This month we have been looking at wounds but acknowledging that sometimes these are not always physical.
When you feel 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.
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. 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. Setting realistic expectations is so important. 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 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 back. But don’t be surprised if sometimes it’s two steps backward and one step forward. This isn’t a failure, it’s reality. Realistic expectations, coupled with patience, persistence and self compassion, will lead to 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 part of the process. 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.
Prioritise self care and self compassion. When you ask a lot of yourself, you need to give a lot to yourself - 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 the physical sensations in your body (such as tight muscles, headaches, fatigue etc) because these are 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 what’s 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 so 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. Help can take many different forms depending on your needs so look at it as another form of self care and ask for the kind of help that best meets your needs.
