‘When you can tell your story and it doesn’t make you cry, that’s when you know you’ve healed.’
Healing matters more than most people realize, because it affects our health, our choices, our relationships, and the direction and overall quality of our lives.
How do you even know that you have a wound that needs to be healed? You can know it in different ways, among others, by feeling pain. Logical, right? Then pay attention to your feelings and reactions.
If you are constantly defensive, if you take everything personally, if you are easily offended, if certain people or situations trigger anger, sadness, discomfort or some trauma from the past in you — without any intention of hurting you — it usually means there is something deeper that requires your attention.
You have to stop and ask yourself: Did this person really hurt me, or did they touch a wound that already existed within me and requires my attention and analysis?
This requires awareness and self-analysis. Honesty.
Many skip this.. and then they transfer their unhealed wounds to others in the form of fear, anger and hurting others.
That’s why, when a situation arises where something provokes you, stop.
Don’t react. Pause. Then act on yourself.
Don’t transfer your ‘traumas’ into future relationships. If you came out of a past relationship hurt, dedicate yourself to yourself. Understand what hurt you and learn how to help yourself. Then talk about it openly with your potentially future or current partner.
In this way, you will get to know each other more and better, deepen the relationship and avoid many arguments.
How do you know you’ve healed a wound? One of the clearest signs of healing is being able to talk about what happened without being overwhelmed by it.
If it still hurts when you talk or think about it, then the wound is not healed.
Yet.
If you can talk about it without a lump in your throat, that means you are on the right path to overcoming it. Or perhaps you already have.
And don’t think that healing is a path like an arrow that only goes up.. Healing often looks like a roller coaster. Sometimes you’re up and sometimes you’re down.
Even when you accept the situation and heal your wounds, it doesn’t mean that a day won’t come when you cry again. Maybe a sad day will come.
But you will recognize that it is simply a ‘sad day’, not an unhealed wound.
And if you do nothing to heal yourself, just remember:
Every time you relive that memory, your body responds as if it is happening all over again — because the brain can involuntarily recreate many of the same hormonal and neurological responses it experienced during the original event. Mental and physical well-being are deeply connected.
So you’re putting yourself through the same stress. Over and over again, you’re feeling the same pain.
And you will keep doing it and feeling it until you decide to work on your healing.
In order to heal, you must understand the importance of acceptance, forgiveness and letting go of situations or people that have wronged or hurt you. That is crucial.
Acceptance does not mean approval.
Forgiveness does not mean approval either, but understanding and allowing negative emotions to leave you. You cannot hurt those who wronged you by holding onto negative emotions and feelings. If you keep them within.. you hurt yourself.
Give yourself some time. Time doesn’t heal anything, but your strength and resilience do. Learn how to live with it. And for that, you need your time.
Grow through what you go through. Learn from every situation. Don’t compare your healing path or process with other people’s ways of healing.
Healing is not something you do for others. Everything you do in your healing journey, you do for yourself. For your peace. For your well-being. For your freedom.
This isn’t the only text. But today, it might be enough.