Healing

There are many types of healing, there’s physical healing and then there’s psychological healing, sometimes also refer to as soul healing or spiritual healing. Physical healing is quite common to all of us, but what is this psychological healing? Is it even important? What is a psychological wound? How do we get hurt psychologically?

Psychological healing is the healing from past trauma or any event that was quite stressful. Anything that distress us can cause a wound to our soul or psyche. This wound cannot be seen but can be felt. It is manifested in certain behavioral tendencies such as losing hope easily, getting exhausted quickly, getting triggered easily, not able to sleep or eat, cannot concentrate, and many more. Our soul is wounded when we go through a breakup, when someone close to us passes away, when we lose a job or we have been a part of something traumatic. Our consciousness can also be wounded when we transition from one stage of life to another (such as from adolescence to adulthood) because it is a stressful transition as we encounter new roles and responsibilities. We change as we grow up, we face new challenges on our way and we lose people very close to us, all this wounds our soul, making us weak. But if we aid our soul on time and it recovers, all this can make us strong not weak. It can give us strength, power and will.

Why do we need to heal? The answer is quite simple and similar to a physical wound. When a physical wound is small, it heals itself similarly a small psychological wound can heal itself but if the wound is big it can be infectious and dangerous. The wound can spread and effect many other parts of our lives not particularly the one where it first wounded. This way a person’s entire psychological functioning can be disturbed. Some wounds require our personal assistance whereas other wounds like deep ones, they calls for professional assistance such as a from a psychologist, we can’t assist our burnt arm, can we?

Healing is process not a destination. We are never completely healed and immune to injury. Sometimes healing is required even when you are not injured because healing provides a fertile environment for growth and development. There isn’t one single method of healing, or a clear-cut technique. Most often people come up with their own ways of healing. As long as the method is serving its purpose and does no long-term or short-term harm, it is good. One of the most common ways to heal is to spend time with oneself because when do we ever get time for ourselves? We don’t address our own feelings, we don’t know what is bothering us or what we want. The more time you spend with yourself, the more you connect to your soul and the more it heals itself, sometimes it just needs your undivided attention. Another common way to heal is by coming in close contact with the nature. Our beautiful nature has its own ways of healing and can also heal our soul.

 

Whichever way you heal, one element common to all healings is coming in contact with the reality. After a traumatic event we often move to denial or use some other defenses to deal with the situation which is helpful but only for short term. Denial for long term will only spread the wound and prevent healing. Whenever something traumatic happens, our emotional part of the brain gets activated and we lose the grip over our rational mind and the product is that we only process the situation emotionally. Emotional processing often intensifies the situation and makes it look like something it isn’t. But when something happens, getting a good hold of the rational brain and controlling the emotional brain can be quite a challenging task. So, after something had happened- process it again, try to think about what happened and how exactly everything happened. This time you won’t be so emotionally charged and will be capable of regulating your emotional brain so that you process rationally.

Now, past can never be changed no matter what, we haven’t invented the time machine yet. To live a pleasant present we need to accept the past and learn from it. Everything that happens in our life is full of meanings, you just need to extract that meaning. If you find that meaning, you learn something from it. Maybe there was a mistake that you made and now you can be careful in the future. Maybe you could have done something that could have prevented the situation, next time you’ll be cautious. By finding a meaning you are not wasting an experience, no matter what it was. By finding a meaning, you are changing the narratives of the situation which can help you accept it and tolerate it.

When you successful see the situation for what it truly is, accepts it and finds it meaning, you have healed, you have strengthened yourself. When you extract the power, the energy out of those experiences, absorbed it into yourself, you become powerful.