Wondering what self-healing is all about?
Tired of feeling stuck or like you’re just going around in circles in life?
Are you always focused on everyone else but starting to resent them all for it? (When is it going to be time for me?)
Or maybe you’re feeling dissatisfied with life: like you woke up one day and the spark and joy that you used to know was totally gone.
I used to feel exactly the same way. And I was so confused by it.
Didn’t I do everything I was “supposed” to do? I followed the rules of life: achieved the marriage, the apartment, the career. So then why wasn’t I actually excited about any of it?
While it took me years to answer that question for myself, the short story is that I’d gotten so used to doing what I was supposed to do that I forgot to take care of me. I was a chronic codependent and people-pleaser. And while I was busy building that Good-On-Paper life, I was also really good at ignoring all the signs that something was really really wrong.
I had fainting spells. Autoimmune issues. Low self-worth, which certainly was not helped by getting married to a narcissist.
If you know my story, you know what happened next: The Cosmic 2×4 Moment.
My marriage suddenly imploded and so did everything else. I found myself moving into my childhood bedroom with a huge sense of shame and an even bigger sense of confusion.
Again, it took time to work through all of that.
I didn’t know it at back then but what I really needed was a ton of healing:
- Healing my low self-worth
- Healing my codependence
- Healing the small-t traumas that made me believe I wasn’t powerful or lovable
- Healing my fear of going after my dreams
If you’re living an Good-On-Paper life, but you’re struggling to find happiness, I want you to know you can heal yourself too.
When you’ve lived your whole life thinking that “This is just the way it is!” it’s hard to believe that you could ever be capable of calm confidence and life satisfaction.
But trust me darling, you can.
It’s time to stop waiting for your life to magically fix itself! Dive in and start doing this self-healing work. I promise you, it will be worth it.
A Simple Guide To Self-Healing: 8 Tips To Get You Started
Self Healing Tip #1:
Radical Self-Acceptance
One of the biggest problems I see with people on their personal growth journey is a simple lack of self-acceptance.
Like everything else in life, you can come to this practice with love–or with self-loathing. You might be showing up with self-loathing and self-disrespect simply because that’s the only way you know how to be with yourself.
However, this isn’t your fault.
Most of us were punished as children, by our parents, or while we were in school. As such, we subconsciously picked up the lesson that we deserve those punishments unless we can achieve perfection.
But of course, perfection doesn’t exist. So we’re left punishing ourselves all the time thinking that if we do it enough we’ll finally end up feeling satisfied with ourselves sometime down the road.
The truth is self-acceptance is a practice. In a society where we’re told day after day that we’re not enough, it’s a radical act to truly love oneself. It’s a radical act to accept yourself, just as you are, without a shot of Botox, the latest It-bag, or fresh highlights. It’s a radical act to accept your sometimes disastrous life, your “f*ck ups”, your messiness, to accept everything about the complicated puzzle that is you.
But if you don’t love and accept yourself first, you will always be headed down a path of more punishment and self-loathing.
So start your self-healing journey here and let it begin to shift everything for you.
Self Healing Tip #2:
Ditch Perfectionism
Perfectionism is something so many of us struggle with. Again, it’s something we’ve been taught to aim for. But when you spend your whole life trying to be something you will simply never become, you will always feel disappointed with yourself.
It’s a neverending cycle. And worse! It can keep you stuck in old patterns for much longer than you need to.
By the way, perfectionism isn’t just about creating unrealistically high standards for yourself. It can also be about setting unrealistic expectations for the future. “I’ll start again fresh on Monday.” “Someday I’ll be the person who wakes up and runs 5k and drinks a green juice.”
If you constantly derail your own success because you messed up your diet or missed a workout, this is you. It’s also you if you genuinely think that tomorrow you’ll magically wake as The Person Who Wants To Do The Thing.
In my case, perfectionism caused me to just opt-out of life. I was paralyzed by the thought of making mistakes, or getting criticism so I just chose the “easy” path wherever I could. (So take it from me: this approach doesn’t work either!)
In healing, the first step of the process is simply acknowledging the problem. If any of the symptoms above rang true for you, congratulations! You are now a recovering perfectionist. Make it your aim to notice that behavior and shift towards something better.
Self Healing Tip #3:
Shut The Inner Mean Girl Down
We all know how much harsh criticism hurts when we hear it from other people. But what most of us fail to acknowledge, is it hurts just as much when you criticize yourself.
Again, this isn’t your fault. You might be totally used to that loud and critical Inner Mean Girl/Guy voice. But please know: they aren’t really you. They are the voices and words of your parents or teachers. They are often the voices of people you saw on TV or read in a book.
And the reason why they are so good at hurting you is because they are trying to control you–not because they’re actually watching out for your best interests.
While this voice seems familiar, it’s really the Scared Lizard part of your brain, doing it’s damn best to try to make you “safe”–aka stay exactly the same. The more you challenge yourself or try to grow your life from the expected, the louder this voice will get.
For a long time, I believed everything my Inner Mean Girl told me. I let her boss me around and keep me small. It was only when I realized that she didn’t actually want the best for me that I was finally able to break that strong spell and (mostly) leave her behind.
She still pops up now and again of course! But I’m much better at not paying attention to what she says. And with practice and lots of self-healing, the same can be true for you too.
Self Healing Tip #4:
Heal Your Small-T Traumas
This might seem like a strange thing to mention in a conversation about healing but there’s one thing I want you to know: you’re not broken.
There’s nothing in the world that could make you unworthy, undeserving, or unlovable. That’s simply not possible.
So why does your brain believe otherwise?
You are simply suffering from a serious case of limiting beliefs. Something traumatic happened to you when you were young. (Think: emotionally upsetting, not only the “big” trauma events usually associated with that word.) Because you were upset, your brain decided to make note of that moment and try to prevent it from ever happening to you again.
However, while your brain had a good intention, it actually went a little overboard. What was a useful way of managing that one moment in time has now become a chronic way of thinking and acting that’s doing more harm than good.
For example, maybe your parents shamed you for asking for a new toy while out shopping one day.
Seems harmless enough on the surface, right? But as a child, you might have taken that moment very seriously. Your brain might now think: it’s not safe to ask for what I want. And that one simple limiting belief might be impacting your career and adult relationships. This is exactly why you need self-healing.
Many of the subconscious “lessons” we learned as children were not actually true. And they’re definitely not actually helpful! If you’ve got low self-worth or you’re constantly struggling with love or romance, then this is definitely an area to look into healing.
Self Healing Tip #5:
Soothe Your Inner Child
As you just learned, despite being grown, most of us not as far removed from our childhoods as we’d like to think. We all have a wounded Inner Child (or many of them!) who’s still crying out for love, support, or validation.
That might sound Eye-Roll-Y at first. But please start to notice yourself the next time you’re feeling triggered. When we’re upset, at times we can seem not like our real selves. It’s like someone else has taken over. If you look a little closer, you’ll see some of your same childhood protest behaviors are coming out of your adult self! You want to scream, or hide, or hit back. But that’s not your logical adult brain at work. That’s your wounded Inner Child, acting out in the way s/he always has.
Again, understanding (or innerstanding) is everything when it comes to self-healing. Every trigger is an opportunity to understand what inside of us is actually hurting. When you figure that piece out, then you create a roadmap for your self-healing journey.
Self Healing Tip #6:
Get Boundaried
Your energy should be one of your top priorities in life. But the harsh truth is that many of us are an absolute energetic mess.
Think: phone addictions. Constant celeb (or IRL) gossiping. Doomscrolling. People-pleasing. Doing things you don’t want to do and never ever saying “no”.
There’s only so much of you to go around. And if you’re spending tons of time in other people’s business or doing things for others, then what’s left for you?
All of these things are a form of self-abandonment. Yes, in the moment, reading the lastest Kardashian gossip might seem very fun indeed. And it’s not that doing that is inherently bad or toxic. But if you choose the gossip (or your friends or your boyfried) above your own needs and desires, you are abandoning yourself.
Your energy (attention + time + actions) is a vote for something. What are you really voting for?
As “good girls” (or boys) we were taught to put others first. But the idea was that if you do that, you will be rewarded for your behavior.
In adulthood, there’s definitely not always a reward. And worse! If you’re constantly putting your needs and desires on a shelf, no one else is going to notice–much less, take you aside and remind you to prioritize yourself. So that’s what I’m here to do.
That part is up to you. And yes, it might even feel bad or selfish to start advocating for yourself. But neither of those things are true. This life is 100% on you and it’s time to start making your own joy a priority.
Self Healing Tip #7:
Build Self-Trust
One of the things people struggling to make themselves feel good are looking for is confidence.
And there are a million blog posts and courses and everything that will tell you how to do that.
But I’m going to boil it all down into one very-easy-to-implement hint:
Build your self-trust.
That’s really what confidence is. Our brain likes to think confidence comes from figuring out every bad possibility in life ahead of time. However, the only thing that strategy is good for is creating anxiety and overwhelm.
You simply cannot prepare yourself like that for every single one of life’s little unexpected zig zags.
What you can do instead, is start to work on trusting yourself.
That really means a lot of different things: trusting what you think and feel. Trusting that you’ll stick to your core values in any situation. Trusting that you’ll do the very best for yourself at all times. Trusting that you can figure things out.
If you’re stuck in a pattern of always needing outside opinions or guidance, all of this can be a very tall order indeed. But trust me my love, self-trust is the only path to freedom. When you trust yourself, you won’t need so much from the outside world. You won’t have to subtly manipulate or micromanage. You won’t have to try so hard or plan so much because you know you have your own back no matter what.
Start by tuning into what you really want. Even if you “don’t hear anything” at first, keep asking. Keep listening. And stop searching for the answers you need in other people. You’ve closed off access to your own inner power for your whole life. But I promise, if you just keep asking the right questions, that inner wisdom will start flowing back out again.
Self Healing Tip #8:
Stop Waiting To Live Your Dream Life
Stop putting off happiness for some vague date in the future. You secretly think you need to get married first, or get permission from “somebody” or to just feel “ready”. And in the meantime, your life is falling short of what you really want.
Someday never comes. Neither does the White Knight, the winning lottery ticket, or the apology from your ex. Stop waiting for things in your outer world to appear a certain way before you get busy with creating the life your soul desires.
Yes, of course building the life of your dreams isn’t always easy. But it also sucks to look in the mirror every day knowing you’re not living up to your potential..
Again, I don’t mean trying to live life the way you’re “supposed to” or how your parents want you to. Self-healing is all about living life for you. The scariest part about really doing this is knowing other people might be surprised or disappointed or have all sorts of weird opinions about you. When you challenge the status quo, you’re also challenging the perspective of everyone around you.
But you know what? Let them be challenged. Let them have their opinions (silent or not). After all, you already know how heavy it feels to be living out of alignment. Be willing to take the risk and find out what it feels like to truly live your life, your way. Listen to your dreams and then make it your mission to manifest as many as possible
(You might just find out that those opinions never mattered as much as you thought they would anyway!)
Now that I’ve done this self-healing work, I know just how important it is. It’s like I’m constantly being revealed new layers of understanding myself and my true inner power.
Not gonna lie though: self-healing is not always easy to do this work. Sometimes I’d rather hide from my inner truth with a big old box of Hagen Daz. However, the more I do this work, the more results I see and the more at peace I am with myself. If that sounds good to you, then I encourage you to save this guide and to start taking your own first steps!
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