Self-healing psychological problems

The core of self-healing psychological problems is never to "repair" oneself into a "perfect person" without any negative emotions, but to learn to live with the current disordered emotions, find a way to match one's own characteristics to rebuild the inner order, and there is no need to pursue "standardized recovery" defined by the outside world.

Last week, I met a young Internet operation girl who came to visit. She said that she followed the "30-day emotional healing plan" online for 21 days and forced herself to write three gratitude journals every day. As a result, after being scolded by her boss last week, she sat at her workstation and stared at her notebook for half an hour without being able to write a word. She suddenly collapsed - she felt that she could not even do something as simple as "healing" and that she was a waste. Don't tell me, there are really many people who make self-healing a KPI. In essence, they are forcing a band-aid with a smiley face on a wound that is bleeding. It looks bright on the outside, but it gets stuffy and rotten faster on the inside.

When I had tea with a psychoanalytic counselor before, she mentioned an interesting point of view: Many emotional problems are essentially old wounds triggered by current scenes. Traumas that you have not dealt with will not disappear out of thin air, but will only hide in your subconscious mind and torment you in another way. I tried the free writing method she taught me. There was a time last year when I was particularly afraid of being alone in a confined space. I always felt out of breath when I was alone in working overtime. According to the method she said, I didn’t need to use logic. I wrote whatever came to my mind. I wrote three pages in a mess. Suddenly, in the second grade of elementary school, my mother went to play mahjong and locked me at home from afternoon until midnight. The moment I finished writing, I suddenly felt that the blockage in my chest was loosened. Later, I didn’t feel so panicked when I was alone at work.

But friends who do CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) completely disagree with this logic of "digging out the past". He said that for many people who don't want to touch the trauma, digging up the trauma is like tearing open the scab again, which will make it more painful. The method he gave is more practical: If you always have the thought "I can't do anything well", keep a small notebook with you. Every time this thought occurs, write it down, followed by three small things you accomplished that day, even if it is "the temperature of the coffee I brewed today is just right" or "just in time for the subway". I tried this before when I had an anxiety attack. After writing for three days, if the thought of self-denial comes up, my first reaction is not to get stuck in it, but "Oh, I have to find a notebook to record negative examples again." The attention is pulled out of the emotion instantly, and the effect is very fast.

At this point, someone must mention the controversy over mindfulness. After all, there are a lot of people online who accuse "mindfulness is an IQ tax". I previously took an experiential class with a mindfulness teacher who has been practicing mindfulness for 12 years. He said that most people think mindfulness is useless and essentially misunderstand the role of mindfulness - who told you that mindfulness requires you to have an empty mind and not think about anything? If you sit and let your mind wander 9 times for 10 minutes, and each time your mind wanders, you can bring your attention back to your breathing. The act of pulling back 9 times is practice in itself. Now when I can't sleep, I don't force myself to "mindfulness meditation". I just lie down and count my breathing, and then count again when I count to 10. I don't scold myself when my mind wanders, I just pull back and continue counting. It is indeed much faster than falling asleep thinking about the next day's work over and over again.

Oh, by the way, don’t limit self-healing to the “psychological method” box. I have a friend who is a tattoo artist. Her way of healing is to save old jeans and cut them into patches if they have holes or are worn out and don’t want to be thrown away. She squats in the studio to sew canvas bags. Another friend's method of healing is to go to the park to pick up garbage on weekends, and another person goes to the vegetable market to watch the uncles and aunts bargaining. There is no right or wrong. It can make you temporarily withdraw from your emotions and feel comfortable, which is a good method. Not everyone has to reconcile with their family of origin, and not everyone has to break down their childhood trauma and talk about it. If you don’t want to touch it, don’t touch it. As long as you can live your current life, it’s fine.

Finally, the boundaries must be made clear: If you have been unable to sleep or eat for more than two weeks in a row, cannot control yourself and want to harm yourself, or even have hallucinations and auditory hallucinations, don't insist on "self-healing" and quickly go to the psychiatric department of a regular hospital to register. You should take medicine and seek consultation. Self-healing is a vitamin besides meals, which can help you get better faster, but it cannot be taken as medicine to cure the disease.

Yesterday, I met an aunt downstairs after get off work. She squatted by the flower bed and picked up the sunflowers that had been blown down by the wind one by one. She most likely didn't know what "emotional regulation" and "self-healing" meant, but she was definitely relaxed and happy at that moment. You see, there is no standard answer. The one that makes your chest feel smoother is the way that suits you best.