Self-healing methods

There is no one-size-fits-all standard template. You don’t need to force yourself to meet anyone’s “healing standards.” Finding the smallest action that allows your emotions to flow naturally and allowing yourself to temporarily stop in bad emotions is the most effective self-healing.

A while ago, I met a client who was 27 years old. She had just ended a three-year relationship. Everyone around her was giving her advice: to travel, to be busy with work, and to find another one quickly. She forced herself to follow these "standard answers" for half a month, signed up for a fitness card, and rushed on weekends. The three social events seemed lively, but one night she was squatting in front of the refrigerator, digging into half a can of strawberry jam that was one month expired, and crying until she couldn't breathe. She even felt sad and demanded that she "come out" before the end of the month, but she pushed herself into a dead end.

When it comes to self-healing, many people's first reaction is to "find the root cause." This is a common idea in the psychoanalytic orientation: Your current emotional breakdown for no reason and the pitfalls you repeatedly step into in intimate relationships are mostly related to the unfinished complexes in your early years. Find the root cause and talk to your past self, and the knots in your heart will naturally open up. I saw a girl who was always afraid of the dark and dared not sleep alone. She was forgotten by her parents at a relative's house when she was in the first grade of elementary school. She woke up in the middle of the night and there was no one at home. She cried for two hours and no one responded. Later, she tried to write a letter to her little self, saying, "Now that I have grown up, I will always be with you and will never leave you alone again." After writing, her fear of the dark really improved a lot.

But if you say, "I don't want to think about the past and it bothers me when I think about my childhood," that's totally fine. Practitioners of the cognitive behavioral school (CBT) do not ask you to dig so deeply into the past. They are more concerned about whether your current thoughts are misunderstood. For example, if you just messed up a project and you feel like, "I can't do anything well, I'm a loser in this life," then you don't need to talk about your childhood. Just take a piece of paper, write down your idea on the left, and list the things you've accomplished since childhood on the right. Even if it's "double hundred in the third grade of elementary school," or "my friends said the milk tea I made last time was really delicious," you'll find out how untenable that idea just now is. There is no right or wrong between these two ideas. Whichever one you can accept is the best.

There is a very popular saying on the Internet right now, saying that self-healing requires "reconciliation with the family of origin." This is actually very controversial. The "reconciliation" mentioned in the theory of family system arrangement actually means that you have to get rid of the obsession that "parents must be perfect" and reconcile with the child in your heart who expects perfect parents. It does not mean that you have to bite the bullet and shake hands with the parents who have hurt you. But many clinical workers will tell you directly: For those who have experienced severe emotional neglect or even abuse, "not reconciling" is the greatest self-care. I have a friend whose parents favored sons over daughters since she was a child. After graduating from college, she rarely went home and paid alimony every year. Someone advised her before that "it's your parents after all, forget it." She directly replied, "I don't hate them. That's the biggest concession. Why do you want me to reconcile?" ”Don't tell me, since she gave up the obsession of "reconciliation", her overall condition has improved a lot, and she will no longer be internally conflicted over a few words from her parents.

In fact, many useful healing methods don’t require you to spend much money or time at all. I spent a month working on a project, and my whole body collapsed. I tried mindfulness meditation recommended by many people. As a result, after sitting for ten minutes, all I could think about was "I still have three reports to write" and "Whether I said the wrong thing in the message I just sent to the client." Another colleague’s method of decompressing is even more interesting. She specializes in saving express delivery boxes. She stacks them in a pile and folds them flat one by one. She doesn’t think about anything while folding, and just focuses on aligning the edges of the paper shells. After folding the pile, she neatly arranges it and sells it at the scrap station. After selling it, she can buy a popsicle for three to five yuan, and the bad mood is sorted out along with the paper shell. Some people also like to shine shoes, some like to take out clothes and fold them one by one, and some like to copy ancient poems. These seemingly "useless" little things essentially pull you out of the messy emotions and allow you to focus on the specific actions of the moment, which are much more effective than deliberate "healing".

Of course, I have to be honest. If your bad mood has lasted for more than two weeks, you can't eat or sleep well, you can't be interested in anything, or you even have unexplained physical pain, then don't bear it, see a professional psychological counselor or go to the psychiatry department of the hospital. Self-healing is to help you deal with daily emotional minor colds. If it really develops into pneumonia, you still have to see a doctor. This is a step that cannot be skipped.

In fact, in the final analysis, self-healing is not an advanced course that needs to be learned specifically. To put it bluntly, it is your ability to coax yourself. Just like when you were a child and it hurt when you fell, your parents would give you a candy and you wouldn't cry. Now that you've grown up, just find that candy for yourself. It doesn’t matter whether other people’s candies are chocolate or fruit candies, the one you like to eat is the most effective.