a result, they can develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is an anxiety disorder that develops after exposure to a traumatic experience. Traumatic experience can include violent personal assaults, hate crimes, natural or human-caused disasters, accidents, abuse, or military combat.
PTSD can cause many symptoms like intrusive memories, flashbacks of traumatic events, constant nightmares, avoidant behavior, numbness, hopelessness, etc. PTSD can also manifest in physical and emotional reactions (the person is easily startled, hypervigilant, angry, guilty, shameful, has sleep difficulty, or destructive behaviors of drinking, & using drugs).
Someone with PTSD hopes to heal some of their trauma and live a less affected life by their challenging past.
People Who are Dealing With Grief or Loss
Abby is experiencing a major loss in her life – the death of her best friend. Daisy was her right-hand person; the person she laughed with, made her most meaningful memories alongside, and loved unconditionally.
She feels the presence of her best friend missing in her life. Unlike people who go through friend breakups, there is no chance of a reunion when a friend passes away. Grieving someone’s death can be very trying on a person.
As mentioned in our past article, in times of significant loss, Psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross says that people go through 5 stages of grief. These stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
People don’t only grieve other people; they also can grieve the loss of a pet, situation, job, etc. Abby also lost her job this year. This situation can be very upsetting and hard to cope with, especially when the job search is so challenging nowadays.
People Going Through Breakups
Breakups can happen for many reasons and can cause a lot of pain. Losing the love you once had for someone or separating from your partner can make your heart feel like it is shattering. You may feel betrayed, abandoned, confused, or guilty about the breakup. At least temporarily, this could make you doubt your worthiness. You may tell yourself, “I’m not likable or lovable”, “Nobody wants me”, or even “I’m worthless”.
As mentioned before, not all breakups have to be romantic – friendship breakups can hurt someone deeply. People going through any type of breakup need to heal and move forward.
People Who Struggle With Body Image
Many people, unfortunately, struggle to accept their bodies. Someone with body dysmorphia (BDD) is concerned about a certain body part/feature. The person thinks about this body part(s) constantly throughout each day and often experiences distress. The person with BDD looks at this body part as a flaw or something to be embarrassed about. What causes Body Dysmorphia remains unknown; however, its influences can include the pressure of societal beauty standards, critical/abusive parents, and low self-esteem.
Accepting and appreciating your body can be challenging. As mentioned in our article about body acceptance, we as a society feel the need to reinvent ourselves and constantly “glow up.” This societal pressure makes many of us might feel the need to change ourselves to please others. Sadly, people often treat others who don’t fit society’s made-up standards poorly. With all of these external stressors, a person can find it hard to love their body from the inside out – they need to heal their relationship with their body.
People With A Wounded Inner Child
Children can grow up in homes that neglected or abused them. These homes made them feel like their voice didn’t matter, they weren’t cared for, and love had to be earned. Inner child healing is all about comforting the child you once were. If you experienced trauma or abuse as a child has probably affected you in your adult life. Inner child work focuses on healing from the pain of the past. The child who was once scared, alone, forgotten, or hurt can now be seen and embraced.
In a study, the data shows that people’s inner child can majorly affect their lives. For example, the inner child can influence things like how someone treats or views future generations. This is why it is essential to heal your inner child and find peace from the trauma or challenging past events.
How Do You Know You Need to Start Your Emotional Healing Journey?
Here are some signs that you should start a healing journey:
- You have gone through a traumatic or hard time in your life
- You can’t let go of the past and move on – guilt, shame, or any other negative emotions always are floating around in your body
- There are some major changes you wish to see happen in your life
- You’ve become withdrawn and separated from the people and things you once loved to see and do
- You aren’t happy with how your life is right now
- There is a lot of hurt and pain in your body that you don’t now how to cope with in a healthy way
How to Start Your Healing Journey
1. Check In With Yourself
Some people are unaware of how much they’ve been struggling. It may take a loved one pointing it out to them or a good look in the mirror to see what their life has become. Take time to reflect on your life recently:
- Have you been going through a tough time?
- Has anything in your life recently caused you pain, grief, loss, anger, etc.?
- Did you go through a significant life event like a breakup or losing a loved one?
- Has your routine changed? Do you feel different emotions (ones of sadness, anger, disbelief, confusion)?
Allow yourself to answer these questions honestly. You could even journal your answers to fully explore these prompts and see the words presented in front of you.
If it feels like you need help after reviewing these answers, now can be the time to start your emotional healing process.
2. Be Open to Help and Lean on Support
Are you someone who hates asking for help? Do you feel like a burden going to people about your problems? If so, it can be hard for you to open up and be vulnerable with those around you. Know that you don’t have to be the “strong” one always and that sharing how you feel is not a weakness – it’s truly powerful to open up.
Your loved ones want to help you! They have probably been sitting by wondering when you’ll finally be ready to open up and come to them for support. Lean on these people! If you don’t feel like you have a support system, you can look towards support groups or therapy options.
3. Have Patience with Your Healing Journey
Healing can take time; the process is not always linear. You may feel like you are progressing in your journey (you are getting back to your routine, being more social, etc.) and other times when you can barely get out of bed. You may also have times when you go back to old vices you thought you healed from, like drinking alcohol or partaking in dangerous behavior.
Have faith in yourself and your abilities. Even if you feel like a downward cycle, you can always rise again. In life, we all have ups and downs. Have patience with your healing journey, and remember to be proud of any progress you make.
Encourage yourself and be your number one supporter. Also, show yourself self-love and self-compassion in times when you feel like you made a mistake or aren’t where you want to be in life.
4. Allow Yourself to Feel and Manage Your Emotions
To heal and move on from challenging situations, you have to face the feelings that sting or cause us pain. In times of distress or tragedy, you can experience various emotions and experiences. As mentioned before, many people go through the five stages of grief.
It can be easy to try and turn off our emotions and rely on coping mechanisms that can be unhealthy. Try your best to look within and embrace rather than rebuke what you are going through. Hiding away your emotions will make it harder to let go and heal.
Some ways to do so are by:
- Journaling to explore your emotions and check in with yourself
- Venting to a friend and letting yourself open up to them
- Joining support groups with people you can relate to or who are going through similar experiences
- Composing a letter to yourself and being as honest as possible.
- Writing a letter to the person you miss, are angry with, upset by etc. Let them know how you feel and what is on your mind – use this letter to vent your feelings. You don’t have to send this letter; keep it and reflect on it when you feel similar emotions.
- Listening to music that makes you feel different emotions, like a happy or sad song
- Watching emotion-provoking movies or TV episodes
You can cope with stress in these times by practicing mindfulness and allowing yourself to find peace in the present moment and center yourself.
5. Develop an Action Plan
For better prevention, intervention, and recovery, list all activities on your schedule. For example, things you can do to make you feel better:
- follow your daily routine, such as exercise for half an hour, have healthy meals, meditation, regular bed time, and good sleep;
- find triggers that could lead to negative emotions, such as an argument with someone, a financial loss, or some health issues. Then list things you can do to help yourself, such as, meditation, relaxation, talk to a friend or family, exercise, music, etc.;
- notice early warning signs of certain issues, such as tiredness, over-sleep or less sleep, emotional eating, irritability, and isolation;
- remind yourself of signs that things are getting much worse, such as more severe depression, a hard time getting out of bed, crying spells. It is important to list things to do to help you feel better quickly. For instance, get your prescription, contact your doctor or therapist;
6. Set Boundaries
When we are in bad spaces in our lives, we often end up in situations that aren’t the best. This can lead to people taking advantage of us or our lack of boundaries we have set in life. One part of healing is allowing ourselves to take up the space we may have thought we didn’t deserve at one point.
It also means creating limits with people and letting ourselves create distance from people who may benefit from our lack of boundaries. Some people may notice you changing during your journey of healing and growth; the people who want what’s best for us will be happy to see us thriving. People who want the opposite may be unhappy with these changes. Remember that you deserve to have caring people who respect you and what makes you comfortable or happy in life.
7. Consider Therapy on Your Healing Journey
If you have emotional wounds, struggle with negative thoughts, or repeat unhealthy or destructive behaviors, don’t hesitate to get help. Therapy can help you heal from past trauma, find healthy coping mechanisms, and live happier lives. Dr. June and therapists on her team would like to help you!
If you’ve been through trauma and have PTSD, therapy can help you heal. Trauma-focused PTSD treatment helps clients reduce trauma symptoms and improve their capacity for life. A therapist can create a PTSD treatment plan to help treat your trauma. Typical trauma therapy approaches may include:
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT)
- Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (PTSD therapy EMDR or PTSD eye therapy)
- Mindfulness-Based Therapy
- PTSD Exposure Therapy
A therapist can help you heal from a grief-causing event in your life. Our therapists provide effective and supportive relationship counseling and can help you deal with your breakup, work on your self-esteem, and improve yourself. Treatment can also help people grieve significant losses in their lives. Grief can make people enter stages of depression. For some people, such sad and depressive feelings could persist for a long time. If you also withdraw from others, constantly have negative thoughts about yourself, others, and the world, lose interest, stop engaging in life, or even have suicidal thoughts, you may be facing clinical depression that requires treatment.
Finally, therapy can be beneficial if you need help healing your relationship with your body! A therapist can help you deal with any eating disorder or body dysmorphia you face. You deserve to live a happy and healthy life – one that allows you to be kind to your body and treat it with care.
Contact us NOW to learn more!
Content Creator, Victoria Gallo; Reviewed by Dr. June Cao