Emotional healing: what is it and how does it work?

Emotional healing is a psychological process in which to recognize, accept and integrate a series of painful or traumatic experiences.

Anger, sadness, anguish, fear, despair, guilt… Adverse experiences are a subtle and very complex combination of emotions of negative valence; those that are difficult to understand, and above all to handle.

The truth is that we are not required to know what to do in these types of situations. Feeling lost is completely understandable and respectable; No one can judge us for it. Everyone has their more or less effective abilities, but the most decisive thing is to ask for help, seek the support of someone close or a specialized figure.

On the journey of life we ​​will find ourselves in this type of trap of destiny more than once. Those in which we barely find the words to express ourselves, feeling almost like astronauts adrift in a black vastness. However, we can all develop adequate resources to handle those moments of suffering and vulnerability much better.

There are many stressful experiences that can create deep emotional wounds in you, those that no one sees.

Emotional healing: what is it?

Suffering and emotional anguish are an eternal leitmotiv in our stocks. Losses, breakups, disappointments… No one is immune to those twists of fate or those notches that life and our relationships with others leave behind. Likewise, another fact occurs, each person deals with adversity in a particular way. There are those who are more resilient and there are those who are more vulnerable.

It is very common to carry traumatic events from childhood that are never overcome.. One can reach adulthood with the weight of sadness, the wound of heartbreak and the scar of rage. Every emotion intermingles and creates a type of coating that attracts loneliness and more than one psychological disorder, such as depression.

Emotional healing is the therapeutic process that allows us to accept, understand and self-regulate those psycho-emotional states that limit well-being and completely condition our lives.

The opposite of this dimension is emotional repression. It is a state in which the person represses emotions to try to minimize pain. However, with this strategy what is achieved is perpetuating one’s own suffering.

The complex process towards emotional healing: phases and characteristics

Emotional healing is a therapeutic journey full of challenges and difficulties. It is not a quick process. In general, negative and distorted thoughts make this reconstruction process difficult to create a healthier mental focus. In addition, there are those barricades and defense mechanisms that one builds to protect oneself in the long term, and that settle in the mind for years.

Let’s say that the emotional healing process requires both an exercise in self-awareness and transformation. On this journey we must keep in mind that we will not return to being the person we were before. Post-traumatic growth does not return us to that old version of ourselves that never knew pain. We will give way to a more skillful self when it comes to facing life.

These are the stages that, on average, we will go through in this transformation exercise.

Emotional healing requires stopping judging ourselves for each emotion felt.

Psychological healing requires support, knowing that you are not alone

George Washington University and Yale University conducted a study on psychological healing. An essential aspect to face suffering is social support. Feeling understood, having figures who accompany us, who know how to be allies and with whom we can talk and vent is the best starting point.

Accept all your emotions with self-compassion

The problem with many people is that they are able to put themselves in the shoes of others, to understand the role that circumstances have played in making them react in one way or another at a certain moment, but they are not able to do the same with them. themselves.

Often, someone who has been hurt or lost someone carries with them the weight of denial, anger, and eternal sadness. “Why me” . It is necessary to stop judging ourselves, blaming ourselves or being angry with everyone and everything.

Emotional healing needs to make room for every sensation, feeling and thought experienced. You have to leave out what is inside and then observe it without fear and with high compassion. Trying to avoid what hurts or repress what happened in the past does not work. Naming what hurts, exploring it, unburdening it and integrating it into our past history will allow us to close stages to focus on the present.

Learn to respond instead of react

Traumas or painful events from yesterday make us react in many ways. It is common to lead to explosions of anger, anxiety attacks, and avoidance behaviors that lead us to lose relationships, jobs, etc.

Emotional healing forces us to delve deeper into our internal states to respond to them without getting carried away. Without reaching those extremes. Rationalizing and understanding what hurts will prevent us from leading to problematic or pathological situations or reactions..

The progress of emotional healing is not linear nor can it be resolved all at once

No therapeutic process is linear. Emotional healing is an itinerary in which there are rises and falls, achievements and setbacks.. There will be weeks when we have the feeling that we are moving forward and, suddenly, any one-time, unimportant experience makes us have a bad day. We cannot judge ourselves for it or interpret that we are a lost case.

On the other hand, let’s not think that everything can be solved at once. Often, behind a series of emotions are the deep roots of trauma. There are very unique psychological realities that require more than one coping mechanism.

Each person carries with them a unique story, their own narratives and an emotional backpack that must be analyzed and understood. No hurries. They are undoubtedly situations of great complexity that require time, appropriate strategies and large doses of self-love and self-compassion.

You might be interested…