What Does It Take To Heal?

What Does It Take to Heal?
By Linda McCarrin, BA, Certified Holistic Life Coachn
Healing isn’t a science. There’s no time frame, control or variable as in an 8th grade experiment. There are no instructions that come with it. There are libraries of books on the topic, but when you get right down to it, healing happens differently for every person. Each of us has a different time table and different ways of expressing our pain. Often we feel powerless when we are trying to make sense out of a hurt. However, what we don’t realize, what most of us have not been taught, is what to do in the aftermath.

There are some simple things we can do for ourselves and others if we just get n“out of our own way.” By giving ourselves permission to FEEL the pain and ndiscomfort, we then stop resisting. It is when we stop resisting that the discomfort nwill begin to stop. Think about when you have a headache, your neck is tight, your njaw is clenched. But when you relax, breathe deeper, and let the jaw drop, the pain nof the headache begins to disappear.

Think of your relationship with someone that has been persistently annoying. Every ntime you see that person, have to talk with that person you immediately go into ndis-ease. Your mind says “I don’t like her.” “He is always ‘that way.’" Your mind is non an ego trip! It will keep you in a fear-based mentality based on previous nexperiences…and it may not even be THAT person with whom you had the original nmishap. But in BEING with that individual, the original experience is repeated time nand again.

So, you ask, “What am I to do?” You allow yourself to FEEL the pain, FEEL what is nbothering you and USE it as an opportunity to heal what was originally hurt. For nexample, if I stub my toe and it hurts for 5 minutes…all I’ve done is stub my toe.
But! If it hurts for 5 hours, 5 days, 5 months, 5 years…I have an infected toe!! I nhave a wound that was not healed a long time ago. And as the Scottish priest was nsaid, “It’s the ting, behind the ting, behind the ting.” The pain you are experiencing nnow is something that happened a long time ago.

But why does it hurt more during times of celebration, the holidays, the birthdays nand anniversaries? Personally, I think these times are MEANT to do that very thing.
If we didn’t have something to jolt us out of our unconscious states, we’d never nhave an opportunity to heal ourselves, our families, our co-workers, our community,nour planet. More healing happens because more pain & discomfort comes up. n
Just like a volcano that lays dormant or mildly active from time to time, so too do nwe, human beings, act in much the very same way. We disallow ourselves to feel nthe anger, frustration, and disappointment in our lives. We don’t give ourselves npermission to build healthy boundaries in order to keep ourselves from people who nwe know may upset us or be in direct opposition to our values. We don’t go to the nright person, at the right time, and with the correct intensity to state our case.
Instead, we prefer to go to someone else, ally them with our thinking, thus “building na case” for ourselves. And in so doing we now have our own army to help us defend nour positions, our rationalizations, our “right-ness.” Will we ever learn to communicate nwillingly and diplomatically with one another?

That, my friends, will not happen until people allow themselves to Feel their Feelings nand let it be “okay.” That could take another several hundred thousand years while nwarring peoples wipe one another out, or it could take only a decade for that to occur.
None of us can determine that so let’s look at the “aftermath.” Sometimes we can be nin the middle of a volcanic eruption and be “unconscious” to what’s really happening.
We’re so caught up with the drama of the intensity that we miss the real issue.
Our family, neighborhood, community, state or country can be in pain or crises and if nwe don’t pay attention, how can we know what is really going on?

What about the climate of the relationship amongst the people involved? If we nunintentionally spew forth our wrath with others, if we say things at the wrong time nor place and with the wrong amount of intensity, we can do more damage and thus ntake longer to repair, reinstate, and re-establish what had been there before. n
I suggest this:

Feeling your Feelings. If you are angry, feel it. If you don’t you will go into the nemotional block of “Blame.” You will generally feel betrayed. Admit that you’re angry, nfeel it and act on it in this manner: n
1. Go to the right person
2. Go at the right time
3. Go with the right degree of intensity & explain your feelings
4. Use “I” statements…stay in 1st Party “I am so angry about…”
By using this method you will be more “conscious” of your own feelings and how nyou use them. In time, the “The Law of Attraction” will ignite your conscious efforts ninto ACTION by teaching someone else how to react appropriately because you nhave given them permission to feel their own feelings by feeling your own. The nbenefits are far reaching. n
You feel better because you have built better boundaries for yourself. You “own” nyour own feelings. You’ve taught someone else that it’s not so scary to say the ntruth and you’ve taught someone else how to do the same. And in time, based on nthe “The Law of Attraction,” your positive energy will have far greater success in nreaching people who are more interested in being “right” than in learning something.
Who knows, by putting our ego’s aside you may even impact the devastating neffects of one nation proving to be “more right” than the other. You could shorten nthe “aftermath” of the volcano around this planet.n nn