10 Practical Ways Intelligent People Heal Emotional Wounds

Healing deep emotional wounds is a process. It requires time, patience, and self-compassion. Remember, healing does not happen overnight.

Healing is not a linear process.

In your healing journey, you will have good days. You will have bad days too, but that's normal.

Here are some specific helpful strategies to make the process smoother:

1. Acknowledge the wound:

Write down your feelings in a journal. What are you going through?

You can't understand what you can't express. You can't express what you don't reflect on. Reflecting to acknowledge your emotions, express them, and understand your emotions and thoughts. This is the first step to healing.

"You can't heal what you don't acknowledge." -Unknown

2. Practice self-compassion:

Once you understand what you are going through, treat yourself as you would treat someone else in similar pain. You deserve your own compassion and care. Give it to yourself.

Make it practical. Treat yourself to things that make you feel good, such as a bubble bath, a good book, or a favorite meal. Remind yourself it's okay not to be okay. You deserve to take care of yourself.

"Be kind to yourself. It's hard to be happy when someone is mean to you all the time." -Christine Arylo

3. Seek support:

Healing is relational, just like emotional wounds are relational. You can't heal alone. In fact, you can hurt yourself more if you isolate yourself while you're hurting. Don't isolate.

Connect with a friend. A family member. Or therapist you trust. Talk to them about your feelings. Allow them to listen. Allow them to offer a different perspective. Most importantly, express what you feel.

"Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much." -Helen Keller

4. Practice mindfulness:

What's your go-to practice for mindfulness? Don't neglect it during your pain. When you are hurting, you can get stuck in the past or escape into the future. When this happens, your pain lasts longer. Your healing is impaired.

Pray. Stay present. Meditate. Do whatever it takes to help you focus on the present moment and reduce stress and anxiety. All wounds happen in the present, and all healing happens in the present too.

"The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it." -Thich Nhat Hanh

5. Engage in activities that bring you joy:

Hopefully, you know activities that bring you joy. I'm speaking about the things that help you unwind. Things you enjoy doing because they refresh you. Don't neglect what brings you joy, especially when you are hurting.

Engage in the things that you enjoy. Painting. Writing Playing instruments. Dancing. Singing.

Don't do it just sporadically. Make it regular. Make it a form of self-expression and a way to distract from your pain. When you return to reflect on your wounds, you will have a fresh perspective and a reservoir of positive energy to help you heal and find joy again.

"The purpose of our lives is to be happy." -Dalai Lama

6. Allow yourself to feel:

Emotions are scary, especially negative ones. As children, we are socialized to hate and avoid feeling negative emotions. Yet, as adults, we can not escape these feelings. Healing demands feeling. There's no healing without feeling.

Give yourself permission to feel the full range of emotions your healing elicits. If you're feeling sad, don't stifle yourself up. Allow yourself to cry the pain away. Esp for men, this can be scary. Dude, if you need to hide to cry, do it. Don't 'man up' your feelings. In the end, you pay a huge price.

If you're feeling angry, allow yourself to express that anger in a healthy way, such as through writing or talking to someone. Don't punch someone. The goal is for your to feel and release the pain, so you can open your emotional channels. Feel your emotions so you can gain the power to release them!

"The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive." -John Green

7. Be patient:

Remember that healing takes time, and it's essential to be patient with yourself. Keep in mind that you will have good days and bad days, and that's normal. Take one day at a time, and remind yourself that you are making progress. "Healing takes courage, and we all have courage, even if we have to dig a little to find it." -Tori Amos

8. Seek professional help:

When our plumbing fails, we call a plumber. When our roofs leak, we seek a builder. When our car breaks down, we call a mechanic. When our computers fail, we take them to geeks and programmers. In other words, we seek professional help in all these situations.

How come we are reluctant to seek professional help for our mental health needs? Is it perhaps because we have accepted the myth that seeking professional mental help is a sign of weakness?

Healing emotional wounds is one of the most challenging things you will ever work on. It's slow and messy. You can't see your whole life objectively because you are in the mirror. You need external help.

Seek professional help. Therapy. Coaching. Counseling. Your life is bigger than you can see. Professional help will help you understand your emotions, teach you coping mechanisms, hold you accountable, and offer you enlightening insight into your past experiences.

"The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step." -Lao Tzu

9. Practice gratitude:

Emotional wounds have a tendency to distort our view of the world and distract us from the good in our lives. Relationships suffer the most from such distortion, yet all our happiness in life resides in relationships.

When we're not grateful, it's like walking around our life with rocks in our shoes. It makes our life intolerable. Everything becomes uncomfortable, but we can't tell why. But when we embrace gratitude, things can change radically. Experiencing gratitude is like taking off the rocks in our shoes and feeling light as a feather again, even just for a moment.

Gratitude is the cure if we apply it with sufficient frequency and intention. In your pursuit of healing, practice gratitude. Make your gratitude prompt. Express it NOW. Focus on the present. Shift your focus from the past to the present moment and find things to be thankful for in your life right where you are.

Gratitude is perishable, and you can't save it for later.

Gratitude is like a game of hot potato; you gotta pass it on before it burns your fingers. Pass on the gratitude now. Experience it in your heart and express it to the hearts in your life.

"Gratitude turns what we have into enough." -Melody Beattie

10. Practice forgiveness:

One of the most burdensome causes of emotional wounds is the perpetual feeling of "they owe me". Sometimes emotional wounds cause us to hold on to grudges and debts that will never be paid.

Your ex can not give you back those four years. Your patience can not be paid back. Your trust can not be paid back either. No matter how justified you are to hold on to the debt, remember, in the end, you suffer more than the person(s) who 'owes' you. Healing demands traveling light. Unpack the baggage from those past trips. You are now on a new journey.

Choose to travel light. Practice forgiveness. Forgive yourself for everything. You did what you did, and now you can choose differently. Healing demands the release of negative feelings and emotions that are holding you back. Forgiveness is the key. You deserve it, whether or not the people who wronged you deserve it too.

"Forgiveness is the final form of love." -Reinhold Niebuhr

Bringing it all together:

Healing deep emotional wounds is a process that requires time, patience, and self-compassion. It's important to acknowledge the pain and hurt you are feeling, practice self-compassion, seek support, practice mindfulness, engage in activities that bring you joy, allow yourself to feel, and be patient.

Remember that healing is a personal journey, and you need to find what works for you. Additionally, seeking professional help, practicing gratitude and forgiveness, and engaging in physical activities can help in the healing process.

Remind yourself that it's okay not to be okay and that healing takes time.

Be kind and compassionate towards yourself throughout the process.

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Dr. Job Mogire is a cardiology fellow, award-winning speaker, and author of Heal Daily, a blueprint that helps committed professionals to Heal Deeply to Live Deeply. Email Job: [email protected]