Wisdom Within
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Holistic Health
Five Steps to Healing Emotional Wounds
by Nancy Russell, M.D.
Emotional wounds take longer to heal than most physical wounds. These wounds are
more subtle and can be hidden from one’s self. It is important to dig into the hurts of our life. How we deal with these hurts is important.
In the book, Feelings Buried Alive Never Die, the author associates physical
symptoms with different kinds of feelings. The feelings of hurt can come out as
anxiety, depression, anger, rage, fear, guilt, resentment, need for approval, rejection,
overwhelmed burden and also chronic physical pain. Emotional trauma can be trapped in muscles and other parts of our body.
The first step is to reveal our hurts. As we talk about them, they are brought into the
light. Open up to a trusted person or a counselor or a pastor. Depending on your beliefs, open up to God or your higher power. Pour out your heart and the healing can begin. GIve yourself permission and allow yourself to feel whatever feelings you may feel. These feelings are much easier to change if you accept and own them rather than deny them and pretend they don’t exist.
The second step is to release those who have wounded you. If you hold onto bitterness, desire to get even, hurt someone back or be revengeful; this leads to your suffering and comes back to haunt you. There can only be momentary satisfaction. For example, eating rat poison doesn’t hurt the other person, it hurts you. Walk in forgiveness and turn the situation over to God, the Universe or Nature. As you forgive, you can give up the bitterness and let it go. Inner peace translates directly to more confidence and better personal and business decisions.
An example of release from the book, Feelings Buried Alive Never Die by Karol
Truman is as follows: “If you major feeling is a need for approval then say, Spirit, please locate the origin of my feelings that created such a need for approval in me. With total forgiveness and unconditional love, I allow every physical, emotional and spiritual problem, and inappropriate behavior based on the negative origin recorded in my DNA to transform. I choose approving of myself. I feel approval of myself. I choose being cherished. I choose feeling loved. I feel loved. I am loved. I am connected to all those I love.”
The third step to healing our emotional wounds is to replace the lies with the truth.
These are the lies that your parents or authority figures told you: You’re no good, you’re a loser, you never do anything right, you’re not good enough etc. Physical, emotional and sexual abuse is also based on lies. Restore your emotional well being by replacing the lies with the truth of living a good life and not repeating the lies of the past.
The fourth step is to heal the wounds and grief of the past, reshape your life by learning how to be a positive, balanced person. Replace negative feelings with positive feelings. Positive affirmations and prayers are examples of how to start this process. This is not always easy to do on your own. Reach out to your trusted person or higher power to restore and reshape your life. This process doesn’t happen overnight so be patient with yourself as life situations arise and bring up past hurts. You can transform undesirable feelings so that they no longer hinder your growth.
The fifth step to emotional healing to to reach out with love for others. You can bring
hope and healing to others when you are your journey to healing. To start your personal journey, the resources I have found are a wonderful counselor, an amazing pastor, the book as mentioned above, Feelings Buried Alive Never Die and the Oaks of Righteousness Class at the VIneyard Church is the Kansas City Northland. I encourage you to reach out to the resources that speak to you and begin your journey to optimal health today.
Nancy Russell, M.D.
has been a holistic Internal Medicine physician in the
Kansas City northland
for over 30 years at
5140 N. Antioch Road in Kansas City, MO.
Her phone number is
816-453-5545 and website=
is www.nancyrussellmd.com where you can get more information.
Dr. Russell is board
certified in holistic medicine and is a member of the American Holistic Medical Association and a prior board member.