11 Powerful Rituals for Emotional Healing You Need Now

Hey there, everybody. Doc Snipes here. Today we're going to talk about 11 powerful rituals for emotional healing that you need right now. Let's start out by thinking about what emotional wounds actually are. Emotional wounds are caused by memories of past experiences and beliefs that formed from those past experiences that leave you feeling unsafe or powerless in the present. Engaging in one or more of these 11 powerful rituals can empower you to heal those wounds. The first one is journaling to recognize what your emotional wounds are. A lot of people have kind of pushed them down or put them back in a closet somewhere in their head, kind of locked them up, but they're still there. Journaling can help you recognize your emotions and signals of distress and emotional wounds in each piece of your life. Some of your emotional wounds will come out because it makes your stomach tight or makes. Makes it harder for you to sleep. Some of your emotional wounds may come out when you're feeling jealous or resentful of people or guilty. Some of your emotional wounds may come out when you're just feeling depressed and you're not exactly sure why, or anxious or angry, you know, all of the above. Some of your emotional wounds may come out mentally when you have difficulty focusing or when you just really have a negative attitude about most things. That can signal that you're feeling vulnerable and that there may be an emotional wound that needs to be dealt with so you can see the good and the bad. You also want to recognize signs of emotional wounds in your environment. Maybe you don't put up any pictures of family because you had a very chaotic upbringing. Or maybe there are triggers in your environment that just keep opening those emotional wounds, recognizing those, paying attention to the fact. When I look at this particular lamp or knickknack, you know, it makes me feel sad. Okay. Well, it could be just a moment of reminiscence, or it could be an emotional wound that you still need to heal. Maybe it's the lamp that you got when your mom died, and there are things that you failed to tell her before she died, and you still feel guilty about that. So when you look at it, that guilt comes up. When you're journaling, identify what triggered the emotion in the present. What was going on when I started feeling this emotion? What's the purpose of this feeling? If I'm feeling guilty, why am I feeling guilty? Oh, I'm feeling guilty because I didn't tell her those things before she died. Okay. So the purpose of that feeling is to remind me that I'm angry at myself for not telling her those things. All right, we want to identify those unresolved hurts that were activated, the benefits and drawbacks to holding on to that distress. So what are the benefits and drawbacks to me holding on to that guilt for not saying those things to my mom before she died because I can't do it now? What's the benefit? How does that enrich my life? How does that help me move toward my rich and meaningful life and not make that same mistake again? And how can I use my energy to address that issue in a way that helps me move toward my rich and meaningful life? I don't want to have that guilt. I don't want to have that situation happen again where somebody dies and I haven't told them everything that I need to tell them. Therefore, I am going to use my energy in the present to make sure that I communicate with people how important they are to me and how much I love them and care about them. Another practice is practicing hardiness and gratitude daily. Hardiness means commitment, control, and challenge. I mean, looking at all the things that are important in your rich and meaningful life, recognizing that some of them are not going to be going well. It's rare that everything is going perfect. All right, that's fine. Hopefully the majority of them are going okay. And you've got a few things over here that are not going so well. Embrace the good with the bad. You're committed to those, using your energy to nurture those things, even the things that are going bad in your rich and meaningful life. Control means recognizing the things you can and cannot control and using your energy again in the present to address those things you can control, to nurture what's important in your rich and meaningful life. And the challenge is actually doing it. The challenge is stopping trying to control those things we can't control. And when we run into obstacles along the way, instead of viewing it as something horrible, getting curious and viewing it as a challenge. Okay, well, being healthy and living a long life so I can see my grandkids go grow up, that's important in my rich and meaningful life. But, oh, no, I have a heart condition. So, you know, now I'm worried that I won't be able to live to see them grow up their entire, you know, and have their own kids. I won't get to be a great grandma and. But I'm committed to trying to do that. I'm committed to living as long as I can and making the most out of the time I have. So I'm going to use my energy to do What I need to do to control my heart condition and to nurture the relationships with my kids and my grandkids as long as I can. And I'm going to view it as a challenge. Yes, it would have been easier without the heart condition, but is what it is. So I could either use a lot of energy being angry about the fact that my life's not perfect, or I could say, I can do, I can have a rich and meaningful life and have this heart condition. I can be grateful for what's going well in my rich and meaningful life right now. Mindfulness is another powerful daily practice. In the morning, starting out, reviewing what's important in your rich and meaningful life, thinking about how you're going to use your energy positively to move toward that rich and meaningful life throughout the day, and being compassionate with yourself. You know, mindfulness isn't all about just being optimistic. Sometimes it's about being realistic and saying, you know what? I'm just not feeling it today. I didn't sleep well or I'm starting to get sick or whatever it is, but I, I'm just not on my A game today. Being mindful of that, being compassionate with yourself. And instead of ignoring your thoughts, wants and needs, changing it up a little bit to say, okay, so we're operating at 50% today. What can we do in order to, as we use our energy, as we do the things we need to do in order to move toward our rich and meaningful life. And that's huge because it can help us start counteracting those harsh words that we got that we learned when we were growing up that you need to do it anyway, Just shut up, suck it up, and do it anyway. In the morning, we can acknowledge the new day. In the morning, we can acknowledge what is going right, what. Which can help heal those emotional wounds because it helps us feel more empowered and safer. In the evening, we look back over the day and we give ourselves a congratulations for the things that went right. We have gratitude for what went right. And we recognize that if we made mistakes, we can learn from them. And that's another tool in emotional healing. Instead of viewing failures or mistakes as negative, view them as opportunities to learn. This is another thing we were often not taught growing up. That caused a lot of shame and emotional wounds. It was like, oh, I made a mistake. People are going to hate me. They're going to judge me. No, if they do, that's their business. But because I made a mistake doesn't make me any worse of a person. It doesn't make Me any less lovable, it means I learned how not to do it. Developing distress tolerance skills is important for healing emotional wounds. Think about an emotional wound like a cut on your arm. And when you're trying to heal that wound, you want to protect that, that cut and that scab from getting assaulted again. You don't want a bunch of stuff messing with it and knocking off the scab or what have you. So you're going to figure out ways to protect it. If it starts to hurt, you're going to figure out ways to address that so the pain doesn't. So you can tolerate the pain while it heals. If you've ever had a broken bone, you know how this goes. Some days are better than others. But learning how to tolerate that distress to keep from reopening old wounds, learning how to tolerate that distress and saying, you know what? I'm different now. The situation's different now. That was horrible back then, and the way I felt back then wasn't right. But there's nothing I can do to change the past. So in the present, I can recognize that that younger version of me is still hurting and I can help that younger version of me heal. And. And I can tolerate the distress. It's not going to overwhelm me. It's not going to overtake me. You can validate your feelings and avoid what Hayes calls dirty discomfort. And dirty discomfort is the feelings we have about our feelings. So if I wake up in the morning and I'm just. I'm not feeling it. I'm feeling kind of depressed and flat, and then I start getting angry at myself for feeling depressed, and then I start feeling guilty because I feel depressed and I may not be as productive today as I quote should be. That's dirty discomfort. Each one of those emotions drains my energy. So the more feelings I have about my feelings, the more energy I'm spending on focusing on distress. So validate your feelings. You wake up in the morning, you're depressed, you're just not feeling it. Alrighty, well, I might use some of my energy to figure out why I'm feeling this way. But I'm going to avoid holding on to those fleeting other feelings. I may get angry at them for a minute, like I'm feeling depressed again. When am I going to feel better? All right, acknowledge it. Let it go. What we're focusing on is the depression and feelings. We don't want to completely eliminate them. They help us survive. Anger and anxiety are there to tell us. Just like a smoke alarm, there might be a threat all right, well check it out. If there's a threat, then act. Act to protect yourself. If there's not a threat, let it go. And finally, strengthen your vagus nerve, also known as your relaxation response. Your vagus nerve triggers, the rest digest and repair. What's the word I'm looking for? System. And when you're stressed, that relaxation response is kind of off, if you will. And when you're stressed for a long time, that stress response becomes dominant and becomes a bully. And your relaxation response has difficulty tell telling it to turn down, telling it to turn off. So by strengthening your relaxation response, by strengthening your vagus nerve and developing those distress tolerance skills so you feel more empowered to tell your brain to tell your body, hey, there's nothing to be worried about right now. I got this. You're going to start healing those emotional wounds. You can also create a personal affirmation using distress tolerant thoughts. You wake up in the morning and it's, it doesn't have to be I'm good enough. If you don't believe it, don't say it to yourself because no matter how many times you say it, you're probably never going to believe it. So you need to find something that you believe. Personal affirmation could be, I can do this today or I'm strong enough to get through the day or I can do anything for 15 minutes. Whatever affirmation that you need that says I got this and I can handle this situation or this feeling, even if it's unpleasant, can be really helpful. I encourage people to write it down. Keep a copy on their mobile device so they can look at it wherever they are. You can also define what emotional healing looks like for you. It looks different for every person. And just saying that when I'm healed emotionally, I'll be happy. Well, what does happy look like to you? I have a friend of mine who said the happy boat sailed many years ago. That's not a feeling I'll ever experience. Okay, not going to invalidate him. That's fine. So what does emotional healing look like for him? And it's important for him to define what that looks like. Contentment, you know, maybe that's as high as you think you can get. Okay, so what does that look like? If you're content, how is it going to impact you physically? How is it going to change your relationships with yourself and with others? How is it going to impact your emotions? How's it going to impact the way you think about things and how clearly you can think? You know, those are all the Things that we're going to use to define what you're working toward when you say, I want to heal emotionally. That way, when you get there, you can look back and say, yes, I'm sleeping better. I have less pain, I have less digestive upset. I am more patient in my relationships. Whatever it looks like for you that will let you know that you have healed or you are healing emotionally. You can also reprogram your subconscious, starting with what emotional healing looks like for you, thinking in your mind right before you go to sleep about one thing that'll be different when you're healed emotionally. So maybe in my mind, I envision myself being more patient with people at work throughout the day. You know, that's one of those things I just envision. So I'm starting to heal my ability or inability to manage my emotions. And by doing that right before bed, it actually sort of seeps into, if you will, your subconscious. And they've done studies with athletes who've envisioned, like, doing the perfect golf stroke or the perfect dive. And they've also envisioned it with other things, like being able to confidently talk with other people. When people envision it right before they go to sleep, it actually does have an impact. When you're rehearsing it in your mind before you go to sleep, it starts to create those neural networks. You can practice forgiveness and acceptance and finally engage in hobbies, listen to music, and get outside to just increase those positive chemicals to balance out the distress and allow your create an environment where you can heal.