Guide to Healing and Self Discovery (Natasha)

We often hear of many people speaking about healing and discovering themselves. It seems to be a life lesson that we all share. In a harsh world where we face immense difficulties, it is not surprising that we are left with painful scars. In my life, I often spoke about wanting to heal and reach a place of peace and clarity, but it was not until this year that I truly learned what it meant to experience healing and self discovery. I learned that these two concepts work together. My healing ultimately led to self discovery and through self discovery, I was able to heal wounds. When faced with adversity, I was called to reconstruct my life from within. I have compiled a simple guide that helped me embark on this journey and look at healing in a different way than I was used to.

Feel, Reflect, and Redirect

The most important decision that I made starting this journey was allowing myself to feel all the emotions. In the past, whenever I felt happy, I would become uneasy as I rarely felt that way on a normal basis. Whenever I felt depressed, I would run away from it and try to escape the feeling through suicidal ideations. This time, I decided to embrace all the emotions, even the negative ones. Allowing yourself to experience the range of emotions helps you learn more about yourself and realize you are stronger than you ever thought. In moments when I felt sadness creeping up, instead of running, I let myself experience it, cry if needed and then focus on redirection through a hobby or something that made me feel good. I will discuss the importance of hobbies later.

Judgment Free Zone

You may have heard the quote “you are your biggest critic”. This holds true for a lot of people. We are often very judgmental of ourselves and harder on ourselves than to our loved ones. In theory, this should not be the case as we should also love ourselves and treat ourselves with kindness, but that is not always within reach due to our traumas. A big reason why I escaped my negative emotions was due to shame. For example, If I wanted to do something that I logically knew was not in my best interest, I called myself stupid. “How could I still love and care about a person that hurt and betrayed me? Why would I still want them in my life? They clearly are showing me they don’t care.”  Instead of this, I decided to acknowledge that I made the choice to care about someone and that it was not wrong. Continuing to care for someone that you created a bond with is not a wild thing to do even if they end up disappointing you. We are human. Choosing to have grace on yourself as opposed to condemning yourself for a very human trait made all the difference in my healing.

Tap into Your Hobbies

I was able to heal myself by discovering myself through my interests. If you feel as if you don’t have hobbies, it might feel intimidating, but don’t overthink it like I did. I started out by doing the things that I knew how to do. I know that sounds silly, but it’s a good place to start. For example, I learned to knit when I was young. I slowly started to integrate knitting back into my routine. I have a guitar that I am not that good at, so I started to practice playing it again. Don’t feel pressured to go out to do something big or spend a lot of money. I strongly recommend reading. I know I love to read a good self-discovery book, but you don’t have to limit yourself to self-help books. There is a lot of joy and learning that can come from fictional books as well! Whatever you decide to get into, the idea here is to start slow and create a routine of doing things that you love. When you are ready, you can always implement new things. 

The Takeaway

Healing is not linear and there will be times when you feel you are going backwards. In reality, it is not that you are going backwards, but instead experiencing the cyclic nature of life. On the surface this can seem discouraging as we want to constantly experience the joys and positivity of life, but healing allowed me to view this in an optimistic way. I know that any pain and suffering is temporary, and that I can and will continue to cycle through this unique life and experience love and happiness again.

If you are feeling down and need support, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us here at Letters Against Depression if you haven’t already. We send letters of hope and support to those who need someone there for them. You can request to receive letters here.