Self healing is all about implementing healthy routines into your life that support wellness and help you feel more capable. While these practices aren’t meant to replace mental health care, they can help you get more out of the treatment you’re receiving from a trained therapist.
The UIUC team used cheap epoxies in their experiments, but other chemistries could lead to cheaper versions of self-healing materials.
Acknowledge and Accept Your Feelings
Emotions like fear and anger serve useful purposes, so it’s important not to suppress or run from them. Instead, try practicing emotional acceptance. Emotional acceptance involves letting your feelings be as they are and viewing them with curiosity, compassion, and nurturance.
A good way to start this process is by imagining your hard feelings as background noise. This is especially helpful when the emotions are at full volume, she says.
It can be challenging to accept difficult emotions, particularly if you’re used to coping with them in unhealthy ways, such as self harming or using risky substances. However, it’s essential to recognize that these unhealthy coping mechanisms aren’t working and can only cause more distress over time. This is where therapy comes in handy.
Engage in Spiritual Practices
Whether you are religious or not, the desire to engage in spiritual practices can be helpful in promoting mental health. These activities often produce positive states of being, including inner peace and contentment, gratitude and compassion.
You may be able to uncover these spiritual experiences through internal reflections, journaling or lists of promises and intentions. You can also find a wealth of tools and ideas through reading or listening to people’s life stories and conversations.
Any routine practice that promotes wellbeing can be considered a spiritual discipline. For example, the mother who says a prayer for each child when they leave the house in the morning is engaging in a spiritual practice. Ultimately, you will need to work through your own beliefs and values to determine what is best for your personal spirituality.
Take Part in Healing Circles
Healing circles are a type of group support that fosters connection, compassion, and community. They can also be helpful for emotional and physical healing by providing a safe and supportive space to share experiences and feelings.
Circles are self-governing spaces that allow participants to determine who they want as their guardian and host, and how the group will be structured. In addition, they can decide whether to use a talking piece or not, and how often the circle will meet.
Inspired by Kitchen Table Wisdom, healing circles are being brought to life in many different settings. For example, Ang Coxen holds circles in schools, Geo Errante leads them at a prison, and Beth Light hosts them for nursing retreats. Healing circles are also being incorporated into restorative practices.
Include Supplements in Your Healing Routine
When wounds are healing, the body needs building materials (proteins), energy sources, and specialized workers (vitamins and minerals) to get the job done. A balanced diet can supply these nutrients, but sometimes dietary supplements are needed.
It’s important to note that supplements must be carefully chosen and used, and they should never replace good dietary habits. Additionally, some supplements can have harmful interactions with prescription medications.
Therapy supports self-healing by teaching you to recognize and challenge negative thought patterns that inhibit mental health. Therapists also teach coping techniques to manage stress and anxiety and build resilience. When you prioritize your mental health through self-healing, it can lead to a happier and healthier life. Contact us today to learn more about our therapeutic approaches to mental wellness.
Try Externalizing
In computer science, self healing is a system that reacts to errors by taking corrective action. For example, if an application fails, the code might redeploy it or restart it. Self healing at an environment level can also take the form of scripts that automatically scale and provision new test environments based on logging or other metrics.
In Internal Family Systems (IFS), externalizing can help shift a person’s perspective by viewing problems as separate from themselves. For instance, instead of thinking “I’m depressed,” you might think “Mr Mischief is acting up.” Having a visual representation of the problem provides clarity and emotional distance. In addition to drawing, mapping and other art forms, IFS therapists are skilled in offering other externalizing techniques including movement, psychodrama and writing.
