self-healing mechanism

The self-healing mechanism is never the magic of "clearing all negative emotions" advocated on the Internet, but the human body's own adaptive repair ability that integrates the three major systems of physiological regulation, cognitive adjustment, and social support. Its ultimate goal is never to "completely eliminate trauma", but to help you return to the track of feeling happy and normal life with the marks of the past.

At the beginning of last year, I met a girl who was an e-commerce operator. She stayed through the Double Eleven promotion for 21 consecutive days, and her core project was temporarily cut off. Then her boyfriend of three years broke up with her. During that time, she didn't even have the strength to get out of bed to drink water. She took leave and stayed at home for a week. Her friend asked her to go to psychological counseling, but she refused to go. Later, she took a two-kilometer detour from get off work every day to feed the neglected calico cat at the gate of the community. She signed up for a pottery experience class on the weekend and crushed more than 20 kilograms of clay. Nine out of ten cups she made were crooked. More than three months later, she invited me to eat hot pot. She picked up a piece of chopsticks and laughed suddenly, saying that she had not eaten offal to accommodate her ex-boyfriend, but now she felt that the tripe was so crispy after being cooked for 15 seconds.

You see, she neither signed up for any "healing courses" that cost tens of thousands of dollars, nor did she force herself to "come out quickly." She even cried to old chat records for half an hour from time to time in the first two months. She was so confused that she slowly returned to her state.

As for how this mechanism works, different schools of psychology have been arguing for almost a hundred years, but they have not come up with a standard answer. The school of psychoanalysis believes that this is the function of "sublimation" - people will instinctively transfer suppressed painful emotions to constructive activities. Things like kneading mud and feeding cats are essentially transferring the energy of inward attacks to external creation and connection. Cognitive-behavioralists are more acknowledging the contribution of "cognitive reappraisal": you don't suddenly figure it out, but you find "I can provide warmth to a little life" when you feed the cat again and again, and you find "I can still get things done" when you make a usable cup. These small and small feedbacks slowly overturn the previous negative cognitions of "I can't do anything well" and "I am not loved", and people naturally relax. The embodied cognition school that has become popular in recent years has a more direct view: How can there be so many twists and turns in the mind? If you walk an extra two kilometers a day, bask in the sun for ten minutes, soak your hands in the cool clay when making clay balls, and eat hot pot, the hot soup will warm your stomach. These physical feelings will be better first, and your brain's ability to regulate emotions will naturally come back, without you having to force yourself to "figure it out."

To be honest, I have been working as a psychological companion for six years and have met no less than 30 people who have recovered from their troughs through self-healing. I found that the common point among everyone is never "being strong enough", but "not forcing yourself to be strong". After a boy's father passed away in a car accident, he didn't listen to the people around him who said, "You should cheer up and take care of your mother." Instead, he took a detour every day after get off work to buy a brown sugar steamed bun from the Laomian steamed bun shop where he and his father used to go. He said that it was then that he realized that he didn't have to hide the "missing daddy" thing before he came out. If he could finish a steamed bun calmly and still feel warm thinking about what he said, he was already feeling better.

There is a lot of controversy about this matter on the Internet now. Some people say that self-healing is a scam of self-comfort. If you really encounter trauma, you still need to find a professional counselor and take medicine to be effective.； Some people say that professional intervention is just cutting leeks, and that all psychological problems can be solved by oneself. I think both sides are a bit extreme - just like if you make a small cut on your hand, put a band-aid on it and don't touch the water and don't pick the scab, and it will grow back on its own. If the cut is so deep that you can see the bone, of course you have to go to the hospital for stitches, but whether it is mild or severe, it is your own repair ability that ultimately helps the wound heal. The self-healing mechanism is the psychological "self-healing power." The Harvard School of Public Health conducted a follow-up study in 2022 that covered 12,000 moderately traumatized respondents. 78% did not receive professional psychological intervention and returned to normal social functions on their own within 3 to 6 months. The role of professional intervention is essentially to help you open up blocked links and activate your own healing mechanism, rather than working for it.

The biggest misunderstanding that many people have about self-healing is that they feel that they must "reconcile with the past" and "forgive those who have hurt you." I saw a girl force her mother to go to parent-child consultation in order to force herself to reconcile with her patriarchal mother. Instead, she had a huge quarrel and her depression worsened for half a month. In fact, what “must” is there? If you don’t want to forgive, don’t forgive, and if you don’t want to reconcile, don’t reconcile. Even if you remember those bad things your whole life, as long as you can eat well, sleep well, and find some fun in the little things every day, then the healing has already taken effect. It has never been some high-level metaphysics. It is just the soft hair that rubs against the palm of your hand when you feed the cat, it is the crooked cup you squeezed out, it is the hot bun you sat on the roadside and finished chewing, it is the energy hidden in your body that helps you overcome all difficulties.

Last time I saw the little sweet potato of the operations girl. She now posts three videos a week, half of which show off the weird-shaped cat paw cups she made, and the other half of her daily life of the three-flowered cat snatching her snacks. The introduction said: "There is nothing you can't get through, unless you insist on standing there and fighting Kaner." ”You see, it's that simple.