How to Find Emotional Healing

Table of ContentsView AllTable of ContentsWhat Is Emotional Healing?Tips for You As You HealBenefitsFinding Emotional HealingHow Do I Know If I Am Healing?

Table of ContentsView All

View All

Table of Contents

What Is Emotional Healing?

Tips for You As You Heal

Benefits

Finding Emotional Healing

How Do I Know If I Am Healing?

Emotional healing happens when you can acknowledge, accept, and process difficult emotions or experiences. This process looks different for everyone, but it is possible as long as you are open to releasing expectations about what the experience will be like or what it will lead to.

The reality is that you will never be the same person you were before whatever happened that you are healing from.That can feel scary, but that can also feel incredibly freeing as you attempt to find yourself and experience post-traumatic growth.

At a GlanceAfter you’ve gone through something painful, difficult, traumatic, or life-changing, it’s essential to heal your mind as much as your body. The emotional healing process takes time, and it looks different for each person. Regardless of what you are healing from, taking steps like practicing self-compassion, practicing mindfulness, caring for your body, and trying therapy can help. Let’s take a closer look at why emotional healing is so important and the steps you can take to recover emotionally from life’s challenges.

At a Glance

After you’ve gone through something painful, difficult, traumatic, or life-changing, it’s essential to heal your mind as much as your body. The emotional healing process takes time, and it looks different for each person. Regardless of what you are healing from, taking steps like practicing self-compassion, practicing mindfulness, caring for your body, and trying therapy can help. Let’s take a closer look at why emotional healing is so important and the steps you can take to recover emotionally from life’s challenges.

Emotional healing is the process of acknowledging, allowing, accepting, integrating, and processing painful life experiences and strong emotions. It may involve empathy,self-regulation, self-compassion,self-acceptance, mindfulness, and integration.

Emotional healing takes the time that it takes—which may be longer or shorter than you expect or plan on—if you allow it to be fully acknowledged, felt, moved through, and processed.

Emotional healing will look different for everybody, but it may includeemotional regulation skills, a feeling of lightness, and stronger relationships as you can be more present with yourself and your loved ones.

Self-Healing Techniques for a Happier and Healthier Mind

When Do You Need Emotional Healing?

All people will need emotional healing at some point during their lives—we all experience challenges and difficult emotions that need processing.

Some common life stressors after which people may seek emotional healing include:

The Best Online Trauma Therapy, Tried and Tested

Outside of specific events, it’s also possible to experience intensifying, lingering, and seemingly unshakeable anger, sadness, or anxiety that feels like it is taking over your life. These feelings may cause a functional impairment in your day-to-day life. Emotional healing may look different if symptoms are becoming chronic.

No matter what the trigger for your difficult emotions, emotional healing is possible in all of these scenarios.

Signs of an Emotional Breakdown

Questions to Ask Yourself Before Healing

We won’t sugarcoat it—emotional healing is not an easy process, but it can be incredibly rewarding for many people and help them find clarity and inspiration in life beyond whatever it is they are healing from. Here are some questions you might want to ask yourself as you embark on your healing journey.

What are you healingfrom?Maybe you don’t know, but you know you’d like things to be different:

Mindful MomentNeed a breather? Take this free10-minute meditation focused on finding clarity—or choose from ourguided meditation libraryto find another one that will help you feel your best.

Mindful Moment

Need a breather? Take this free10-minute meditation focused on finding clarity—or choose from ourguided meditation libraryto find another one that will help you feel your best.

As you work through the healing process, here are some tips that can help:

Practice Self-Compassion

You’re not broken. It’s pretty hard to heal if you’re beating yourself up all the time. That’s why showing yourself kindness and compassion can be key to your emotional healing.

Research has shown that people who practiceself-compassionshow more significant increases in well-being than those who don’t.

Thank Yourself

Thank yourself. Yes, that’s right—thank yourself. Despite the emotional pain you’ve experienced that’s leading you on this emotional healing journey, you have made it this far. Whatever coping mechanisms you used worked for you at the time, even if they don’t work now, or weren’t the “healthiest” in the first place.

While past coping mechanisms might not serve you now, you’ve made it this far. You’ve shown you have the strength and resolve to find new strategies that will move your forward toward healing.

Don’t Go it Alone

Science shows we heal better together.Your instinct might be to go into hiding until you are “done” healing, but the reality is that your friends and family probably want to help you! Reach out to someone who feels safe.

Don’t Try to “Fix” it All at Once

Emotional healing is not simple, and whatever happened to you likely has deeper roots in you than you realized and may be affecting you in many ways. Back to being realistic: don’t expect to fix all the ways your issue ortraumahas affected you all at once.

Sit Through It

This may be one of the hardest things to do. You are likely experiencing a range of deep feelings such as sadness, grief or rage. Those aren’t fun emotions and it’s tempting to want to ignore them or rush through them. It will be uncomfortable, but acknowledging tough feelings is part of healing. The good news is that feelingsdopass even if it doesn’t feel like they will.

Know That Progress Isn’t Linear

You may feel like you are making the best breakthroughs, and then you have a terrible day where you feel like all of your emotional healing has been undone—or that you did something wrong. If you broke a leg, you might have a bad day where you’re in pain again despite a sustained period of healing.

Strategies for Healing With Holocaust Survivor Dr. Eger & Her Daughter Dr. Engle

Benefits of Emotional Healing

You may not like the pain that you’re in, but maybe you’re afraid to work on emotional healing because you’re afraid of what you might find in the process. This is a valid concern, but here are some of the health benefits that are associated with the positive emotions associated with healing.

How to Find Emotional Healing

If you’re trying to heal your emotional pain, here are some ways that you can embark on your journey to emotional healing.

Therapy

Emotional healing can be incredibly rewarding but it can also be painful in the interim. You might want to consider talking to amental health professionalwho is trained in working with people on emotional healing journeys every day.

They can help you heal at a pace that is appropriate for you and provide the insight you might not be able to reach on your own.

Get Help NowWe’ve tried, tested, and written unbiased reviews of thebest online therapy programsincluding Talkspace, BetterHelp, and ReGain. Find out which option is the best for you.

Get Help Now

We’ve tried, tested, and written unbiased reviews of thebest online therapy programsincluding Talkspace, BetterHelp, and ReGain. Find out which option is the best for you.

Mindfulness

When we are attempting emotional healing from something, it can be very easy to get pulled back into past events or to catastrophize what the future will be like if youdon’theal.Mindfulness practicescan help you be in the present moment and see that, at this moment, you are just fine.

Journalingis often suggested—and for good reason. Research has shown that journaling may be an effective tool for building greater emotionalresilience.

Allow yourself to feel the fullness of your grief, anger, pain, or loss without attaching further meaning, stories, or thoughts. This can be deeply healing and helpful in processing emotions.

Research suggests that many emotions tend to be fairly short-lived. Some last longer than others. Challenging emotions likeshame, fear, disgust, boredom, andirritabilitytend to fade the fastest.

This information can help emotions feel less overwhelming. When an emotion overcomes you, you can keep an eye on the clock to note how long it takes before the feeling dissipates—employing mindfulness skills in the meantime.

Notice, allow, and describe the physical sensation of the emotion moving through your body without judging it or attempting to change it. Breathe through the sensations.

You can perform exercises to ground yourself such as putting your feet on the floor, drinking a sip of water, or running cold water over your hands.

Moving the body to process stress or trauma can be seen in the animal kingdom as well. In his book “Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma,” therapist Peter A. Levine notes that in the wild, an impala that escapes its predator will instinctively “shake off” the traumatic event, regaining full movement of its body.

Helpful Therapeutic TechniquesTherapeutic techniques likesomatic experiencing (SE)and trauma release exercises (TRE) can help process and move trauma and emotions from within the body. SE involves becoming aware of their internal bodily sensations and bringing awareness to them.TRE consists of a person intentionally moving their body to decrease stress levels.

Helpful Therapeutic Techniques

Therapeutic techniques likesomatic experiencing (SE)and trauma release exercises (TRE) can help process and move trauma and emotions from within the body. SE involves becoming aware of their internal bodily sensations and bringing awareness to them.TRE consists of a person intentionally moving their body to decrease stress levels.

Get Support

How to Find a Therapist

There is no finish line to cross that signifies you are fully healed! Emotionalhealing can sometimes be so gradualyou may not even realize how much you’ve healed, and others may notice it before you.

There may be deeper and deeper levels of emotional healing to be discovered. Do your best to live in a way that honors and supports your continued journey of emotional healing. This will allow you to experience ever-expanding emotional healing that can improve your physical, emotional, and mental health, well-being, satisfaction in life, and connection to yourself and others.

Press Play for Advice On Healing From Trauma

8 SourcesVerywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.Crego A, Yela JR, Riesco-Matías P, Gómez-Martínez MÁ, Vicente-Arruebarrena A.The benefits of self-compassion in mental health professionals: A systematic review of empirical research.Psychol Res Behav Manag. 2022;15:2599-2620. doi:10.2147/PRBM.S359382Li F, Luo S, Mu W, et al.Effects of sources of social support and resilience on the mental health of different age groups during the COVID-19 pandemic.BMC Psychiatry. 2021;21(1):16. doi:10.1186/s12888-020-03012-1Babić R, Babić M, Rastović P, et al.Resilience in health and illness.Psychiatr Danub. 2020;32(Suppl 2):226-232.Lohner MS, Aprea C.The Resilience Journal: Exploring the potential of journal interventions to promote resilience in university students.Front Psychol. 2021;12:702683. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.702683Verduyn P, Lavrijsen S.Which emotions last longest and why: The role of event importance and rumination.Motiv Emot. 2015;39(1):119-127. doi:10.1007/s11031-014-9445-yLevine P.Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.Brom D, Stokar Y, Lawi C, et al.Somatic experiencing for posttraumatic stress disorder: A randomized controlled outcome study.J Trauma Stress. 2017;30(3):304-312. doi:10.1002/jts.22189Berceli D, Salmon M, Bonifas R, Ndefo N.Effects of self-induced unclassified therapeutic tremors on quality of life among non-professional caregivers: A pilot study.Glob Adv Health Med. 2014;3(5):45-48. doi:10.7453/gahmj.2014.032

8 Sources

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.Crego A, Yela JR, Riesco-Matías P, Gómez-Martínez MÁ, Vicente-Arruebarrena A.The benefits of self-compassion in mental health professionals: A systematic review of empirical research.Psychol Res Behav Manag. 2022;15:2599-2620. doi:10.2147/PRBM.S359382Li F, Luo S, Mu W, et al.Effects of sources of social support and resilience on the mental health of different age groups during the COVID-19 pandemic.BMC Psychiatry. 2021;21(1):16. doi:10.1186/s12888-020-03012-1Babić R, Babić M, Rastović P, et al.Resilience in health and illness.Psychiatr Danub. 2020;32(Suppl 2):226-232.Lohner MS, Aprea C.The Resilience Journal: Exploring the potential of journal interventions to promote resilience in university students.Front Psychol. 2021;12:702683. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.702683Verduyn P, Lavrijsen S.Which emotions last longest and why: The role of event importance and rumination.Motiv Emot. 2015;39(1):119-127. doi:10.1007/s11031-014-9445-yLevine P.Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.Brom D, Stokar Y, Lawi C, et al.Somatic experiencing for posttraumatic stress disorder: A randomized controlled outcome study.J Trauma Stress. 2017;30(3):304-312. doi:10.1002/jts.22189Berceli D, Salmon M, Bonifas R, Ndefo N.Effects of self-induced unclassified therapeutic tremors on quality of life among non-professional caregivers: A pilot study.Glob Adv Health Med. 2014;3(5):45-48. doi:10.7453/gahmj.2014.032

Crego A, Yela JR, Riesco-Matías P, Gómez-Martínez MÁ, Vicente-Arruebarrena A.The benefits of self-compassion in mental health professionals: A systematic review of empirical research.Psychol Res Behav Manag. 2022;15:2599-2620. doi:10.2147/PRBM.S359382Li F, Luo S, Mu W, et al.Effects of sources of social support and resilience on the mental health of different age groups during the COVID-19 pandemic.BMC Psychiatry. 2021;21(1):16. doi:10.1186/s12888-020-03012-1Babić R, Babić M, Rastović P, et al.Resilience in health and illness.Psychiatr Danub. 2020;32(Suppl 2):226-232.Lohner MS, Aprea C.The Resilience Journal: Exploring the potential of journal interventions to promote resilience in university students.Front Psychol. 2021;12:702683. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.702683Verduyn P, Lavrijsen S.Which emotions last longest and why: The role of event importance and rumination.Motiv Emot. 2015;39(1):119-127. doi:10.1007/s11031-014-9445-yLevine P.Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.Brom D, Stokar Y, Lawi C, et al.Somatic experiencing for posttraumatic stress disorder: A randomized controlled outcome study.J Trauma Stress. 2017;30(3):304-312. doi:10.1002/jts.22189Berceli D, Salmon M, Bonifas R, Ndefo N.Effects of self-induced unclassified therapeutic tremors on quality of life among non-professional caregivers: A pilot study.Glob Adv Health Med. 2014;3(5):45-48. doi:10.7453/gahmj.2014.032

Li F, Luo S, Mu W, et al.Effects of sources of social support and resilience on the mental health of different age groups during the COVID-19 pandemic.BMC Psychiatry. 2021;21(1):16. doi:10.1186/s12888-020-03012-1

Babić R, Babić M, Rastović P, et al.Resilience in health and illness.Psychiatr Danub. 2020;32(Suppl 2):226-232.

Lohner MS, Aprea C.The Resilience Journal: Exploring the potential of journal interventions to promote resilience in university students.Front Psychol. 2021;12:702683. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.702683

Verduyn P, Lavrijsen S.Which emotions last longest and why: The role of event importance and rumination.Motiv Emot. 2015;39(1):119-127. doi:10.1007/s11031-014-9445-y

Levine P.Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.

Brom D, Stokar Y, Lawi C, et al.Somatic experiencing for posttraumatic stress disorder: A randomized controlled outcome study.J Trauma Stress. 2017;30(3):304-312. doi:10.1002/jts.22189

Berceli D, Salmon M, Bonifas R, Ndefo N.Effects of self-induced unclassified therapeutic tremors on quality of life among non-professional caregivers: A pilot study.Glob Adv Health Med. 2014;3(5):45-48. doi:10.7453/gahmj.2014.032

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At a Glance#

When Do You Need Emotional Healing?#

Questions to Ask Yourself Before Healing#

Mindful Moment#

Practice Self-Compassion#

Thank Yourself#

Don’t Go it Alone#

Don’t Try to “Fix” it All at Once#

Sit Through It#

Know That Progress Isn’t Linear#

Benefits of Emotional Healing#

How to Find Emotional Healing#

Therapy#

Get Help Now#

Mindfulness#

Helpful Therapeutic Techniques#

Get Support#

Press Play for Advice On Healing From Trauma#

At a Glance

When Do You Need Emotional Healing?

Questions to Ask Yourself Before Healing

Mindful Moment

Practice Self-Compassion

Thank Yourself

Don’t Go it Alone

Don’t Try to “Fix” it All at Once

Sit Through It

Know That Progress Isn’t Linear

Benefits of Emotional Healing

How to Find Emotional Healing

Therapy

Get Help Now

Mindfulness

Helpful Therapeutic Techniques

Get Support

Press Play for Advice On Healing From Trauma