Emotional Healing 101

Every Psychological approach has its own theory of healing. Take Behavioral Psychology, for example, here it is believed that doing the correct behaviors will heal you. The 12 Steps of AA is based on this. Reality Therapy is one behavioral approach where the focus is creating a plan of action and follow it to a tee. This helps individuals focus on doing the right behaviors to heal. More or less, this is an approach of rewards, where a new rewarded behavior gets repeated in order to obtain the feel good again. That is what our paycheck is. You work for something and money is the reward. So you continue to work.

There are many other theories of healing starting way back in the 19^th Century with Freud’s Psychoanalytic approach. His aim was to bring repressed issues from the subconscious mind to the surface for a better understanding of self.  

Gestalt therapy has its focus on Unfinished Business stuck in the subconsciousness by processing past difficulties through empty chair work or role-playing. Imagine talking to an empty chair to find relief, but this approach is no joke. It is absolutely incredible.

At the crisis center, I worked at for over ten years, having people recall in detail the horrific details of something they went through retraumatized them. Though working with some of our staff was traumatizing enough, but that’s another story. We soon learned that there was another way that was more effective and more long-lasting – Spiritual Psychology’s love applied to the hurt model.

Do you ever get angry? Underneath anger is hurt. Anger is our quickest shield to our wounded feelings. I am sure you have seen this play out in your life where people are so upset (feeling hurt) they lash out to others (anger). Or, maybe you too have lashed out in anger and tried to convince yourself, “That wasn’t me”. Or, “They made me do that”, which is a “Rationalization” according to Sigmund Freud. Did your child really make you yell or hit them? That behavior came from you. Now, repeating the proper behavior has its limitations. Have you ever tried to hold in anger? It only gets worse because in doing so, you only suppress your feelings and there is only a limited space for you to do so. Eventually, the anger is going to leak out – then watch out! The volcano is about to blow!

Love to hurt – how is this achieved? In use, for example, a Gestalt therapy approach you can talk to the part of you that went through the horrific experience and be compassionate. Here is where emotional work gets a bit weird. This is not logical work but emotional and much of the work on emotions involves play-acting. It is imagining you are talking to your younger self, put yourself in that younger mindset, and let that part of you communicate back. Trust me, this is the golden approach to healing. Spiritual Psychology comes along and maintains that when the adult self applies love to the younger self, you heal.

How great would it have been for, at the time of a trauma, an older part of you showed up and was absolutely wonderful to you? The interesting thing is that visualization and actual experience registers the same in the brain. Therefore thinking things out actually feels like it is happening right now. This is why when we think about what the worst thing is that can happen, people often create panic attacks! If we are to imagine something, why not imagine the best cases?

Here is the model of emotional healing, according to Spiritual Psychology spelled out:

In a nutshell: Our anger is equivalent to our underlying hurt. When love is applied to hurt, we heal.

The question is, do you go up from hurt to anger, blow up, or cut off anger and experience anxiety? Or, do you allow yourself to feel your hurt, embrace it and drop down into the healing?

As the science of Psychology progresses, it is not uncommon for mixing and matching to take place. It is important to do the right behaviors, get rewarded, come up with an action plan, but if we fail to address the underlying hurt, it will eventually make its way back up to the surface.

A good rule to follow is addressing a problem in four ways: physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. This will provide the best odds for problem resolution. The physical level is basically doing the right behaviors. Mentally, is simply changing negatives into positives – a great approach for this is called Narrative Therapy. Emotionally, Gestalt therapy leads the way. Spiritually – Psychosynthesis through its use of visualization.

According to Narrative therapy, people create stories of a situation and store it in their memory. These stories are often told, almost verbatim to others. “This thing happened to me and it was horrible…” Then, not to be outdone, we come back with our own horrific story of tragedy. This drama bonding is what we’ve been trained to do. Narrative therapy blows that up by having people focus on the strengths they had during that event, how they survived and learned a valuable lesson. Mental in nature, it has some cross over to spiritual and emotional.

We are emotional beings whether you want to agree with it or not. We are only as strong as our emotional makeup and learning how to embrace your feelings, learn, and grow from them, is key to ultimate mental health.  

Compassionate Care is Always Available

There are many more tools and strategies you can use in your pursuit of happiness. Here is where we come in. Contact us at Basic Steps Mental Health and let us support and educate you on this journey back to your loving heart center. Imagine living a heart-centered life, regardless of what is happening externally. We’d love to be of help.

For 25 years, Dr. Scott Alpert, the clinical director of Basic Steps Mental Health, has treated over 7,000 people with mental health and addiction problems, using a Psychological approach that mixes and matches ten of the top approaches used in the industry.  We are here virtually and in-person to help you get through this COVID-19 pandemic and many other difficulties you may be experiencing.

May you have good mental health.