The Meaning of True Healing and Three Steps to Guide the Journey
Today, I want to dive into the profound and often challenging topic of healing, specifically emotional healing. In a time of significant discourse in our country and the world, it's crucial to recognize and navigate the inner turmoil that may be surfacing, enabling us to take more impactful action.
Some signs of an emotional wound include self-hate, never feeling good enough in your relationships, anxiety, depression, erratic behavior, and self-sabotage. What I've observed is that most of us carry deep wounds, often stemming from childhood, where our needs for unconditional love and acceptance were unmet. These wounds don’t always arise from extreme abuse; even subtle family dynamics, societal expectations, and economic hardships can shape our emotional landscape from a young age.
It's important to clarify that our caregivers are not to blame for failing to meet our needs, and having an emotional wound is not our fault. As children, we weren't equipped to process confusing or painful experiences, and these wounds often manifest in adulthood as defenses, patterns, and triggers. In a way, these manifestations serve to protect us, numbing us from the raw experiences of life.
However, this numbness comes at a cost—it cuts us off from the natural expression of our spontaneous, joyful, loving, and compassionate inner self. Repressing our wounds stifles our ability to fully "be" ourselves, leaving us with a sense of incompleteness and suffering.
The Psychoanalytic Perspective on Emotional Wounds
From a psychoanalytic perspective, these wounds represent unresolved conflicts from our past that continue to influence our present behavior and emotional state. Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, posited that our unconscious mind holds repressed memories and desires that shape our thoughts, feelings, and actions. These repressed elements often emerge as symptoms—such as anxiety, depression, or self-sabotage—when they are triggered by current events or relationships.
Carl Jung expanded on Freud's ideas, introducing the concept of the "shadow," which refers to the parts of ourselves that we reject or deny because they are too painful or unacceptable to our conscious mind. The shadow often contains these emotional wounds, and until we bring these aspects of ourselves into the light of awareness, they will continue to govern our lives unconsciously.
Healing, therefore, involves making the unconscious conscious. It requires us to confront and integrate these repressed parts of ourselves, which is no small task. It’s the path of rediscovering the assumptions, stories, and beliefs we developed about ourselves and the world by gently revisiting and peeling back the layers of the wound while cultivating a safe space of self-acceptance.
Steps to Integrate Deeper Healing Into Your Life
1. Trust Your Emotions
The healing journey begins by recalibrating our relationship with our emotions. Psychoanalytically, emotions are often seen as signals from the unconscious, indicating unresolved conflicts or unmet needs. Every emotion is connected to a deeper truth, usually on an unconscious level. Our task is to uncover what that is, and we can start by trusting what comes up as it comes up. You might say to yourself, "I don't know why I feel the way I do, but I choose to trust myself in this moment." This trust opens the door to exploring the unconscious content behind the emotion.
2. Get Really Curious
It’s natural for us to jump to conclusions about why we feel a certain way or behave in certain patterns. However, the healing path requires us to re-examine these automatic responses and delve into the underlying causes. This step involves questioning our assumptions and exploring the origins of our emotions. For instance, you can ask yourself: Why might I be feeling this way? Can I give myself space to just be with this? When is the first time I recall feeling this way? What might be underneath this emotion, and what lies beneath that?
By asking these questions, we signal that we trust our emotions and are willing to look at, understand, and eventually shift them. This process aligns with the psychoanalytic practice of free association, where we explore our thoughts and feelings without censorship to uncover deeper insights.
3. Daily Review
A practical tool to integrate into your healing journey is a daily review, where you spend a few minutes each evening journaling and reflecting on your day. Write about the reactions you had, what was coming up within you, and what happened. Over time, you'll start to notice patterns—these patterns are often the manifestations of your unconscious conflicts. By identifying them and taking responsibility for what is coming up, you gain the opportunity to change them, which is the essence of healing.
The Path to True Freedom
Healing is your birthright. It’s the path to true freedom, connecting with your intuitive knowing, embracing your mess, and honoring your human experience. The true meaning of "healing" is not about eradicating our wounds but about integrating them—acknowledging and embracing the parts of ourselves that we have long rejected. This is the journey of becoming whole, and it is the only way to find the strength to do the bold, authentic things you aspire to do.
Let us begin this journey together, one step at a time, as we uncover and integrate the deeper truths within us.
To your healing and wholeness.