Emotional Healing
How can you enjoy life while feeling depressed? And how many people do you have around you, that really understand what it's like to be in your shoes?
The ongoing emotional and mental pain can wear anyone down to the point where life becomes a struggle, but there is a way out of the hopelessness and even the slightest improvement can have a positive effect on your situation.
Freedom from anxiety and depression is a liberation in the true sense of the word. Let's give the emotions some attention.
Negative Emotions
We are open to our emotions when we are happy, but we reject them when we are feeling low. This is the human conditioning or our nature, if you like.
We do whatever we can to get rid of unpleasant emotions, that includes exercising, listening to loud music, eating, sleeping, having sex, drinking alcohol, doing drugs and even committing suicide.
We are always shunning away from painful emotions and more so than not, we are afraid of them. The first time you voluntarily give attention to unpleasant feelings, can be a totally overwhelming experience, for the most part because of fear.
The emotions are not of any immediate danger to us, but we tend to be afraid of them. Given time and practice, you will get used to giving attention to painful emotions and develop an almost neutral relation to them. Fear is replaced with a sense of security. Let's move on to emotional healing.
Gentle Emotional Healing
I recommend a gentle approach to emotional healing so you can familiarize yourself with the unpleasant emotions, one step at the time. This makes the process smoother.
Let's approach the emotions with love and care, this can not be over-emphasized. You have avoided the painful emotions for years, now it's time to give them gentle and loving attention.
First, a few words about healing in general. Crying is one of the most relieving and effective forms of healing. So, I recommend that you welcome the tears just like a farmer welcomes rain.
Then, I suggest you seek help from someone with experience of emotional healing. Choose a therapist you feel comfortable with, this naturally speeds up the healing since you are able to relax in her presence.
It's equally important that you are at ease with the type of therapy you are in. Let me recommend three forms of emotional healing.
Talk Therapy
I'm for plain and simple talk therapy where you get a chance to express your feelings and thoughts, which is the very heart of healing. It's so relieving to talk about your situation to someone who really listens, it's almost like letting the air out of a balloon.
There are many ways of approaching emotional healing, let's take a look at an alternative method.
Reiki Healing
I'll never forget the first time I received healing. I was deeply depressed at the time and desperate to ease the emotional pain. The unpleasant emotions were getting too hard to bear.
As the gifted healer put her palms to my chest I felt waves of soothing warmth flow into me, I had never experienced anything like it. With the added dimension of healing energy, I find reiki even more gentle than talk therapy.
A reiki session is usually a combination of talk therapy and hands-on healing. As a reiki healer, I recommend this form of healing to anyone who is open to it. Google the word reiki for more information on energy healing. Let's touch on relaxation.
Healing Meditation
After having lived with unpleasant emotions for months or even years, deep relaxation becomes a wonderful relief. It effectively dissolves physical and mental tension and is easy to learn.
Meditation can bring about very positive changes with light forms of anxiety and depression. I strongly recommend healing meditation. No previous experience needed, practice makes perfect...
Best of luck!
Buddhist Emotional Healing
In this post we'll take a look at how to heal unpleasant emotions with awareness. We will also compare how Buddhist emotional healing differs from conventional talk therapy.
Regardless what type of healing method you choose, it's extremely important that you work with someone you feel comfortable with, since healing cannot take place when the body and mind are tense.
Also keep in mind that it takes time to heal emotional pain, you may have to work on it for years. But I can assure you that there is a way out of the hopelessness...
Awareness Heals Unpleasant Emotions
Normally, we avoid anything in life that is unpleasant and that includes negative emotions. But once you give relaxed attention to your unpleasant emotions, you purify or heal the negative energy. All you have to do is lie down on your back, close your eyes and give relaxed attention to the unpleasant sensations in your body. Practice for 5-20 minutes at the time.
For someone who is depressed, for example, the mental state is dominated by negativity which makes it easy to become aware of unpleasant emotions. On the other hand, if you're not feeling particularly unhappy while doing healing meditation, you can think of a painful situation from your childhood. That would put you in touch with painful emotions.
Whenever you give relaxed attention to negative emotions, accept that the healing process is somewhat unpleasant. Giving attention to negative mental states is a form of acceptance. This is really all you need to know to get started with this type of healing.
Buddhist Emotional Healing Versus Talk Therapy
If Buddhist emotional healing purifies the mind, then talk therapy could be said to ease the emotional pressure. In my experience, talk therapy can quickly improve your mental state to a certain degree.
If you are deeply depressed, I would strongly recommend a few sessions of talk therapy. It feels so good when someone really listens and gives you attention; afterwards, you experience a great relief, as if something has been lifted off your shoulders.
Talk therapy does not heal as deeply as Buddhist emotional healing, but it certainly works. Therefore, I recommend the combination of the two.
Talk therapy eases the emotional pain while giving relaxed attention to your unpleasant emotions, purifies your mind at the deepest level.
