How To Love and Be Loved | Part 4: The Process and Purpose of Healing
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Healing is a lifelong journey, with many ups and downs along the way. In a special series of six podcasts, I talked to former NFL star Joe Ehrmann about how we can turn the wounds of the past into our purpose for the future. Here are the top takeaways from the fourth episode, in which we outlined the six-step process of healing.
Name the Wounds
Whatever we resist is life will persist. The more we avoid, deny or suppress wounds we experience, the more they continually show up. To truly heal from the hurts of the past, you must name the wound, understand it and then start the process to get past it. To begin, rate your wounds from 1 to 10 with the intensity of the emotion experienced for each. What triggered that emotion? Through journaling, you can walk back to where that wound came from and begin to see it for what it really is.
Find Someone You Can Share With
None of us can go it alone – we all need someone we can share the journey with. Find someone you can tell your most intimate and deepest secrets to. This person will not only be a trusted confidant – he or she can help hold you accountable too.
Dig Deep for Truth
You must keep digging deeper into what wounded you. What is your story? What is the elephant under your carpet? Again, journaling is invaluable in connecting the dots of your history and getting to the reality of the deepest part of these truths. Life is all about digging for deeper truth and meaning.
Release the Energy
Give yourself permission to really feel what you feel.Cry, weep and be free to express yourself in a physical way. If emotion stays continually bottled up, you might be tempted to just numb out your pain or it could turn up in anger. Emotion is energy and it has to be released.
Don’t Be Afraid
On the journey to healing, you will encounter all kinds of raw emotions, such as sorrow or anger, that you might not be comfortable with. As you experience these, learn how to be still. Try not to run away from the emotion, but enter into it. In order to truly forgive and continue the healing process, you have to sit with the pain so you can understand it.
As you take this emotional journey, you’re going to have good and bad days. Remember that everything hurts before it gets healthy, but on the other side is something good. Persevere, because the opportunity to live your life to its fullest is too rich to pass up. Stay on this journey and you will experience healthier relationships and ultimately find your transcendent cause and purpose.
Listen to the latest episode of “It’s a Good Life” to learn more.
