Heal The World By Healing Yourself

The best way to make the world a better place is to heal yourself.

Are anyone’s destructive patterns being triggered during quarantine? Do you find that being at home without outside distraction, you’re falling back into your old addiction or whatever it is that gives you emotional comfort?

Or maybe the current situation is forcing you to live with someone who triggers your old destructive patterns?

Whatever it may be, maybe this is the perfect time to, instead of running away from our shadow, face it head-on.

Since we are socially isolated, we can gear all of our energy towards our darkness, digging through the deepest pain we’ve ever felt within our heart which is usually the trauma and experiences that occurred during childhood.

All our destructive patterns were formed as parts of an escape - an emotional escape from something that caused us far greater pain. Pain comes in many forms - from being abused, neglected, to being controlled. The emotional toll it took on us was far greater than the physical pain itself. Subconsciously we tried to find a way to escape. We tried to find emotional relief. We tried to find our happiness.

Sometimes the pain was far too great that even cutting our wrist gave us a relief; that purging gave us a relief; that starving gave us a relief; that eating gave us a relief; that being drunk gave us a relief; that being high on drugs gave us a relief; that doing mischievous things gave us a relief; that sweating so hard to the point where we could barely breathe and our muscles ache so much gave us a relief.

A relief from feeling controlled, abused, ignored, and more importantly hopeless because we were too young to be able to walk away and legally take full control of our lives.

A relief from feeling lonely, abandoned, neglected, and worthless.

A relief from feeling misunderstood, rejected, and not accepted for being who we truly are.

Some of us turned to books and music as a way to escape. Some turned to programming. Some turned to sports. Some turned to food. Some turned to drugs or alcohol.

But whatever it may be, we can all agree that our destructive patterns were formed to help us escape, to help us feel better, to help relieve us from feelings of deep, unbearable pain.

But it was exactly that reliance that came to hurt us. We quickly became attached to things that help relieve us of the pain. The deeper the pain, the stronger our ties to the pain reliever is. The next thing we knew we became addicted to something we shouldn’t be addicted to. It became a way of life. It became a way for us to find happiness because that’s the only way we knew how.

Over the course of our lives, we try to escape from that pain. We learned that our pain reliever wasn’t healthy so we tried to find a healthy alternative. But the stronger the attachment to the pain reliever was, the stronger the attachment to the healthier replacement had to be. So we become addicted to something else, something healthier, but the addictive tendency remains. Because only with the addiction, can you feel more in control of your life. The damage was already done. Wholeness is already lost. You can only patch up the hole, hoping it would never leak again.

Healing is a constant work-in-progress. It is a lifelong commitment and a never-ending journey of pouring self-love & self-acceptance into you.

But can life be interesting without pain?

• Can life be fulfilling without having overcome challenges?
• Can you be unique without having been rejected for your differences?
• Can you be interesting if you’re just like everyone else?
• Can you be strong if things have always gone your way?

Would you have ever reached the depth of your soul if you’ve never swum in the deep sea?

Would you have ever transformed if you’ve not hit rock bottom?

Some were put into this world to face more challenges in life because overcoming them and sharing what they learn in the process of overcoming their pain is the purpose of their being.

They were born to put a dent into the Universe.

Here are some questions you can work through during this time:

• What pain did you experience so deeply?
• What did you do to feel relieved from pain?
• When did you start relying on it and become addicted to it?
• How can you find your happiness from other sources?
• What can you do to avoid triggering the pain by being near the source of pain?

It is impossible to not have scars when we have been deeply hurt. But what we can do as adults on a self-healing journey is to recognize that we now have the power to:

1. Put up boundaries (aka keep the source of the pain away from us).
2. Choose the way we respond (pause and choose the way we respond instead of reacting).
3. Change our perception by understanding where they’re coming from and looking at them from a place of compassion.
4. Accept that we cannot change others but we can block them out from our mental space.
5. Love ourselves above all else which includes choosing to be attached to a “healthy” pain reliever.

You can also use our Healing Journal to help you work through your past trauma and pain and begin the healing process.

Cheers to never giving up, to understanding yourself, to loving yourself, and to being here & moving forward.

Stay strong. Everything will be okay. And don’t be too hard on yourself. :)