Principals of Healing

1. Emotions are signals

Before getting into nitty-gritty, lets nut out what emotions aren’t and what they are.

Then we’ll discuss why knowing this is vital to changing your life.

Emotions are not:

• Permeant (they last approx. 90 seconds)
• Emotions aren’t our imagination. Each emotion has a frequency that it vibrates at. Each frequency can be felt in the body differently.
• Emotions aren’t good or bad. Sad doesn’t mean bad, depression doesn’t mean bad, happiness doesn’t mean good. They are signals. Nothing more, nothing less.
• Emotions are no different to ‘hunger’ or ‘thirst’.

Emotions are:

• Emotions are one of the bodies ways of communicating to the brain.
• Emotions are energy – frequencies (they exist; therefore, they are energy)
• Energy cannot be created, nor destroyed. Only converted i.e. Electrical energy being converted to light energy and heat in a light bulb. Therefore, the same goes for emotions. They cannot be created, nor destroyed, only converted. i.e. Anger => determination. Or anger => punching a hole in the wall.
• Emotions are a neutral spectrum of signals from the body.
• Emotions are triggered by thoughts (emotions can also trigger thoughts but again – another blog).
• Emotions are temporary (they last 90 seconds unless we continue to think the thoughts that triggered them or remain in environments that trigger said thoughts).
• Emotions are fluid: they aren’t designed to remain within the body, they are designed to have their signal felt and then appropriately responded to.

For Example:

When we feel hunger, we know it is a signal from the body that we need food. Most of us will go get a snack and then the feeling of hunger will go. Other emotions are no different. I would even call ‘hunger’ and emotion itself.

Emotion	Signal	Healthy Response
Anxiety	Signal to let you know your thoughts are too much on things out of your control. Or too much in the future (because you can’t control the future)	Notice it. Return thoughts to things within your control. Complete tasks within your control.
Anger	Signal to protect yourself. Someone or something may have violated a boundary (energetically, mentally or physically).	Notice it. Protect yourself: walk away, disengage, hit back, yell back. Obviously, this one is very dependent on the context of the situation.
Guilt	Signals you have made a choice that doesn’t align with the person you want to be.	Notice it. Make the opposite choice of the thing that caused the ‘guilt signal’ to be set off
Fear	Signals you are doing or experiencing something you haven’t experienced before.	Notice it. Keep going. The unknown will become to known (comfort zone).
Jealousy	Signals someone has or is doing something you want to have or do.	Notice it. Figure out what you are jealous of, and how you can take the steps to attain it in your own way.

Why does this matter? How does this apply to healing?

Many of us aren’t taught how to feel emotion. Especially men. We watched our mother’s cry behind closed doors. We got told to ‘calm down’ when we were frustrated. We got told to ‘simmer down’ when we got passionate. We got told to ‘cheer up’ when we were sad.

Instead of being taught how to feel the emotional signal, and learn what it was trying to tell us, we were taught how to stop the emotion, or how to ignore it.

Seeming as emotional signals are the bodies main way of communicating with our brains, by not being taught how to feel, we were subsequently not taught how to listen to our bodies, and subsequently ourselves. We were, instead, taught how to ignore ourselves (mainly for the comfort of others – tears in public make us uncomfortable, no?).

This has deadly consequences:

Emotions are energy (they exist; therefore, they are energy). We know that once energy is created it cannot be destroyed. It can only be converted into another form of energy. In the same way electrical energy is transformed into light and heat energy (light bulbs). So, if energy is ignored, it will remain where it is until we decide to do something with it i.e. until we change it into another emotion or action.

i.e. I want to quit my job because it’s making me under stimulated and depressed. I think about quitting my job and I notice I feel fear. I know fear is the signal for ‘watch out! We haven’t done this before! It’s scary because we don’t know the outcome!’. Because I’ve never been taught to understand what fear means, I don’t quit my job because I have been taught that fear is not good, and it feels uncomfortable in my body, so I avoid it all together. I keep going to work. I keep getting more and more depressed. I keep trying to quit my job, but I keep feeling fear, and I keep not quitting. The energy of fear remains stored in my body. Where else would it go? It’s physically impossible for it to disappear. Now I’m filled up with fear. Any more fear and I can’t cope. I can’t change my circumstances because I’ll feel more fear. I stay in the same job and continually grow more and more depressed. This is where we often meet burnout, severe depression, or in some cases, severe physical illness.

So, you can see that by learning to understand our emotions, and subsequently learning how to safely feel them, can result in healthier decisions for our wellbeing. This is healing. Healing is not a state; it is an action. It’s an action, if we chose to walk this path, that would need to be repeated again and again each and every day. There is no destination, there is only a deeper understanding of ourselves.  

Obviously, this is far easier said than done, and I truly believe most of us will spend the rest of our lives learning how to do this. Healing isn’t about only feeling happiness, nor is it about only feeling regulated. Healing is about being able to feel all the emotions on the spectrum (because you will, always and forever, it is a part of being a human as opposed to a robot).

2. Understand your computer

To heal, we need to have an understanding as to what it is we are actually healing.

What are we then? Well, we are an ever-adapting computer, in a meat sack, with a soul. In other words: Mind, body and spirit.

Your soul doesn’t need healing. It never did. It is perfectly imperfect, and it is infinite energy. Energy cannot be created or destroyed. Therefore, your soul is a fragment of infinite energy. Ever changing, ever converting, and a literal part of everything else in existence (let me know if you’d like me to go more into the science backing for this in another blog). What we need to heal is the computer part of the meat sack: The nervous system.

You are not your thoughts. You are not your emotions. You are the observer of all those things. This is why the soul is so important. It allows us to step back from the computer. To observe the computer from a distance and figure out what we want to work on and change. Once you realise this, you will be able to observe all your patterns, determine the belief that drives those patterns of behaviour. Then you can work on changing said belief, which will subsequently change the behaviour.

For now, though, let’s leave behind the soul part and figure out what this computer is.

I’m sure everyone has heard of the nervous system, and this is where we’ll start. This is the computer part of what makes us, us. The nervous system looks like this:

The nervous system is comprised of the central nervous system (CNS) and the peripheral nervous system (PNS).

• The central nervous system (CNS) consists of the brain and the spinal cord.
• The peripheral nervous system (PNS) consists of all the other branching nerves in the body.
•  The peripheral nervous system acts like a highway, and consists of sensory neurons and motor neurons
• The sensory neuron signals carry information from the body to the brain on things like: texture, touch, pressure, hot, cold, sharp and light.
• The motor neurons carry commands from the brain and spinal cord to the body.
• So, the sensory neurons let the brain know what’s going on inside and outside the body, and the motor neurons carry instructions from the brain to the body i.e. move this muscle, move hand away from hot stove, liver – work harder because you had a big night on the town the day before.

Okay so that’s the high school human bio lesson done. Let’s nut out how this is relevant to changing your life.

It is what happens in the central nervous system (the brain and spinal cord) that we can change when healing. Like rewiring a computer database. Remember, this is one strategy, one tool to help healing. It is not the only way. I started using this technique later on in my healing journey. It was only effective for me after I had learned how to feel my emotions. And yes, change is possible, this is called neuroplasticity. But that’s another blog.

The brain and spinal cord (central nervous system) are like computers. They have memory (Everything we’ve seen, heard, touched and been told), data bases, and algorithms. They sort through, organise, interpret and decide what to do with all the messages coming from the rest of the nerves in the body. For example:

1. There’s a wolf on the road in front of you.
2. The eyes send a signal to the brain.
3. The brain uses our memory, our beliefs, our past experiences (the things we’ve seen or been told before) to determine that the eyes are, in fact, seeing a wolf
4. The brain then uses its memory, our beliefs, our past experiences (the things we’ve seen or been told before) to determine what the hell we do now.  
5. Depending on what the information is the brain has gathered, the brain will then send commands out to the body (we all have lived different lives, seen different things, heard different stories, so this is why everyone’s response to seeing a wolf will be different)
6. If the person has seen someone being attacked by a wolf before, the brain will most likely send the signals to activate the fight, flight or fright response i.e. F*CKIN PANIC.
7. If the person has only ever seen videos of wolves cuddling children on television, or everyone has told them wolves are friendly, the person will feel calm or curious, and maybe even try to approach the wolf.
8. As a result of this whole processes, some might run, some might freeze, some might wave their arms and make themselves appear larger, some might want to ‘pet that dawg’. I truly hope some of you have seen that video.

This process occurs every second of each day. From what time we decide to wake up in the morning, to the whether we decide to leave our job.

How does this apply to healing? How does this help me?

Only once we truly understand something, can we then change it. Once we understand that every single choice we make in our lives is dictated by an incredible computer inside our heads, and this computer bases all its decisions on our past experiences (inc trauma), current beliefs, memories, what we’ve been told, then we can start to:

• Observe how we usually choose to respond to something

i.e. When I go out for dinner with my friends, I drink way too much and end up doing things I regret.

• Figure out why we responded that way (what memories, beliefs or traumas drove the brains decision to respond in this way)

i.e. I believe that I am a boring person and therefore I am not enough as I am. I need other things (like alcohol) to change my personality, so that others will find me more interesting

• Change those beliefs

i.e. I am not a boring person. I have interests that are specific to me, and that doesn’t make me boring, it makes me interesting. I am enough as I am, and I don’t need to be any different to accept myself.

• Change the response.

i.e I am not a boring person. I don’t need anything (like alcohol or drugs) to change my personality. I am enough as I am. I no longer drink too much at parties because I am comfortable with myself.

This is what is called a “top down” approach to healing. It doesn’t work for everyone. It only worked for me once I had learnt how to feel my emotions and got comfortable with understanding the signals from my body.

In Summary:

• Understand yourself and how you work

Self-educate yourself. Understand you are an incredibly complex being, comprised of body (meat sack), mind (computer) and spirit (infinite energy/soul). Once you understand the driving forces behind your behaviours, you can start to alter those driving forces, which will result in different behaviours

• Emotions are signals

Feeling and listening to the signals our bodies send can be a pretty terrifying process for those who have been taught that those signals (emotions) are unsafe. Know that emotions are only guides. They are messages, in the same way hunger or thirst are. Our only job is to notice them, understand what they are signalling, and act accordingly. Its not that scary when we put it like that, hey?

• Healing never ends

Healing isn’t a destination. Healing is an action. It is a way of being. It is an endless journey of self-discovery. Therefore, there isn’t anyone who can tell you how to understand yourself, only those who can guide and provide pointers. I hope to be one of those people for some of you 🙂

Much love, and I hope this made sense to some of you and helped things become a little less scary, and, instead, a little clearer.