“There is a field beyond right and wrong. I will meet you there.”
– Rumi
Welcome the final section of our guide on How to Start Healing Wounds. Before we dive in, let’s set expectations. Everything here is for self-help. There is no one right answer for everyone. But I believe these tools and ideas are an excellent place to start. I hope that through this journey, we can meet beyond the field of right and wrong.
Again, healing your wounds is extremely personal and subjective. Approach this process mindfully, with great self-love, let go of judgment, and go at your own pace. As you progress and get deeper into the healing, you likely will feel and experience a lot of new things. My ask of you is that you take it carefully and never push yourself. If at any time you feel too uncomfortable, scared, or you simply want help, please seek immediate professional assistance. Therapists, coaches, and other modalities not only go hand in hand with the healing but often are key for progress for many people. The old saying is that we all climb the same mountain, but we each walk our own path. Be smart and be careful. I will do my best to map out some additional resources to consider both at the end.
Please also keep this in mind. Only you can ever know yourself. While there are wonderful therapists, coaches, and guides, ultimately, you have to walk the path and do the work. I hope that this guide serves as a first step so that you begin to heal and identify what needs work. Then when and if you find your therapist, coach, or guide, you have some good starting points to expedite the process.
Jackson MacKenzie mapped out some fantastic tools in his book Whole Again: Healing Your Heart and Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse. I highly recommend his book for a deeper dive into this healing process and for some wonderful additional insights.
Here are five steps for the healing process
Step One: Awareness
Step Two: Self Love
Step Three: External to Internal
Step Four: The Core Wound
Step Five: Rebirth and Second Chances
Step One: Awareness
Becoming aware is the first step.
“An antidote to fear is acceptance.”
Jim Dethmer
The first step in your journey is to realize and gain awareness of your patterns, wounds, and the signs you have healing to do. Let’s start with the most common side effect of the protective self, numbness.
Do you ever feel numb or wonder why you don’t know how you feel? Most people go through life, never realizing they are numb. The numbness is one of the purposes of the protective self. It creates an almost “layer of amnesia” that it serves to maintain. You may have noticed throughout your life an “uncomfortable, indescribable feeling: numb, void, blocked up, hollow, tight, empty, or bored.” *
It is underneath this numbness of the protective self that your truth is hidden away. Remember, emotions are stored in your body, so the defense of the protective self to a wound is to separate and numb you from that part of yourself so that you can survive and keep on going.
Recognizing and becoming aware of this from a gentle, caring perspective is the first step. It helps to remember that our ego does everything possible to stop us from seeing our wounds as our protective self is integrated into our ego. Keep in mind then that your protective self formed, automatically and subconsciously, to protect you from something that at the time was too overwhelming. You could not cope with or handle the emotions at the time, but now you can. Because behind those wounds is your heart and your love. If you want to live your life to its fullest, you must return to your self-love.
As Mr. MacKenzie points out, we often start off saying: “What nonsense. I’m totally fine except for this feeling of boredom!” or “I have no issues except that tight feeling in my heart” or “I am completely functional except for that constant void in my stomach.” * Does this sound familiar? Can you see that you can’t even feel this pain because your body is preventing you from experiencing it? Understandably, people suffering from wounds and trauma believe that they are completely fine except for this vague sense of numbness.
The good news is that there are ways back into your heart. But you need to start by becoming mindful, present and start to work on both understanding feelings and asking your body to let you past the numbness to begin to experience feelings. Here are some steps to begin to sit with your feelings and emotions.
As you begin this process, do not try to label or analyze the sensations. Don’t try to tell yourself a story about the sensation. Just feel because you cannot “think” your way into feelings. Feelings are in the body, and because the left brain tries to understand and control things, you need to calm it down and let yourself connect to and begin to develop a stronger connection with your body and feelings without judgment. The idea is to move from fighting your feelings, letting go of the anxieties and instead listen to the message they bring, and then just let them go.
You can try this exercise. Take a few minutes right now, and just focus on the emptiness in your body and see what happens. There is no goal, no target, nothing more than just feeling whatever comes up. Don’t judge, don’t get mad, just kindly notice it and any thoughts that come up with it. There is no need to get caught up with corresponding emotions. All that matters is that you begin to give yourself permission to feel.*
Step Two: Self Love
I will say it again and again; healing is hard. We will only do the work if we first believe we are worthy of healing, and only if we care enough about ourselves to make it a priority. To do this, we must first begin to find self-love for ourselves.
As we lightly discussed in the previous sections, our perception of the world and ourselves shape how we view and react to things. As we get clarity and heal, we will learn to and eventually find our purpose and path. A method to begin that process is to brainwash ourselves to return to loving ourselves. Love is the key, and loving yourself is the most important thing you can ever learn to do.
Over time this self-love will grow into unconditional self-love, and your whole world will shift. First, look at our definition of what self-love is here. If you want to review how we define love, look here.
Here are two guides on how to approach self-loving meditation.
Step Three: External to Internal
The next goal is to move from focusing on the external distractions to returning to what is inside us. With mindfulness and daily practice, we can begin to notice our protective selves’ tricks and patterns, and through that awareness, gradually regain control of our lives and our love. The beauty and added benefit are that as we move away from external measurements and distractions, we find what truly matters to us.
The path will be hard, as your protective self will fight hard and unfairly. External focuses often become our obsessions, trying to prove we are happy because of them. And you will likely have even stronger external urges and temptations as you progress. That is ok. It is just part of the process. You will probably feel worse in the short term, but you will begin to start feeling!! “You’re basically stopping your mind from entering this distraction overdrive mode, which slowly puts you on the same wavelength as the discomfort in your body. This is where non-judgmental mindfulness makes a huge difference.” *
As you move towards this work and internal focus, remember, you are the only one who can do the hard work to release the old messages and toxic defenses and reconnect yourself with love. But you got this, and you can do it!
Here is another exercise: Take a few deep breaths. And once again, feel past the numberless. You can do this anytime, but it is wonderful when you feel an impulse or urge to do something external. All you need to do when this happens is to stay with it. Don’t act on it, but try and feel. You are likely going to feel an impulse to do something else, just decline it, and you will have begun to take control. You might feel discomfort or bad through this. And that is good; you are feeling. The goal is to get past the automated responses and feel so that you can build up healthier newer responses in time. It sometimes helps just to close your eyes and imagine if you could just feel light and free in your own body without needing to accomplish or do anything.
Be mindful of resentment. Whether it is for yourself or another, it is a form of judgment layered with hatred, and it will only keep you from finding love for yourself. This goes to the state of mind moving away from the victim mentality that things happen to me to the growth mindset that things are happening for me. Everything can be a lesson, and you can learn, grow, and heal. The choice is yours.
Why to What
As we shift our mindsets, moving from why to what is powerful. Instead of focusing on why it is not working, focus on what can be done to improve the situation. It is more logical and future-oriented. Reframe your self-awareness. This leads to true introspection and learning rather than going down an endless rabbit hole of self-loathing, negativity, and victimhood.
It might help to keep in mind also that “Why “questions give our amygdala free rein. The “What” questions instead move us toward the more logical part of our brain so that we can respond instead of merely reacting.
Now is a good time to reflect on what wounds you think you might have and see if you have developed external focuses that are the opposite of your wounds. For example:
“Perfectionists secretly believe they are imperfect and deeply flawed. Codependents secretly believe they are worthless and never enough. Borderlines secretly feel they don’t exist, so they are constantly trying to prove their existence (drama, temper, overly emotional). Avoidants secretly believe they have no value, so they find it elsewhere. Sociopaths believe they are powerless, so they seek to dominate and seduce others. The first key to overcoming resentment is allowing it to be there. Understand that you were thrown into an impossible situation, and you did the best you could at the time.” *
As we progress, the most challenging part that we will dive into subsequently is releasing and letting go of the hurt through forgiveness (especially to yourself), gratitude, and mindfulness. I hope that as you progress, we will begin to find something new in you: unconditional love.
Resentment and rumination, might not seem healthy, but they can be used to develop unconditional love.
“Rumination can be one of the toughest things after a traumatic situation. It serves a purpose for a while (to get you out of the mess and figure out what happened). But eventually it just becomes a bad habit, keeping your mind stuck in obsessive analytical mode and closing off the heart. Trying to control or stop these thoughts can have the opposite effect, because it just strengthens the same rigid, critical, analytical type of thinking… So the next time you’re ruminating, try playing the role of a friendly observer who is watching you ruminate. You’re just listening, interested, and curious. You are not asking yourself to stop, or judging yourself in any way. So often we think that love is only offered when we are good or think good thoughts, so we try to do everything right all the time and berate ourselves when we stumble. Mindfulness and unconditional love challenge that belief. Unconditional means exactly that. You do not have to be “on” all the time. Your anger, resentment, depression, fear, shame, embarrassment—it is all welcomed and cared for. Every time you start ruminating, just put in a little mental reminder to add in this loving “friend” watching you ruminate. It’s really that simple. With time, that part of you will become automatic. This is the nature of habits. You will eventually start turning to this loving presence, rather than the rumination. It feels so much better in the body, like a soothing medicine, so powerful in washing everything away. Instead of trying to control or analyze our thoughts (which keeps us in the feedback loop), love activates different parts of our brain and body. This work will also help you discover the parts of yourself that resist this love: scream at it, scoff at it, doubt it, fear it. I felt it all around my heart. Remember, all of those parts of you are also welcomed unconditionally.” *
Emotional Triggers Are Keys Back to the Core Wound:
Because this takes time, often a long time, you are going to run into triggers and what appear to be setbacks. But that is a good thing because, as you become more mindful and self-loving, the things that set you off into running away, anger, etc., are the same things that are your keys to returning to and healing your core wounds. It might take you a lifetime, but as we heal, the wounds get lighter and lighter. The goal is to move from reacting in a toxic defensive way to developing responses in alignment with unconditional love for ourselves.
Story of the Thorn
“Imagine a little girl is rolling around in a field and gets a thorn prick in her side. It hurts a lot, but she doesn’t know how to get the thorn out, so she puts a bandage over it. The next day, her mom hugs her and she recoils in pain. The hug accidentally pushes against the thorn. She decides not to hug anyone anymore, and she goes upstairs to put on a heavy sweater. “There,” she says to herself. “That will protect me.” But the next day at recess, she was playing with her friends and fell off the monkey bars. She landed right on her side, and the sweater wasn’t enough protection from the thorn. She resolved never to play in the playground again, went home, and put on another sweater. This continued for months until she wore so many layers of clothes that she looked like an Eskimo in the dead heat of summer. She didn’t hug, she didn’t play, she didn’t do anything. But at least she was safe from the pain.
This is how emotional wounds and shame work. A part of ourselves is hurting, so we keep building protective layer upon layer to avoid the pain. But eventually all those protective layers suffocate us and prevent us from living happy lives. Additionally, they separate us even further from the wound that needs our attention. Triggers seem like a curse at first, because they feel so unpleasant, but in fact, triggers are our key back to the core wound—the thorn—so that we can resolve the thing we’re trying to hide.
In the above story, the girl finally takes out the thorn (or asks someone for help). It doesn’t feel very good, and it takes a while to heal, but once it’s out, there’s nothing left to hurt. The next day, she puts on a T-shirt and shorts, hugs her mom, and plays with her friends on the playground.”*
This story points out something important. We have a choice. As these thorns in life occur, instead of just ignoring them or letting them control you, you can slow down and take the time to remove them and get back on track. As we face and heal old and new thorns, we will be lead back to our truth. The best part is through practice and healing, it will become easier to live free from reactions and toxic defenses.
So whenever you feel discomfort, try something different. Notice it, then try and create a little space before reacting to just stay with it. In fact, if you can welcome it. It might be unpleasant, but it is what you need to put your attention to most. It is exposing your wounds, and in so, providing you a path to healing them.
The Box Story
“The Box Once upon a time there was a little girl. Her parents taught her a lot of messages that parents aren’t supposed to teach children: “No, you don’t matter. Your feelings are wrong. You are wrong. Our feelings matter more. You are bad.” Those messages were too confusing and painful for any little girl to understand. So an angel came down and gave her a box. “Here,” said the angel. “Put those messages in this box.” And so the little girl put the messages in the box. The angel closed the box for her. Suddenly the little girl didn’t hurt so much. She didn’t feel very good either. Sort of like . . . emptiness, and disconnected from the world around her. But that was better than the shame of feeling defective and denied love. As she grew up, she encountered more pain—bullies at school and abusive relationships. Fortunately, she had a solution for those things—the box! She put more bad feelings into the box and felt empty again. To avoid the feeling of emptiness, she fantasized about finding perfect love from someone else, and she offered perfect love to everyone. She copied other people and acted just like them, so they would never want to leave her! But despite her best efforts, the same thing kept happening . . . over and over again. And every time, she put the pain in a box and started over, determined to find the person who would make her feel whole and loved. Except the box was starting to get full. It started to spill over, and she couldn’t control it. She cried and yelled at people she cared about, which made them leave. Then she felt ashamed and buried those things deeper in the box, and struggled to keep it shut. “Why does the same thing keep happening to me?” she screamed. “Why does the world hate me? All I need is the perfect lover, and then I will be happy. But you keep sending me pain and rejection. I can’t take it anymore. My box is overflowing. How can I possibly find the perfect lover with this box inside me? I hate it!” That night, the angel appeared in her dreams. “Darling, the world does not hate you. The world loves you. I love you. So much. I am trying to guide you down a different path than the one you’re taking. I am trying to burst open your box, so you can feel the pain from so long ago—and heal it. But every time I remind you of this pain, you feel betrayed and block it away. It is not betrayal. It is an opportunity to finally open the box and become the pain inside. “You can spend the rest of your life running from this intolerable feeling of inner defectiveness that arises when you’re abandoned or rejected. You can keep avoiding it with grandiose fantasies and drama and crises and accomplishments and impulsive behaviors, but those things will not help you. “I gave you the box long ago because you were only a child and had no other way to cope. But you are an adult now, and you do not need this box. You can experience the pain inside, and you can find the true love on the other side—my love—the love you have always sought from others, inside your own heart.” When the girl awoke, she realized—for the first time in her life—just how loved she had always been. So she looked down at the box and said: “Okay, I’m ready.” And the angel watched proudly as the child began her long journey home.”*
A word about anxiety
Anxiety is one of the most commonly triggered responses of the protective self. It is interesting because it adds a layer of fear onto everything and can take over all of your thoughts. It can cause you to imagine bad or scary things happening to you and the people you love. It usually starts as a gauge of fear and dread, and it is hard to point this back to the core wound. While anxiety is extremely uncomfortable, it is a powerful sign, and the fear behind it is a path back into your body and healing. You will likely experience anxiety as you work through healing protective selves. In fact, as you get closer to your core wound, you should expect to feel like the world is closing in around you, expecting the worst around every corner.
You need to expect things to get worse before they get better. You probably will ask yourself, “why the hell am I doing this to myself? I feel so much worse than before.” That is a good thing! Feeling is the key, and Dr. Peck even holds out that depression is actually a signaling tool of the body that something is off that we need to address. So push through as you can because these feelings are the gateways to your body and healing. And as you move from external to internal, you will feel less and less disassociated from your true feelings.
Don’t try and stop or control these feelings. Just be there, and notice without judgment the feelings. This is where your unconditional self-love is so key because it will become your anchor in the storm. While anxiety and fear want you to believe these feelings are real, they are just distracting you from returning to your core wounds and healing.
Find your love, find your confidence, and just shake your head and smile at the fear. Just go slowly.
Self-Doubt
There is no blame here, there are no bad guys, only wounded souls and broken hearts and scrambled minds.
-Robert Burney.
Expect a considerable amount of self-doubt throughout the journey. You may hear voices telling you, “this isn’t real” or “my feelings are fake.” As your loving self-awareness gets stronger and you unravel the protective selves and eventually the wounds, you are going to feel a lot of new feelings. Stay strong on your path, and let the feelings pass. Let the unconditional love hold you through and let the voices pass. No matter how overwhelming or intolerable they might be, they will get better.
Self-love and forgiveness are the tools that will help you move past the walls and feelings. Offer yourself mercy, which is at the core of unconditional love.
“The whole point of self-forgiveness is realizing even if those darkest fears were true, you are still forgiven and loved. You don’t need to prove yourself anymore. That is the power of conditional love. Forgiveness ends this cycle, unlocks your heart, and allows you to start behaving in ways that you’re actually proud of. This gets you into a new loop – a virtuous cycle instead of a downward spiral. “*
Even if you struggle to forgive yourself, you can forgive yourself for being unable to forgive. That is unconditional love, and it is a step in the right direction. You are a good human being. You are worthy of love and mercy.
Forgiveness creates the space for love to rush in. For this purpose we can transform the gatekeeper of our heart into a celestial bodyguard, free of all preconceived notions, becoming our heart’s greatest ally. Actually forgiveness does not mean allowing someone who wronged you to forego his or her karmic debt, nor does it mean condoning or forgetting what was done.
– Guiditta Tornetta.
“It takes more than a one-time forgiveness and is more like learning to live in a continuous state of forgiveness… Having experience of betrayal means that we are identified with the ego personality programs that are telling us that we are being let down, taking a loss, experiencing a breach of trust or feeling victimized by something… The scar tissue in the emotional body is the grievance – the holding on to the idea that something bad was done to us… forgiveness actually dissolves the hard knot and relates the contraction, so the energy can get through your heart… Forgiveness releases the idea of betrayal held in the mind, and the contraction betrayal creates in the physical body leaves. It also releases the associated emotional content. “*
When you live with resentment, you close your hands tightly around your heart, hoping that no one will penetrate this strong-fisted protection. When you forgive, you open those hands, let your heart out to love again, freely and confidently. Why? Because evil cannot defeat you; evil cannot destroy your heart’s capacity to love.
– Dr. Robert Enright.
We don’t heal in isolation.
There is a lot of misinformation about healing and finding ourselves. While it is important to be comfortable being alone with yourself, the truth is that we do not heal in isolation. In fact, it is the protective self that causes most people to isolate themselves as it avoids the challenges we face in relationships and the feelings and triggers our protective wounds seek to avoid. While I am not saying that people in toxic states should expect things to go perfectly, I am saying that if a couple or family commits to healing and working together, then 1 + 1 can equal 3. We are tribal, and as you read about love, we can only love another human being, and it is in that reciprocation of love that we receive is as much or more than we give.
How to heal and move towards secure attachment?
While attachment wounds are not specific wounds per se, it’s the product of usually multiple wounds, but it could be just one. Nonetheless, it can be helpful in this process as we are healing to have some tools to use in our relationships to move towards secure attachment and ensure your relationship has the best odds of success. The following are things you can work on:
1) Be present and be focused in your relationship. Listen compassionately, with discipline and love.
2) Use the beam gleam look. This is a nourishing, I love you look. I appreciate you. I think you are great. Sending out the energy of love out of your eyes.
3) Attunement to your partner. Just be there for them in the way they need you to be.
4) Be sensitive to coming and going. Everyone handles touchpoints differently, so be mindful and aware of your partner’s needs. You can also build stability with a tool called the “Welcome home hug.” Hold someone till both of you calm down and regulate each other. You can also create a ritual together before sleeping. This joint attention and connection can be powerful. Engage in something together and intimate when hugging maybe even just touch each other’s tight spots of the body or do a gentle massage to bring some relaxation.
5) Practice easing and transitioning into your own space. So that you are ok with how your partner needs to come and go. Be an anchor, be an island.
6) Find time to be playful and creative. Novelty creates attraction in a relationship.
7) Be consistently and mindfully responsive to your partner and their needs. Look out for when a partner is crying out for help in perhaps a less than normal way. Stay in connection with what’s going on in life. Practice being more mindful of responding to communications. Be of the quality and type of communicator that your partner wants or needs.
Step Four: The Core Wound
So much of what we learn about love is taught by people who never really loved us.
– RH Sin
We have mostly focused on getting past the protective self and learning to feel and reconnect with ourselves. This path of self-love brings us back to our love and, eventually, the core wounds.
Wounds are energy, nothing more or less. They are not who we are. When we un-identify with our wounds, they dissolve. Wounds can be shallow or deep but are often an unresolved mess of guilt, shame, humiliation, abandonment, betrayal, and rejection. To heal, you need to be willing to sit with and finally process and accept these feelings and whatever memories or experiences they are tied to. That doesn’t mean you need to agree with them as truths, but consider the occurrences as facts. You are simply rewriting the story and how you chose to see and remember them.
As you spend more time in genuine acceptance of these wounds, they will become less and less uncomfortable and lighter and lighter.
The best part? Is that as you progress and release and heal layers, they never come back! Keep in mind healing can be time-intensive and very energy draining. Your sleep might even be disturbed. You might be tempted to regress to old bad patterns, but you won’t for long as your old toxic solutions are broken and no longer hold you back.
“One visualization that helps me a lot is to imagine the core wound is in my hands (rather than wrapped around my heart). When I hold it out in front of me, I can see it writhing and clawing, desperately clinging to control. It’s not a part of me anymore, but instead just an old energy that was born from fear. It is not who I am. Try imagining your wound in your hands, across the room, or dissolved altogether. This can take a lot of time and practice. Listen to the voices and fears that try to keep you inextricably linked to your wound, making it seemingly impossible to disconnect from it. Those are all just last-ditch efforts from the wound to keep its place in you.” *
Step Five: Rebirth and Second Chances
We can all be Legendary Phoenixes; through healing and growth, every day is a new beginning. The last stage of healing is to return to yourself and evolve over time new boundaries and responses.
You should take a moment to be proud of yourself. Just reading this guide you are doing the work. The work is hard, but everything happens for a reason. That reason is to bring us back to healing. To return your love -your truth. That is who you truly are, a beautiful shining heart at your core. The core you lost long ago, buried under protections in responses to a tough world. The path that leads you here was hard, but through it, you learned, and grow.
Welcome home to your body and to your love. It has always been waiting for you inside. All you needed to do was to let it out. Healing is one of the greatest things we can achieve in our lifetime.
“It takes more than a one-time forgiveness and is more like learning to live in a continuous state of forgiveness… Having experience of betrayal means that we are identified with the ego personality programs that are telling us that we are being let down, taking a loss, experiencing a breach of trust or feeling victimized by something… The scar tissue in the emotional body is the grievance – the holding on to the idea that something bad was done to us… forgiveness actually dissolves the hard knot and relates the contraction, so the energy can get through your heart… Forgiveness releases the idea of betrayal held in the mind, and the contraction betrayal creates in the physical body leaves. It also releases the associated emotional content. “*
As you return to yourself and no longer are controlled by your protective selves, let’s now look at creating new boundaries and mindful protections.
Boundaries
Some people, when they first get into Recovery, when they first start on a healing path, mistakenly believe that they are supposed to take down their defenses and learn to trust everyone. That is a very dysfunctional belief. It is necessary to take down the dysfunctional defense systems but we have to replace them with defenses that work. We have to have a defense system, we have to be able to protect ourselves. There is still a hostile environment out there full of wounded Adult Children whom it is not safe to trust.
Robert Burney, Codependency.
Your body created protecting responses because there is something worth protecting. As we heal, our challenge becomes knowing who we are, what is right for us, and loving ourselves enough to create and maintain healthy boundaries. This applies in everything from where you spend your time, who you spend it with, and how you let people treat you.
The amazing part of this spiritual growth is that as we experience unconditional love, we start to meet our own needs. This makes us stronger, healthier, and more capable of supporting and loving the people around us, rather than just depending on them.
One of the most impactful aspects of this is that you move away from your old stories. Your past no longer shapes you, and as you find your love, you can then find your future self. As Benjamin Hardin maps out, our future self then becomes the source of who we want to be and how we live our lives. You become the writer of your story, and we get to live and become the best you, enjoying the journey and becoming present to treasure it all.
As you use these steps and heal, I highly suggest you check out his book and free program to start finding your future self. Personality Isn’t Permanent: Break Free from Self-Limiting Beliefs and Rewrite Your Story by Benjamin P. Hardy
What if I need more?
I want to be honest with you. What I have written helped me immensely. But my path of healing started in high school. Through a series of serendipitous events, and some not so gentle, I gained awareness of my protective selves and began the work. I wrote this guide because it wasn’t until recently that I finally found these answers and tools. During my path, I required several bitch slaps and awakenings that I will talk more about in the future. But for me, my progress really began after I working with Ayahuasca. It is a powerful plant medicine that helped me take a step back and begin to see and feel again. It is most definitely not the right tool for everyone. And in fact, it can be the wrong tool for many.
But I share this because while we can begin our path to self-healing, and self-love, which I started years before I found the medicine, we all need different tools and modalities for our unique paths. It is important to know some of what is out there. So here are a few things to be aware of and some resources to consider.
1) Psychedelics are becoming legal and present a wonderful opportunity. However, I believe you need to do some preparation work first to decide if they are the right tools for you. I will be writing a blog post about this in the future, but for now, here are some helpful links and books to consider.
Tim Ferris Post on Psychedelics
2) Therapy is also a wonderful tool. It is, however, very hit or miss. So by doing some research first to understand where you are, your challenges, and where you want to go, you can completely change your experience and success with a therapist by doing preparation first. We will be adding in more resources to help you in this process.
3) Religion and other paths. I have had the blessing of meeting someone who truly healed by spending 13 years of his life in a Buddhist monastery. There is a lot to be said and found in the wisdom of our ancestors. And for some, this can be a wonderful and correct path.
I will continue to add to these and expand as I discover more tools to help you. In the meantime, remember this.
Life is a blessing, and so are you. You are worthy of love and deserve to live a life well-lived. So please keep learning, reading, and trying. Find your heart, give yourself the gift of healing, and don’t give up until you find yourself. Be the blessing I know you can be.
And always…
If I am not for myself,
who will be for me?
And being only for myself, what am ‘I’?
And if not now, when?
– Hillel the Elder
Resources for this article and recommended additional reading:
