The Healing Realm

Have you tried everything that conventional medicine has to offer, and yet you’re just not getting better? Perhaps that is your body telling you to self-heal. You have to be your own “doctor.”

“It’s supposed to be a professional secret, but I’ll tell you anyway. We doctors do nothing. We only help and encourage the doctor within.” -Albert Schweitzer, MD

Self-healing is an opportunity to listen to your inner voice and nurture your well-being. Let’s be honest, nobody knows yourself better than you. That means NO ONE is better equipped to heal you than you. Self-healing is a process and a spiritual practice. It’s a practice that teaches us to listen to our intuition before accepting external opinions. It’s a practice of healing yourself mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. A large part of self-healing is facing your shadows; to do the Shadow Work. That means you must work on the parts of yourself that you don’t acknowledge; your shadows. These could be emotions, desires, thoughts, or parts of your personality that you’ve pushed away, or ignored, because you think they’re bad, wrong, or unacceptable. It means healing your past which may involve past traumas, emotional pain, past hurts, heartbreaks, father/mother wounds, and even ancestral wounds. Self-healing is a process, so what is the process? It is:

Feel Your Feelings as Bottling Them Up Harms You

It’s critical to recognize and honor your feelings, as feelings lead to thoughts which lead to beliefs and patterns.The truth is, we frequently suppress our emotions as they might make us appear vulnerable, or we don’t want to deal with them to avoid feeling overwhelmed. When we bottle up feelings, they become trapped in our body and can manifest as physical tension, anxiety, and even illness. Our emotions are messengers carrying important information about our needs and desires. Ignoring them can lead to emotional dysregulation and hinder our ability to cope with life’s challenges, eventually causing us more pain. It’s imperative to learn to deal with emotions.

Reframe Your Story: Rewrite the Narrative of Your Past

Our past experiences shape our perspective, but sometimes we cling to the negative narratives about ourselves or past events. These narratives might cause us to think:“I’m not good enough,”“People don’t respect me,”or“I am a failure.” Reframing the past involves challenging these limiting beliefs and rewriting the story.

It is Imperative to Change Limiting Beliefs

Our subconscious mind is like a vast storage system, holding beliefs, experiences, and programming from our past. Unlike the conscious mind, the subconscious works in the background, influencing our decisions, actions, and perceptions without us realizing it. Limiting beliefs are learned, as they are false assumptions that we make about ourselves, others, or the world around us, and they restrict us in some way.

 Self-limiting beliefs are perceptions and thoughts that prevent you from doing something that you’re capable of doing, even though you think you can’t! The truth is, we tend to accept our self-limiting beliefs as facts. We believe that because we think or feel something, it must be true, but that’s a complete fallacy. We think thousands of thoughts a day and ignore most of them, yet we cling to our self-limiting beliefs.

Usually self-limiting beliefs develop in our formative years in response to painful experiences. Some psychologists believe that by age seven most of our patterns of behaviour, our beliefs and our habits are formed. From these experiences we create our own generalizations about life. These beliefs are precisely that: Beliefs.  They are NOT facts. They mostly stem from childhood experiences, where we absorb messages from parents, teachers, peers, and even media like television. Think about this: television is “tell-a-vision.” Parents unknowingly pass down beliefs like “You need to behave a certain way to receive love.” These beliefs are reinforced over time through repetition and emotional intensity. We always act in ways consistent with our belief systems. The good news is that the brain is malleable, meaning these patterns can be rewired.

You Need to Heal Guilt and Shame

Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College, and is considered an “expert” on shame. She has spent years studying vulnerability, courage, authenticity, and shame. She believes that guilt is helpful since it is about something we’ve done or failed to do which goes against our values and causes us psychological discomfort. Shame is much more, as she defines shame as an intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging. Brown believes shame is NEVER helpful or productive. Many of us, if not most of us, are carrying some shame without our awareness, preventing self-love and causing self-sabotage. Shame must be shed to heal.

Healing Our Inner Children is Essential

An inner child wound is about the damaging experiences or repeated experiences we lived through as a child.These experiences often result in unresolved trauma that manifests in us as adults. The wounded part deep within us might—for example—be unconsciously choosing to be in relationships with other hurt people. This could be from experiences we faced when growing up; experiences such as feeling ignored, rejected, dismissed, abused, neglected, or traumatized. Such wounds find an emotional space deep within us, changing how we see ourselves and the world. Those hurt inner children are still operating in our subconscious with self-limiting child-like beliefs. Our inner children must be reparented and healed.

Learn to say “No” and Set Boundaries

Setting boundaries is critical for self-respect and emotional well-being, since it allows us to create a safe space for ourselves. However, saying “no” is difficult for most of us—often due to religious guilt and programming. We want to please others, avoid conflict, or simply be a virtuous person. Setting boundaries is an act of self-love. It allows us to create a less stressful life and foster healthier relationships built on respect and understanding. Learn to NOT be a doormat and set boundaries.

You Must Forgive Yourself and Others

What is forgiveness? Forgiveness is the liberation of resentment, grudges and/or anger. Forgiveness NEVER means reconciliation. You never have to return to the same relationship or accept the same harmful behaviors from those who hurt you. The thing is, the act that hurt or offended you usually stays with you, so working on forgiveness can lessen its grip on you. It can help free you from the control of the person that caused you harm. Forgiveness never means forgetting or justifying the harm done to you, nor does it mean making up with the person who caused the harm. Forgiveness frees you as it brings a kind of peace that helps you go on with your life. You must reach a point of forgiveness to heal.

Learn to Trust Yourself, Especially Your Intuition

Self-trust is the secure reliance on the integrity of yourself. It is the conviction to be kind and respectful to yourself. Self-trust means we feel secure in the fact that we can rely on our integrity. As American filmmaker, Billy Wilder once said, “Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else’s.”

Learn to love yourself as opposed to hating yourself

Self-love entails accepting yourself entirely, with all its flaws, treating yourself with kindness and respect instead, and prioritizing your physical and emotional health. We CANNOT be of service to anyone if we never prioritize ourselves first. Self-love goes beyond actions as it extends to the thoughts and feelings we have about our self. Self-love is closely linked to self-worth, self-esteem, self-compassion, and self-confidence. As American motivational author, Louise L. Hay says, “Love is the great miracle cure. Loving ourselves works miracles in our lives.
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I will expand on the above process in future blogs. When we deal with our hurts, emotional wounds, trauma, Mother/Father wounds, heartbreaks, or whatever other shadows you may have, you live with much less stress. Daniel Goleman, in Vital Lies. Simple Truths says, “While stress arousal is a fitting mode to meet emergency, as an ongoing state, it is a disaster. Sustained stress leads to pathology.” The American Psychological Association in its article, Stress in America™ 2020: A National Mental Health Crisis, says, “We are facing a national mental health crisis that could yield serious health and social consequences for years to come.”

This was the process I used in my healing journey. There is no order to these steps as healing yourself is about peeling the layers of shadows—like peeling an onion. Not all of these may apply to you. It’s a journey of discovery; a journey of being curious about why you are the way you are. There are many healing modalities that can help—some of which we do. You need to find those healing modalities that resonate with you. It’s also about introspection, the process that involves looking inward to examine one’s own thoughts, emotions, judgments, and perceptions.

“The natural healing force within each one of us is the greatest force in getting well.” Hippocrates allegedly said that. It was Deepak Chopra who said, “In the mere observation of yourself, you begin the process of healing and transformation.” You can take control of your own healing OR you can believe the programming of Western Medicine and Big Pharma. James Morcan says it best in, The Orphan Conspiracies: 29 Conspiracy Theories from The Orphan Trilogy, saying:

“Big Pharma needs sick people to prosper. Patients, not healthy people, are their customers. If everybody was cured of a particular illness or disease, pharmaceutical companies would lose 100% of their profits on the products they sell for that ailment. What all this means is because modern medicine is so heavily intertwined with the financial profits culture, it’s a sickness industry more than it is a health industry.”

Western Medicine is really “SICK-CARE” not “Healthcare.” Start a journey of SELF-HEALING instead.