Healing deeply embedded wounds

I realise the conversation has gone off topic a bit and I've been thinking about what has helped me in self-healing.

I feel the term deeply embedded wounds describes a phenomena in healing, where you heal one aspect of life and as you do so, the next step of healing is revealed. But I feel that it creates a really unique journey that doesn't just pull out the root and kill that experience off...as if it never happened. Instead, the journey teaches you how to get through adversities...and it gives you life-skills as well as an in depth understanding of how experience effects us on a physical, mental and spiritual level. So it is a journey worth taking.

If I were to make a list of things that have helped me (and ofcourse it may be different for everyone)...but at the top of that list I would put...

1) Hope = life changes and in the most hopeless of times I believe more than anything, that there is something new to experience and something worth living on for.

2) Faith from experience = I've believed and have found time and again that something always comes along...some opporunity that will assist me in turning the corner. Whether it's god, amgels, spirits, fate, intuition or blind optimism...whatever IT is, it works. And I feel that the faith that IT works makes me aware and open to the opportunities for change that present themselves.

3) Ok, I'm going to get more practical here and say that number 3 useful healing tool is to gain an understanding into how the mind works...and how your own mind responds to your experiences.

There are two steps to this: Firstly it helps to have a basic understanding of learned behaviour and how thought/emotion/reaction interact in the mind. It forms the basis of CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) if you want to research it.

Secondly, is self-analysis. This takes a good dose of self honesty without beating yourself up. It is about noticing your failings and achievements and looking at what deeper feelings created/caused them. Another aspect to this is reflection...so that you use how you see the outside world to help you to see your own fears, jealosies and desires. Another aspect of this is to ask yourself what your expectations of a situation are (often expectations being broken are what hurts) and in the same vain..what you feel needy for or fearful of - because these aspects are what lies behind many of our perceptions and actions.

4) Be allowed/allow yourself - whatever you feel you need to do to positively heal...DO It...cry. meditate, go for a jog/a long walk, find a new job, find new friends etc.

5) If ever you feel that getting revenge or damaging anothers prospects for self satisfaction will cure you - resist it because it pays off in the long run.

6) Ask for help - but with the understanding that you can take what is helpful and leave what is not. In the end, it must absolutely be you and you alone that heals you. You are responsible for that, and it's everything that enables you to take responsibility for your own healing that ultimately gives you what you need to go on and face the rest of your life (and lives to come)

I hope for this reason, that you will manage to avoid those promising quick fixes, because they take away your ability to learnm that you can do it for yourself.

Originally Posted by Meadows

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In my opinion, healing is a process that needs to be approached from multiple angles. The more understanding you have, the better able you become to treat holistically and to adjust treatment to best help the individual. Moreover, a healer sometimes needs the ability to pass on a client to somebody better suited to their needs.

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The suggestion is there, you may take it or continue as you are.

I am not highly educated like Aquarian indicates s/he is, but I have had 40 plus years of life experience and I agree with Meadows in that healing is a process best approached from a holistic perspective. In our Aboriginal teachings, we say "It takes a village to heal an individual" (a spin off of that oft-quoted phrase of raising a child). In a "village" there are numerous healers and helpers who all work together from their specific modalities to help an individual heal their wounds. It involves the healing of the whole person: body, mind, emotions, and spirit. Why I trust this approach is that the Indigenous peoples, as one group per se, have used this holistic multi-mode approach for thousands of years - must have worked for us to have survived so long!

MikethePhoenix, I hope you explore various methods of healing and welcome the combination that works best for you to keep on your healing path. Many well wishes to you!

And further to the debate of PTSD ... it is, as I`ve experienced it, a re-living of the traumatic event. I would hope that if there are highly effective strategies for healing PTSD, that practitioners of said strategies could help the millions of women who re-live the nightmares of spousal violence, the millions of children who re-live the trauma of abuse at the hands of adults they trusted, and the millions of military personnel who re-live the horrors of war.

In fact, I would ask our decision-makers to make such strategies free and thus available to all.

Mike, you reading all this? Your OP has inspired quite intense conversations - it's been very educational for me to read, and i hope you've been able to cull out what fits you.