Healing is a journey and a process that requires your active partnership to see it happen. Many times, we wear our pain as a badge and allow it affect our views of life and perception of people, tribes and places. Choosing to deal with your hurts is a sign of emotional growth and spiritual maturity.
You cannot function well when your heart is filled with many issues from different seasons of your life that is unresolved.
So after going through betrayals, rejection, break ups and many other forms of disappointments, here are 5 important truths I learnt about the healing journey that can help you too.
1. There’s a root cause to every negative belief that you struggle with. Healing must take place at the root itself. For you to identify the root cause to your feelings and beliefs, you must be willing to identify the pain you are healing from.
There are examples of painful situations you may have gone through like rape, molestation, break-up, father wounds, divorce, neglect, loss of a job, betrayal and so on.
Let’s do a quick exercise:
Take your time to write out 3 beliefs that you are struggling with. Examples can be; “I do not feel qualified enough” “Nobody cares about me” or “My life is just filled with bad luck”.
After identifying the beliefs, take some time to remember what is sponsoring this belief in your mind. Can you remember what happened to you days, weeks, months, or years ago that is re-enforcing this mindset?
It may be an experience that you don’t want to remember, and this is a sign that you are yet to heal from it. Every experience you have gone through has a purpose and does not mean it is your fault. You can learn from it, especially what it has made you become positively.
Identify the experience you went through or the person that hurt you and begin to confront the beliefs you have attached to it. You don’t have to be in a hurry, take your time but consider it.
2. Every trigger of the pain is linked to the circumstances around your painful experience. There are some things that happens to you frequently that you may be dismissing as a normal part of your life now but it may be linked to what you have gone through in the past. Examples of triggers could be a movie, a location, boredom, a name, a sound or a picture. They are linked to the occurrence that happened to you in the past. If you can master your triggers, you will be able to navigate through it for a better purpose instead of letting it haunt you. You can change the meaning that you are attaching to that trigger itself so that your mind can attach a positive experience to that situation.
For instance, If you were shut down while growing up, taking corrections can be hard because it represents a weaker personality to you but if you view it as an opportunity to grow and evolve, taking corrections would become easier instead of reminding you of your inadequacies.
3. Take your beliefs and thoughts that have become strongholds and deal with them one by one. Don’t put yourself in a hurry but surrender to the process. Now that you know your beliefs and trigger, deal with them over a period of time. Deal with the result of those beliefs like, loneliness, depression, emotional eating, weight loss, idleness, fear of marriage and anxiety. Confront them head on as you move along in life and you cannot do this alone, you will need support, your healing should not be done in isolation.
4. Negative words and circumstances builds walls around you that serve as a defense and it becomes difficult for you to receive love or enjoy intimacy without fear of abandonment. This shows up in your relationships and marriage too.
This is a fact that you must understand. If you decide not to deal with the painful experiences you went through, you would build a wall around yourself and it will become difficult to relate well with people or build relationships without being blurred by your experiences.
5. Do not ignore the role of therapy and counseling in your journey. While it is important to begin the healing journey through self-awareness and self-mastery, make it a point of duty to seek professionals that can help you discover the issues you have ignored in the past or the effect of pain in your life. It is a big relief to talk to someone who does not judge you or make you feel condemned. You are not alone and your healing is important for you to thrive well in your relationship with others. In your healing journey, enjoy talking to God and sharing your feelings with Him, He is able to give you the best inside out healing that you need to thrive daily and your identity can be fixed with him.
I want to urge you to take care of your emotional, mental and spiritual health. If you need to seek therapy or counseling, do reach me at hello@nikefolagbade.com
