There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to emotional healing, just like there is no right ways to grieve after loss. But in my experience, emotional healing comes in stages. I didn’t move through these stages in a straight line, but passed through them all on my path to healing.
I learned of these stages as I passed through them, and a therapist helped me along the way. But if you an understanding where you are in your healing journey you can reclaim your inner peace and continue to move forward.
I thought I would share the information that I have learned so that maybe someone can learn to recognize these stages also.
Here’s what happens at each stage:
1. Awareness
The first step in emotional healing is recognizing that you are experiencing pain, distress or grief. Acknowledging the existence of your feelings and there impact it’s having on your life. Awareness brings your inner struggles into focus, and gives you starting point to begin healing.
2. Acceptance
Acceptance means embracing your emotions without judgment or resistance, it requires allowing yourself to feel what you feel, no matter how uncomfortable or painful those emotions are. Acceptance is an important step in emotional healing because when we resist our feelings they persist for longer than necessary.
3. Processing
Processing your emotions means engaging with them consciously and actively. This stage causes us to explore the don’t causes of our pain, or distress. This stage includes unresolved issues or past trauma. There are ways to process your emotions through self-reflection, journaling, therapy, or conversations with people you trust.
4. Release
Releasing your emotions means letting go of past experiences, pent up feeling and all the energy they consume. This stage may involve expressing your feelings in a healthy manner, which helps free yourself from emotional burdens and makes a space for healing. If you’re using all your energy on past experiences, you have no room for healing.
5. Growth
There is no doubt that painful experiences change us, but not necessarily for the worse. There is a thing called “post-traumatic growth which means people who have passed through emotional healing often emerge with new wisdom and strength they didn’t have before. Emotional growth empowers you to make positive changes in your life based on what the difficult experience has taught you.
6. Integration
At this stage of healing, you begin to integrate the experience, your feelings, and the lessons you have learned a long the way into your daily life.
7. Transformation
This transformation represents the final stage of emotional healing, where you come out if your experiences as a stronger, more resilient person. This is a fundamental shift in your emotional and mental outlook on life. It leads to an adaptive approach to your life. This gives you the ability to get through hard times and maintain a healthy outlook on life.
It is possible to get stuck in a stage of emotional healing. These stages don’t always progress in a smooth manner. Sometimes it feels like you are getting stuck on a stage of healing or another. This is a normal part of the healing process. Sometimes we need some support to get out of the stage you are in.
Emotions are supposed to be temporary -unless you feed them. Our emotions can take on a life of there own when we fuel them by ruminating, or by catastrophizing them about our future, or beating ourselves up about our past mistakes. These habits create painful thought loops that keep us from moving forward.
We have to have to treat ourselves with compassion because judging our feelings will keep you stuck. If you treat yourself with empathy, validate your feelings, and engage in emotional self-care it will help you move forward.
I used to feel bad about not allowing my mother to be alone with my children. Everyone needs to know their grandparents right? But, because of my lack of trust, I couldn’t do this. There is no sense beating me up about it. It was a reaction to the situation I was put in.
Move through your feelings, when we are in pain it’s only natural to try and shut our feelings down, deny our experiences or do things to numb or remove ourselves from the pain you feel. However, these avoidant coping strategies stop long-term emotional healing.
Doing mindfulness practices about your inner experiences and noticing your thoughts, feelings, and body sensations without judging them or trying to change them. Can help the healing process along.
If you need emotional healing, You probably have some unhealthy coping strategies. Those strategies will not go away if we don’t replace them with healthy coping strategies. My coping strategies when I needed emotional healtning was taking prescription pain pills or drinking alcohol and sleeping. I replaced it with hiking and supportive friends in my life. Any positive activity that helps you regulate your emotions rather than avoiding then can be a healthy coping mechanism.
Help yourself manage your emotions in a way that brings you back to your original state and empowers you to choose your actions. You can do this with a few timed breathing exercises like holding you breath for 4 seconds and then exhaling that breath over 8 seconds, mindfulness techniques, going for a walk.Building a toolbox for yourself of emotional regulation skills that are effective can help you feel your feelings and move through them in a way that leads to emotional healing.
I hope this will help someone that needs emotional healing.
From Pity to Praise 