What impedes your emotional healing
By: Riya Khajuria
Tags: Selfhelp, Emotional Wellbeing, Psychology, Mental Health, Self-awareness

Life is magnificent, magical, but also, when it hits, it hits real hard. It tends to leave behind the emotional scars, and spiritual ones, and we in turn, in order to protect ourselves from the same kind of hurt again, we build walls, hell, we build fortresses. This prevents negativity pouring from the outside environment, but it also filters out all the joy and pleasantness of life. And upon realizing, with time, most of us learn to lower our defences and be a little more vulnerable. We give ourselves the needed time to heal, to settle and to stand up on our feet again, but the scar still remains. Why does this happen? In all of the healing processes, is there something we are forgetting? We grieve, we accept, come to terms, we overcome, we hope, and sometimes, we relapse, healing is something very very messy, it takes effort, it takes time. So where to we go wrong, and how to keep from repeating this vicious cycle again and again?

1. Forgiveness

The concept of forgiveness is still very vague among most of us. We are usually very critical of ourselves and do not forgive easily when it comes to us. And talking about forgiving the other person, we might forgive to seem like the ‘bigger person’ in the picture. Forgiveness is seen as something which can be held over the other person, well, to truly forgive is to ‘forgive and forget’, never to be raised again in any other conversation. And if you’re not ready yet, it’s better not to forgive rather than such forgiveness and hurting all over again.

2. Self pity

Pitying yourself is something which will always stand in the way of your healing. When you feel sorry for yourself, you usually are reliving the past in a very subtle way, you are reacting to something which has already happened and you reacting to past can never change the past. Instead of saying ‘I feel sorry I had to go through that’, try ‘I am proud of myself for overcoming a trying situation with such courage’. It makes a huge difference when you change the way you talk to your self. Instead of being the victim, turn the dialogues around and talk like a god damn warrior.

3. Excessive carefulness

Have you ever noticed how smoothly things and situations tend to run when there is no conscious worrying about it? Same applies here, strain yourself with conscious and excessive care, and the task at hand is ruined. Take deep breathes, just relax, try some relaxation techniques, it will help keep conscious excessively running thoughts at bay. There is a significant improvement in our performance when we are in a flow. Sit back and let things roll over on their own.

4. Your comfort zone

Usually, your comfort zone is what you need most when healing. But stay there for long and that harms your recovery, we don’t need ourself fixated on a problem by standing at the same place, take as long as you need, but also, take the littlest step out of your comfort zone. It helps keep us moving, we don’t need our healing process be stunted.

5. Don’t let the hope die

Many a time, we will find ourselves repeating the same patterns of behavior we are trying to end, and that is okay, that happens. The more important thing here is, you recognize it and you are aware that you need to change it. What you need to know is, you will eventually make it happen. You failed a couple times does not mean you are a failure, you make mistakes, mistakes do not make ‘YOU’.

These are some of the things we need to keep in mind while we are on our journey to improve ourselves and heal ourselves. We do everything right to make sure we are on the right path, but there are usually the smaller and subtle things we unknowingly overlook.