Emotional Healing for the Hurting Heart

Isn’t it true that your emotions really take a knock when your heart is aching? Sometimes it feels like the day of healing is a million miles away. The difficult time you encountered in the past can take a while to be purged from your system.

It's definitely healthy to experience a range of emotions. However, it's unwise to have the negative ones consume your existence. You're better off working towards healing the hurt. That way, you can start to experience joy and happiness again.

Emotional healing is possible if you work at repairing the source of the hurt. As you'll see, that may mean making some tough decisions:

1. Remove negative influences from your life. If you're honest with yourself, you'll realize something important. Some of the negative influences may very well be the people closest to you! It's going to be a challenge separating from them. But your emotional health is more important than maintaining those relationships.

• Are any of your friends guilty of adding fuel to the fire? Can you identify times when they've encouraged you to avoid forgiving someone who offended you?
• You can very quickly identify people whose advice is riddled with negativity. Avoid allowing the years of friendship to cloud your judgment. You can almost guarantee continued misery if you keep them in your life.

2. Accept responsibility for your actions. It's pretty hard to look in the mirror, right? Deep down, you know your actions resulted in the hurt you feel. But it's difficult to accept the part you played.

• Confront your wrongdoings. Be courageous enough to accept responsibility for your actions.
• Inner peace can elude you if you try to cover up the role you played. Inner turmoil can feel just as unbearable as physical discomfort
• In the same breath, be willing to forgive yourself so you can move on to better days ahead.

3. Live according to your moral compass. You likely have a set of morals to live by. And while you know they exist, you may sometimes avoid them when making decisions. Abandoning morals is the easiest way to make missteps in life.

• Go back to your roots. Take a hard look at what really matters to you. Start to embrace those morals one by one.
• Start to repair how you approach situations. If making a decision means abandoning your moral compass, take another route. Just like any other compass, your moral compass keeps you on track. It's the best way to avoid getting lost in the sea of emotional decision-making.

4. Commit to daily renewal. The road to emotional healing is long and winding. It's something that usually takes quite a bit of time to achieve. But it can be done! All you need to do is re-commit to the cause every morning when you wake up.

• Daily renewal is the best way to turn your healing into habit. When you go for days without that renewal, it's easy to slip back into the heartache. Be fair to yourself. Remember you deserve the healing.
• At the end of each positive day, celebrate your progress. Congratulate yourself for completing one more day of healing and positive living. You'll find you rest more soundly at night.

Achieving emotional healing isn't an automatic process. It takes time and a lot of attention. Now is the time to really take care of yourself. Focus on what you need and block out the noise around you. Use these tips to help you on your healing journey.

This Week’s Creative Exercise

Sew your heart to mend.

Supplies:

• Fabric, this can be an old tshirt, dishcloth, any piece of fabric you have lying around. 2 pieces, each about 6” square

• Scissors
• Needle, thread, embroidery floss, anything you can stitch with. Unravel an old sweater if you need to.
• Fabric marker or permanent marker
• Small bit of stuffing (or dust bunnies, dog hair, really anything to add some poof)

Cut out 2 heart shaped pieces, I would do this by hand instead of tracing a heart so it has some character, but you are perfectly free to trace a heart. 

Note: Make sure when you cut it out it is slightly bigger than what you want the finished heart to look like to give room for stitching.

Note: if you are making it an off kilter heart, make sure both sides are facing out when you cut it, so that when you sew it together they will be wonky on the same sides.

On the sides that you want to be on the inside (you will not see), write 3-5 words on each half. Words of forgiveness, letting go and healing.

Word ideas: forgiveness, love, release, heal, recovery, mend, truth, feel, acceptance, whatever words resonate with you.

On the front side of one heart, stitch (or draw) a jagged scar and then stitch it up. While you are stitching the scar, send love into that wound that it will heal.

Now stitch a small heart next to the stitched over scar.

Stitch the two sides together.

Note: Put the two right sides together to stitch (you will see the words you wrote). Leave a small opening for flipping and adding stuffing.

Flip the heart right sides out, stuff and stitch closed.

Put this mended heart under your pillow tonight with the intention of releasing the hurt and allowing your heart to heal.

In the morning journal on your feelings, did you feel the release, do you feel better, were you able to let go?

Thursday we will release the video on YouTube, don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss any of the great content we have over there.

Have an Amazingly Creative Day,

Larissa