Methods of Healing Old Grievances and Wounds
✨Video yourself saying what you would say to X person. And this important-listen back to it after you’re done recording. In essence, you are witnessing yourself.
✨The classic write out the letter to what you want to say to the person. Then, burn it. (You can also send it. This requires discernment and expectation management. Can the other person receive your message well? Are you okay with them not receiving it well as long as you get a chance to voice your stuff?)
✨Ask a friend to hold some space for you to discuss the entirety of the drama and validate your experiences. “I’m sorry to hear that. It sucks that this happened to you. etc.”
✨EFT/Tapping. A healing modality that blends accupressure points and affirmation work (highly recommend, lots of resources on the internet that goes more deeply into this)
✨Memory rewriting/timeline therapy. Bring up the old memory that has a lot of charge around it. Then, imagine yourself doing something differently-could be standing up for yourself, or fighting someone off. Don’t be afraid to get ridiculous with this. Like, I imagine beating people up all the time, because it’s cathartic! I know it’s not something I would do in real life (besides for physical defence purposes). The other thing is, imagine the other person doing something differently. Saying something you wanted to hear, or even apologizing. We can’t change the past, but we can change the texture of the memories that live inside of us.
✨Avoid spiritual bypassing. Spiritual bypassing is trying to embody the highest perspective before moving through the steps before that-there’s a natural progression to emotions. The step above depression is anger, the next step above anger is courage, the next step is neutrality, etc. For example, by allowing myself to be ‘petty’ and imagine beating people up, it naturally lends itself to eventually having compassion for that person. But it is a process and I cannot skip the steps. (one caveat is-if i find i have been in the anger mode for a while, this is often the case of needing to forgive myself to move on). And note: there is a difference between intellectually understanding what the highest perspective is, and embodying that perspective. We can know what that perspective is, while working through the steps to embody it fully.
✨Related to spiritual bypassing, is self-gaslighting. Validate and believe in your own experiences.
✨Partner exercise: Have a friend be a stand-in for the person you would like the say the things to but are unable to. For the person being the stand-in, it’s important to maintain the gaze because its the witnessing that is powerful here. (Credit to Marcus Fung for this tip!)
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Photo Credit: Navodhi Ranatunga
