Many people are looking for healing. I wonder as a therapist how to help people that look for healing. Everyone is in charge of their own healing. I cannot force mental well-being or healing or health on anyone. Ultimate health comes from God and I look back at Christ’s life and the healing He performed during His mortal ministry. People were always asking Him to have mercy on them and heal them. They sought out healing from Jesus Christ. He never forced it on anyone. The success of their being healed depended fully on their faith, in other words, it depended on their mental and spiritual orientation. When the children of Israel were bitten by fiery flying serpents all they had to do was look at the brass serpent fashioned by Moses to be healed and live. There was an element of trust in the healer and a belief in a healed state. Did those seeking healing from Christ trust He could heal them?
“As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.” – Carl Jung
In a therapeutic setting, clients must desire healing above anything else. I can validate despair, depression, anxiety, or any negative experience, but we must be able to move on from wallowing in despair. Therapy is about change and healing, everything else is window dressing to get to that ultimate goal. You must want things to be different and be willing to face your fear of change and handle an amount of discomfort to realize that change. Most clients have goals coming into therapy that naturally guide them to change in achieving said goals.
If you have a destination in mind (healing) the journey will make more sense. It is normal to feel lost and despair when you know you need healing and when you feel broken. We might have to get our bearings in this pit of despair and gulf of misery. How did you get here? What did not work? What were you aiming for?
Therapy is usually 50 minutes of working through specifying your goals and processing your progress in attaining those goals. The rest of the week, roughly 111 hours, is your time to make progress and do things differently. The change occurs during the rest of the week. Usually, you want to put those goals in a place to remind you what you need to be doing differently. A consistent change in behavior leads to a different outcome. There also needs to be a change in self-evaluation, self-worth, and self-image. What do you believe about yourself? Which parts of the beliefs about yourself are true? Which parts are false? Part of change is challenging these false perceptions and beliefs of yourself and bolstering yourself with true ideas and beliefs about yourself and life.
A final part of healing is to have corrective emotional experiences. Some situations might elicit strong emotions that seem intolerable. Understand that emotions cannot kill you. Emotions are like the tide, they change and do not stay the same. A sublime truth of existence is that you can modify your emotions. You don’t have to stay mad, but you can drill down into the deeper, more vulnerable emotions to understand the root of anger. You can withstand and overcome fear.
As behaviors, thoughts, and emotions are changed and modified, you move through your own healing.
