Tag: process

I had a bit of a revelation yesterday whilst thinking about what I would talk about on the Huffington Post live interview. It’s strange how these revelations can happen at the weirdest of times and I was driving the car when this one hit me.

I was thinking about healing, and it occurred to me that if we cut ourselves or injure ourselves physically we don’t instantly start running to the doctors to ask how we are going to heal. We don’t get worried about where we are in the process of healing, should blood have clotted by now? What should my haemoglobin level be to this cut to heal? When exactly will the two ends of this broken bone begin to need back together, what is the process and how long will each stage of that process take? We don’t bother with any of that, we just trust our bodies innate ability to heal these wounds at the right pace and at the right time.

So why do we think it should be any different with emotional injuries?

Could it be that if I just don’t bother wondering what stage of the grieving process I’m at or  how long it’s going to take that my mind will just heal itself?

The more I think about that, or rather, the more I don’t think about healing the more peaceful it becomes. I can see there is no need to worry or be concerned about anything, I trust my mind and body to do what it needs to do, when it needs to do it.

I think that sometimes the temptation is to try to rationalise things and get our highly educated brains working on solving the problem of how do we overcome our grief. But the reality is when we do this we ironically get in the way of the healing process and our highly educated brains interfere with the natural healing process, much like we tell a child not to pick their scab on a recently grazed knee. “It’ll never get well if you pick it” I can hear my mother telling me now…

So I’m not going to pick this scab, I’ll let my mind do what it needs to do when it needs to do it, and that’s just fine.