The Three Steps to Healing: Awareness, Expression, Resolution

Have you not experienced success with the emotional healing techniques you have tried? Join the club. I recently realized what was missing in many emotional healing techniques: a systematic and comprehensive approach that would ensure that the three key aspects of the emotional healing process would be properly handled. nnSince early 2001, I have engaged in a dedicated and intense research project on emotional healing approaches and modalities, which encompassed numerous workshops and conferences, books, articles, videos, self-study, and extensive discussions with experts in the field. I have also had the techniques applied to myself as well as to willing clients. nnAs I watched for patterns and underlying structures in these techniques, a clear picture emerged concerning the emotional healing process, the steps involved, and how well many methods achieve their stated goals. nnMy research reveals that there are three steps one needs to take for complete healing. nnStep 1: AwarenessnnBefore one can remedy something, he needs to know what it is that he is remedying. This involves an awareness of it at a deep level. For example, if one feels fear arise around speaking in a group, it is important to follow that fear and see if it is linked to another emotion or feeling. nI guided a woman through a healing session in which she started off feeling sad. As she healed the sadness, other emotions arose (hurt, unable to forgive herself, guilt) until we uncovered a feeling of shame. Once she healed that shame, a great feeling of release came over her—she had been holding on to that shame for close to 50 years. The other feelings still needed to be healed as they had only been identified and partially healed. nnFortunately, there are a number of good approaches to exploring our feelings, and as long as they are respectful of the timing, safety, and support that we need, most of them allow us to identify the primary feelings as well as those lurking underneath. nnStep 2: ExpressionnnOnce we have identified a specific feeling to work with, it is often helpful to express that emotion, both as part of the awareness deepening and the acceptance of it. Being able to talk to ourselves about a feeling is a good first step. We can express it out loud, perhaps looking ourselves in the mirror and saying words such as “I feel fear.”nnTaking this process further, we could then describe the feeling to someone else. We need a good, patient listener who is not going to judge what we say, react to it, or try to fix it.nnIf we feel safe enough, after the words flow will come other expressions, which could include tears, shouting, sobbing, body sensations, and so on. nnStep 3: ResolutionnnThe third step in healing an unresourceful emotion or feeling is to achieve resolution around it. This resolution would include the following elements: a full exposure to the feeling; a diminishing of the intensity of the feeling to a level that is first comfortable and then truly absent; a feeling of peacefulness around the event or subject that triggered the feeling in the first place; and some insight into what was going on for us. nnMost of the emotional healing methods I have explored do not achieve all of these markers of success and focus on only one or two of the elements. Some try to immediately get an insight as to what caused the feeling and then use that insight to “think away the feeling.” Some try to put whipped cream on the cow patty by “reframing” a painful incident through rationalizing about it, verbally minimizing it, putting a positive spin on it, and so on. Some methods place a lot of value on the expression phase, having people scream, punch pillows, kick their feet, and so on. Some methods attempt to quickly reduce the intensity of the feeling by use of physiological actions: having clients do lots of slow, deep breathing, for example. Other techniques take advantage of the normal human desire to avoid pain and our built-in defense mechanism, disassociating, to simply further disassociate the client from the feeling.nnGetting to ResolutionnnHaving watched hundreds of people try various healing processes, with varying degrees of success, I boiled down the results to these four essential elements of a successful healing process. They are simple, practical, and easy to look for.nn1. We experience full exposure to the feeling for as long as it takes for resolution to occur, and we remain fully associated. As this can be seen as counterintuitive, given the human nature to avoid pain, one must overcome the tendency to run away from the feeling. Having someone else guide you through a fully associated process a few times makes it easier. “Fully associated” means you feel the feeling and are looking out through your own eyes, not watching yourself as if watching a movie. n2. The feeling will diminish in intensity, first to a level that is comfortable and then dissolving completely. Stopping prematurely (once a comfortable intensity is reached) can lead to the feeling being possibly retriggered as it is not all gone from the system. The amount of time needed for a feeling to diminish can vary tremendously, so patience is important—it might take hours. There is no attempt to make the unresourceful feeling go away or change—it is accepted for what it is and allowed to run its course until it dissolves of its own accord. n3. Once the intensity of the feeling has reduced to null, a sense of peacefulness around the event or subject that triggered the feeling in the first place is reported. If that peacefulness is not present, it is likely that related feelings are present, and each in turn would be handled like the first, until the peacefulness arises. n4. Some insight into what was going on for us, what meaning we can give to the fact that we had strong feelings about an incident, can and often does arise after holding oneself in the peacefulness for a while. nThere are a small number of techniques that I have found that incorporate processes to facilitate complete resolution of the unresourceful or excessive feeling, and in this article I shall mention one that if properly used, has a very high success rate: Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). EFT makes use of a gentle interaction with the body’s energy meridian system, usually involving tapping with the fingers on certain energetic intersection points. Some have described it as being like acupuncture without needles. EFT has been widely used by many thousands of people to resolve phobias, fears, pains, and emotional wounds.nnIf the healing process you are presently using does not give you long-lasting resolution (the problem keeps resurfacing, despite the temporary relief you experience), you may want to look for someone to guide you through a properly run, fully associated session of EFT or a similar process. You can find a link to EFT practitioners on the main EFT Web site (http://www.emofree.com). True resolution comes from honoring the feeling, and that means staying in it until it dissolves of its own accord. nnI am not surprised by the resistance to this concept of resolution I have encountered from some practitioners of traditional cognitive-oriented therapies. Besides not answering the apparently common human tendency toward complicated methods, it is often difficult for a practitioner to watch someone else be in the depths of his pain without the practitioner’s own pain being triggered. However, once we have healed our own pain, it becomes far easier to patiently support those doing their three-step healing work. n nThis article is excerpted from Robert’s recent book The Missing Link to Your Emotional Healing Success.nnn** This article is one of 101 great articles that were published in 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life. To get complete details on “101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life”, visit http://www.selfgrowth.com/greatways3.html n