Sometimes we put our faith in the wrong thing. When we get a cut as a child and mom kisses it and puts a band-aid on it, we can start to think that it’s the kiss or the band-aid that is doing the healing, and forget, or choose not to realize that it is our own body that is doing the healing. Without being aware of how we heal, we do it. We don’t know how to create a scab, yet it happens, as does the knitting of skin back together, sometimes with a scar, but many times with no evidence at all that there was a wound there at all. Occasionally, we get so used to the bandage, and fear the sight and pain of the wound so intensely, we will refuse to remove the bandage, or we fear the pain of removing the bandage itself.
As it happens with our bodies, so it does with our emotional selves. When we experience a trauma, an event we are unable to process at the time it happens, we feel emotional pain. Many times we put the band-aid of time on it, and it will magically heal. We instinctively think that time did the healing, when in fact we did. Occasionally, time becomes the gooey stuckness we feel in our lives, and between the memory of the event itself and the sticky band-aid of time, we avoid the whole area and refuse see just how much healing has happened. We stay with the belief that the wound is permanent, forever a part of us, that it cannot be undone, and the pain will persist. We hang on to the memory of the hurt, the fear, the loss, and over time, it becomes habit.
It is our nature to heal both physically and emotionally. Unlike physical healing however, emotional healing doesn’t take time. Our emotional band-aids can be removed gently and reveal a powerful, peaceful, and fully functioning emotional self. We can forego the favor that we showed it believing in its frailty and defect. We can lean on it, use it, and depend on its strength and resilience.
You don’t need to continue suffering. You heal, it’s what you do. What hasn’t already healed, can be healed quickly no matter how long it’s been with you. It can be painless even if the pain of the trauma was unimaginable.
Consider reading Goodbye, Hurt and Pain by Dr. Deborah Sandella and following the exercises. You can also listen to a pre-recorded RIM exercise here:
If you’d like to get more information about this level of healing or to get a free personalized example session, please contact me at rebecca@macleanlifecoaching.com
