📖 Why You Should Create Systems to Ease Your Healing Journey?

One of the things that make our healing journey harder is not knowing where we are going. I mean this in the sense of not knowing what is your next step. That “now what” feeling.

This may happen for several reasons, especially trauma.

Trauma tends to leave us in a state of paralysis and it takes us some time to actually understand and assimilate what happened, especially if the trauma was prolonged.

It also affects our sense of self and our memory. When our body is under continuous stress our memory deteriorates. We tend to forget things that have happened in our past that were unacceptable and in turn, allow them to happen again.

Especially if we have forgotten how they made us feel and how we swore to never allow it again.

That makes it harder to exit toxic relationships, dynamics, and habits. The addictions to the chemicals our bodies release keep us in that same place.

So how can we make ourselves more conscious of what is happening in our bodies and what happens when we do?

When we start understanding why we act the way we do it becomes easier to cross the threshold that is keeping us in cognitive dissonance. We start acting more consciously and we might become hyper-aware of the actions that we are taking. Making it harder to let them slide.

It is like when you become aware that that light in your car dashboard actually means that your engine is about to combust.

It becomes harder to ignore now that you know what it means and how bad it can get. And it is the same with the behaviors that are keeping us in the same habits. Once we know how unhealthy they are, that the way we feel is not common, and that there is an opportunity for us to feel way better, it is harder to ignore.

But how do we get to that awareness? How do we get there when we are constantly overloading our brains with continuous stress and the consequences of trauma?

When I was in a bad relationship I barely had time to think about these kinds of things. My brain space was being used to process the overload of emotions that I was experiencing. Plus all the chemicals that were being activated in me.

It took so long to get out of there because my body and my mind were grasping the good moments and was completely forgetting all the bad. To this day my memory is still coming back and I keep remembering moments that I had forgotten.

To get ourselves to open our eyes and see the path that we need to take. We need to create a system for ourselves.

A system and a container that allows us to see clearly everything that is happening to us and analyze from another perspective the steps that we are taking and in what direction they are guiding us.

This doesn’t mean overanalyzing your life and taking care of every single thing that you do so that you never ever get hurt again. Or so that everything in your life is perfect. Then it would become a control issue. It is important to release and let go of these emotions. Once we understand what are they here to communicate to us, we need to let go.

Your system should allow you to see what you need to work on. As well as the progress you have made and what are the things that have hurt you in the past.

A system like this regularly includes journaling.

Journaling in my opinion is the best way to understand your emotions since you are talking to no one but to a blank piece of paper that you are probably the only one who will ever read. This allows you to be completely honest and express the deepest of emotions. Then you can ask yourself some questions that will help you understand what you have written down a lot better.

You can get started with your system by understanding why you are stuck in your healing journey and filling out some prompts. All of this you can find in our Mini guide here.

If you have a journal already take some time to re-read what you have written in the past few months and see if you can find any patterns.

And if you don’t have a journaling habit it would be the perfect way to start. This way not only can you release pent-up emotions but also put your feelings into words in a way you can look at and actually understand what you are going through.

Because sometimes we don’t understand what is happening or what we are feeling until we tell it to someone or until we write it down.