Posts Tagged ‘healing’

We grew up in a world where it isn’t acceptable – as adults – to express feelings like anger. Babies and children have their emotions and express them without judgment. It isn’t until we are adults that we begin to label feelings as good or bad. And, it isn’t until we are adults that we learn to hold back how we truly feel.

So many of us are scared by our emotions. We worry that if we feel what we feel, we will completely fall apart. We bottle up our emotions deep inside. We edit what we feel when expressing ourselves to others. But the true healing comes from doing tough emotional work – having, expressing, and looking at our feelings in order to make sense of ourselves in the world.

Emotional work is not something you get over. It’s something you do if you want to shift or evolve your life. And, it’s difficult to work through “our stuff”, to do the challenging emotional work that will propel us forward towards healthy relationships and a strong internal emotional life.

People always ask me if and when their work, their hard work, is ever going to end. Instead of looking for the end of this work, treat it like it’s a destination. Treat your inner work like a journey of discovery. In this journey, by connecting with your heart, you can find joy and that idea that you are eternal. Why would you want that process, that feeling to end?

Emotion is energy in motion. Feelings change the minute you acknowledge them and embrace them. Most folks attach a story to their negative feelings instead of just experiencing them and processing through the hurdles and bumps. We tend to move around our hearts, skipping over what we truly feel, instead of going through the heart to get another perspective about our emotions.

Winston Churchill said: “If you are going to go through hell, keep going.” For inspiration for our difficult inner work this sentiment can perhaps best be paraphrased as to get out you gotta go through.

Commit to doing the hard work. Commit to go through and coming out on the other side with a fresh, powerful perspective. Commit to yourself. It takes courage and strength to look at all that’s going on inside, experience and process raw emotions, and find core issues and patterns that could change. When you do begin this work, you’ll be on your way to developing your authentic self that can take you to the next level of joy.

“Healing takes courage, and we all have courage, even if we have to dig a little to find it.”
– Tori Amos, pop/rock singer

Some of us dive right into the inner work we know we can truly benefit from while others are more hesitant to dig up (and through) the past. Counseling, self help guides, even creative endeavors and exercise can assist us along our personal paths. And, this process of uncovering and healing all takes time.

Sometimes you can get stuck traveling down this path to healing, and a healthy, helpful boost is what you need. When you feel stuck, which is natural and common, your mind can be compared to a computer that uses software programs. These software programs are filled with your emotions and beliefs that combine together to make up what you think and feel. And, sometimes this software can get stuck in a loop and stop working the way we desire.

It seems that trauma and negative emotions can combine with a certain thought or feeling and create a locked neural pathway in your brain, trapping the negativity in your brain and body. This is how many define post traumatic stress, which seems daunting to deal with, but if you make time to approach your issues with the appropriate tools, you can and will heal.

Take a moment out of every day to assess where you are, where you’ve been, and where you hope to be. With an open mind and heart (and the right tools) you can make big changes that help you heal.