Emotional Healing | Sundardas Naturopath

What is Emotional Healing?

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.

Many people have a tendency to want to control the process of emotional healing by minimising the pain and controlling their emotions, but this can actually inhibit the process of emotional healing.

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 include emotional regulation skills, a feeling of lightness, and stronger relationships as you are able to be more present with yourself and your loved ones.

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:

• Loss of a loved one

• Divorce

• Breakups

• Job loss

• Abuse (including emotional, physical, and sexual trauma)

• Illness

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.

What Is 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 healing from? Maybe you don’t know, but you know you’d like things to be different:

• How is not healing affecting your life?

• What do you want your life to look like after you’ve healed?

• If you woke tomorrow, how would you know you had healed?

• Are you ready to heal?

• Are you willing to sit through some discomfort in service of healing?

• What will help you on your emotional healing journey?

• How has not yet healing served you?

• What can you do to make your healing journey gentle for yourself?

Dr Sundardas is the only Naturopathic Physician in Asia trained in the following approaches: