What Is Emotional Healing and How Can It Change Your Life?

Hi, I'm Dr. Donnie Wilson, and welcome to How Humans Heal. In today's episode, I want to talk about emotional healing. This is something that I find comes up with my patients from around the world and also in the programs that I offer with patients, whether for even for healing something like HPV and abnormal pap smears, as well as helping with anxiety and depression, where it may seem more obvious, but really emotional healing comes into play with all different health issues. And so I feel like it's an important thing to, for us to talk about. And I will also be having more guests interviewed on the podcast very soon to go into this into more detail because I feel it's such an important part of the stress recovery process. I also cover emotional healing in my most recent book, Master your Stress, reset your Health. So what do I mean by emotional healing? We hear a lot about the mind body connection, and we hear about mind, body and spirit. And a lot of times I think we're aware that a lot of our stress is on a psycho emotional level. I also believe that we experience a lot of stress on a physical level in terms of infections and toxins and, and injuries and things that happen to us on a physical level. And it's the combination of those stresses, the psycho emotional stresses and the physical stresses and even spiritual or energetic stresses that compound into the total load of stress that we're exposed to. And we know from research that it's that environmental exposure that turns on our gene expression. So no matter what your genetic variations are, it's really your environmental exposure that turns on those genetic expressions and variations and susceptibilities. And we know that the environmental stress exposure, including emotional stress, is what really has the most influence on our health overall. And so that's why it's so important to be paying attention to it. And the thing is, is that a lot of times we, in our medical system, as it's existed in the past, you know, let's say at least 80 years, has been a separation of mind and body. You know, you go to one doctor for mental health issues or a therapist, and you go to a different practitioner for stuff that's happening on a physical level. Hormones or digestion or, you know, HPV and vaginal for women's health, or, you know, you're going to different doctors for different parts of your body. And so the perception is that we're separate all those body parts, but in actuality, all of our physical bodies and communication, our digestions in communication with our immune system, our hormones, our nervous system, they're all talking to each other. And that means that they can either have a negative influence or a positive influence on each other. And the physical body is always in communication with the nervous system, the mind and emotional level. And so that's again, why even if you're like, hey, I don't notice anything, maybe you're thinking, hey, I don't even feel anything on an emotional level. In fact, if you feel like you don't feel anything on an emotional level, that alone tells me we need to go get you feeling. Because if we're not feeling, then that's already an issue. A lack of feeling, I think, is an issue more so than we ever realized. The thing is, is that we were a lot of, you know, anyone in, in around my generation, and I think even now, still, we're taught as children to not cry, to not be angry, to not. To not to not express our feelings or emotions, right? We're not supposed, it's like we're, we're taught from a young age we're not supposed to feel emotions or we're not supposed to express them. And it's very confusing for children because I can tell you from observing my granddaughter, who's now three months old, she just has an automatic ability to express her emotions, right? She can automatically yawn when she feels tired, she cries when she needs something. She can even laugh at herself in the mirror. So she. These emotions come naturally to us as humans. To me, it really shows me that these are, these are just normal processes that our nervous system and our body knows how to do inherently. And what happens in society and school and religion and so on is in our, in our households, in the way we parent is we suppress it. We're. We're told not to, you know, yawn when we feel tired, we're told not to cry when we feel sad. We're told to somehow control our emotions. And to some degree, okay, yes, we can see the value in, you know, if someone is overly expressing and maybe disrupting others. But there's ways, I think, that we can learn how to feel our feelings, experience and process our feelings without disrupting others and without. Because if we don't feel our feelings, if we suppress our feelings, it's very well established in research and, and even in psychology that when we suppress our emotions, that ends up more likely leading to health issues, including on a physical level. So a lot of times we don't realize it, but we end up experiencing pain, for example, in our bodies when we're not fully allowing our, ourselves to feel and acknowledge and make even make different decisions based on the feelings that we're feeling that we're not feeling, the feelings that we need to be feeling that we're not allowing ourselves to. It ends up showing up on a physical level. And this is also why a lot of somatic, what's called somatic therapy, is a type of psychotherapy that's helping to process emotions that are stored in the body. And there's some great books and authors I can list in the show notes, some different books I recommend if you'd like to learn more. Everything from Carolyn Mace to so many others that go into detail. If you really are like, wow, I want to explore this more. And I have prior episodes also with somatic healing experts, trauma release experts. I have an upcoming episode on myofascial therapy which is another way to release trauma on a physical level. So I want you to know that I really want to bring this information to you especially because what I find unfortunately is that I don't think people have enough support to learn how to process emotions and to recover from stress and trauma. As much as we might be bringing awareness to stress and trauma, we're not so much being guided what to do about it. And so sometimes then the stress and trauma just feels heavier. So I really want to emphasize that as much as I want to help you to acknowledge your stress and trauma from the past and the effect it's having on your body, I want to also help you to have the tools to transform it and to recover from it and start learning what to do with it instead of suppressing it. And it's, it's somewhat unique to each person. You know, there's not one exact pathway for everyone to go down that's going to work for you. It's. I think if it's more like I want to show you a menu of options for you to choose from because I also believe that part of the healing process from psycho emotional stress is this ability for you to put yourself into your own health advocate role, put you into the driver's seat instead of. Once again, because this is how we grew up in childhood is we're dependent on someone else telling us what to do now. It's always this external direction. What also helps heal us on an emotional level is for us to start making decisions for ourselves, to get in touch with our own body's information and messages, what is and in. In touch with your own intuition, what feels right to you. And so I would much rather give you information for you to then Connect with yourself and say, hey, what feels right to me as my next step. Because then along the way, you're also learning to listen to yourself. You're learning to feel your emotions. You're learning to try things with curiosity and learn through the experience. And then in, in this way, there's no right, wrong or right. You're, you're saying, hey, let me try this, see what happens. And I'm going to learn from it and then I'm going to go on to the next thing. So it really teaches this ability to be accountable to yourself and to be forgiving and accepting and yet still moving forward with curiosity to identify what's going to help you heal. So we have to first establish that healing is possible, that recovery from stress and trauma is possible. And I would say that it is. And then we start to look at how best to approach that. Well, yes, a lot of times you hear me talking about how to approach it on a physical level when I'm talking about how to get your cortisol to optimal, that's a, that's your stress hormone. We, that's essential part of this. The more we get the cortisol to optimal, the more we get your adrenaline to optimal, the more we get your neurotransmitters to optimal, even the serotonin gaba, dopamine. The more those neurotransmitters are optimal, the easier it is for you to start processing on a psycho emotional level. So those are all. It's important to do both. I'm not saying one or the other. And I think a lot of people find themselves spending hours and hours and thousands of dollars in a, say, a talk therapy setting and feeling like they are only getting so far with it because they're not also addressing the cortisol, adrenaline, neurotransmitter levels, and even nutrient deficiencies and thyroid imbalances and digestive imbalances. Right. So we are really, that's why I believe we have to be addressing that part. But then we also need to be in a supportive environment to process emotionally. And for some people, it is very helpful to do work, find a therapist you feel comfortable with. There's so many therapists available, and sometimes you have to talk and get to know a therapist to find a therapist who works well for you, who you feel comfortable with, safe with. And then you might end up trying different forms of therapy from cbt, cognitive behavioral therapy, to emdr, which has been shown to be very helpful for stress recovery. PTSD is what they research. But to me, if anything Works for ptsd. It's going to work for other forms of stress as well. Even recovery from narcissistic abuse, recovery from sexual abuse, recovery from any other kind of trauma, even just coming through the pandemic, even coming through the loss of a loved one. Grief processing, these are really real things that as humans we need to pay attention to. I can't tell you how many women I meet with who come in to see me because they have a history, they're, they have HPV and potentially abnormal cells that keep recurring on the cervix or vaginally and they're like why is this virus not leaving me alone? And this is an example of this could also be the case with autoimmunity or different kinds of even frequent miscarriages and, and not being able to have a successful pregnancy. There's so many things that could happen on a physical level that we're like, I'm always then going to explore what's happening for that person. On an emotional level. Did they have loss in their life? You know, a patient might say oh last year my mother in law, mother in law passed away and it was very traumatic and a lot of grief. Or in the past five years I've lost three loved ones. We need to be helping that person process that grief on an emotional level. Or maybe someone has been coming through a very toxic relationship and they're feeling all kinds of anger and resentment that needs to be processed. So it, it, it's about acknowledging that and then finding ways to support it. Even we can use, I would use homeopathy for example. Homeopathy is a system of medicine in India, still widely used ancient medicine in India that's very helpful for helping to process emotionally and connecting this mind body connection for healing. So we can use things like homeopathy, Bach flower remedies and, and so much more. There's so many other approaches for healing on that psycho emotional level, including psychedelic medicine. Now more and more there's increased awareness and research showing how beneficial psychedelic medicines can be for helping us to recover from traumas, PTSD and other kinds of stress related health issues, including addictions that develop because of stress exposure. So I definitely encourage you to, if you're interested in that, listen to and read my other resources related to psychedelic medicines. Everything from, I mean mildly psychedelic would be considered cannabis. But I would say the those that are showing the best results with helping with psycho emotional processing are psilocybin. Ketamine is also used much more likely to be able to access ketamine in in a medical clinic in the U.S. at this point, whereas psilocybin is not yet legalized, hopefully in the near future, because it is so helpful for people as well as mdma and Ayahuasca is a plant medicine from Central and South America that it has psychedelic properties and has been shown to be extremely healing for stress, PTSD and addictions. And to me, again, even if you don't have that extreme history of stress and trauma, even if you just feel like you can't quite get in touch with your emotions and you have a feeling that something that's something stressful that happened to you that you haven't been able to process, I think these should also be still considered psychedelic medicines. So, yeah, those are. I want you to know those are all possibilities and options. And I wanted to also share in this episode that just this concept about emotions, just this concept about how we can allow ourselves even. Even, you know, whether whatever other support you access, something that you can do yourself is to become more aware of your emotions, allow yourself to feel your emotions, be curious about your emotions again, because I think so often we're not allowed. We don't have time. We feel like we don't have time. We feel scary. I mean, sometimes we like resist feeling our emotions so much. It's almost like we'd rather do anything else than feel an emotion. And it's almost like our emotions are monsters and we run away from them like crazy. And it's like I was joking with a patient the other day. It's like we'd almost rather be anesthetized so that we can feel our emotions. Except it doesn't work that way. We have the. The way to feel them is to just feel them and go through it. And believe me, I've. I've myself learned this lesson. It was a very hard lesson for me because I went through. Some of you are familiar with. A couple of years ago, I actually developed a growth on my neck that was related to my joint. But. And it turned out that I had a chronic inflammation in my. And my sternum and my clavicle. Why did I have that chronic inflammation in that location? Because it's a very rare location. Well, one is that I have joint hypermobility and I had injured my shoulders. And so it ended up creating this inflammation in this area. But here again, this is a physical.

Situation. But it ended up also being very tied to an emotional level because this area of the body is also not only the throat chakra, which is in the throat, which has to do with speaking your truth, but also the heart chakra because it extended into my sternum. This is the heart chakra, which is energetic for, for love and, and emotion. And so we can see that sometimes the chakras can be used to help teach us what, where the stagnation or where the inflammation or where the, where we need to pay attention to help our bodies heal. And so part of my healing process was not just to remove the growth, which was a non cancerous growth, it was due to inflammation. I also needed to figure out how to be anti inflammatory. And that's one of the reasons why I chose ayahuasca, because ayahuasca is an anti inflammatory plant, but it's also healing on an emotional level. And so while I was using ayahuasca to heal the inflammation, it also helped me heal emotionally. And I realized that I was storing a lot of emotional pain in this area of my body. And only through processing that grief, that pain, was I able to heal this inflammation in my sternum and at the same time heal my emotional heart. Right. Isn't that so interesting that this is the location of our anatomical heart, but it's also the location of our emotional heart. Right. And so we want to make sure are you healing your heart? And a lot of us have been through betrayals and, and different kinds of situations in relationships with other humans that cause us heartache, heartbreak. That's what we call it. Right. That emotional heartbreak. And it can heal and it, it takes, we always say it takes time, but I think it also, we can help it out with some of these techniques and the, and the awareness we can use. Yes. Working with a therapist. Yes. Using, you know, meditation. Oh my gosh. Meditation and mindfulness are so powerful tools for accessing emotional healing. And so we can use them. We can use, use the chakras and rebalancing chakras, we can use different energetic means as well and, and psychedelic medicines, all in this effort to rebalance and heal on an emotional level. And so I just encourage you to know that all of that's possible and then to discover and to start to ask yourself where, where might you like to explore for yourself down that path. And what I really also wanted to share is I really ha. It's really become clear to me that as humans we have a huge potential for feeling feelings. I really think that as humans we're probably only allowing ourselves to feel like 1% or less than 5% of our emotional capacity. And I know that for myself and I know that from observing patients and others in my life that it's. I think we really restrict and we have no idea that we can experience such emotional breadth. I'm really excited to open enrollment in my new 14 day detox program. It's based on my experience spending 16 days in the Amazon and I realized I really want to be able to support all of you to safely and effectively detox from home. The first 14 day detox includes a kit with protein powder, including antioxidants to support liver detoxification as well as an anti inflammatory diet plan, daily videos and tips from me as well as my self care notebook and lots of encouragement to spend time in nature to reset your circadian rhythm. I want you to be able to detox your mind, body and spirit so you can get back to balance and move forward in your life with resilience. I can't wait for you to join me in this transformational process. And, and by learning this it's like a, just like if you go to the gym and work out your muscles you can learn to expand your ability to feel your feelings and to feel comfortable and confident doing it. All kinds of emotions you might. Some of them I think we don't even have names for. And I was going to mention that there's books on this. There's, there's and I'll mention them in the show notes. For example, there's a book my mom was reading recently called Atlas of the heart by Brene Brown and she talks about 86 different emotions. Isn't that amazing? Like you ever were wondering what are the emotions that the humans can experience? That's a great book to, to just look at the research on all these different emotions we can experience. And what I found is by going through this process that I've explained to you and especially by through the use of psychedelic medicines, I've really been able to expand my ability to feel emotions and to feel comfortable feeling emotions and to feel present. Like a lot of times I think we feel again like we want to run away or that we have to react. We feel an emotion and we feel we have to do something in response to it. But how do we just feel it and allow ourselves to feel it? Just like my friend and colleague Joan talks about in her book 90 seconds to a life you love. She talks about how most emotions we can feel in 90 seconds. And by practicing allowing ourselves to just be present with our feelings for 90 seconds that it can be so transformative whether you feel angry for, you know, 90 seconds. Right. You can handle that. We worry that if we're gonna feel a feeling that it's. I don't know, we think something bad's gonna happen, and. And it's like, no, nothing bad's gonna happen. You're gonna breathe, you're gonna. You can use your tools from meditation and mindfulness. Breathe and connect with yourself and know that you're gonna be okay. You're gonna feel whatever comes up, and it's probably gonna take about 90 seconds. And then you're gonna. You can journal about it, you can sing. These are all techniques that humans have developed over history to help us express and feel our emotions. And then you come out the other side and you're like, oh, okay. But the thing is, is that you. You have actually allowed yourself to feel your feelings, and in doing so, process them. I was talking to a patient today who experienced a betrayal in her life, and it's really wearing on her. And of course, then it's going to disrupt her cortisol and adrenaline. So we don't want to disrupt your cortisol, adrenaline. We want to help to process that betrayal. Which reminds me, another colleague of mine, Debbie Silver, created the Betrayal Institute. She helps people heal from betrayal every day. I'll. I'll put that link to her interview as well. To know that these resources exist and that it's possible to heal as much as we feel. Like, how. What can I do? How am I going to navigate this? There are tools available to help you and to help you to learn how to actually. Instead of resisting. Right? Because when we resist, it persists. But if we can feel it and experience it and get more confident feeling our feelings and actually create time and space to feel our feelings, that it's so healing for us. It's actually so necessary, as necessary, I think, as sleep and exercise and drinking water and eating healthy food is to feel our feelings. And what I find now is I think I can feel hundred or thousand times more than I could feel before. Imagine that. You know, just imagine what it would be like if you. If you feel grateful for something. And imagine if that feeling of gratitude could expand to a thousand times that much. It just. Tears pour out of your eyes and you feel such healing. Because we know that the emotions of love and gratitude really shift us on an energetic level. They actually create change on a cellular level, which they've also studied in science, to show that when we feel these feelings, we're actually. It's actually shifting us on a cellular level to allow us to heal. It's such. That's why practicing gratitude is A is a well known tool. You know, just taking a couple minutes each day to think to yourself. What do I feel grateful for? Is so healing. And it's because that emotion of gratitude, it shifts us on a cellular and energetic level to a healing state. And this brings me to one more thing I wanted to mention in this episode is. Well, actually I have a couple more things I wanted to mention. One is the connection to quantum physics. And I'm curious if you're interested in this, and I'm happy to share more. But quantum physics is this concept in science and math where we're looking at. I. The way I describe it is we're looking at the possibilities. That there's more possibilities than we realize, you know, for so long. And I think as humans it's natural for us to kind of want to control things. And to have one answer, simplify right down to like black and white. And that's part of our human nature. But what's real in actual nature is that things are not so black and white. Things are actually not actually decided until the very last second. And they show this in quantum physics. They show by, in the, in the, they show these in experiments. They, they can show that, that, that even atoms are. The decision of where it's going to be located is not decided until the observer observes it. And so this is like we can take these lessons from physics and, and, and use them, I think, in our, in our understanding of ourselves. Essentially where I start with this is to say that.

As much as we hear.

About. One of the ways to manage our stress is to focus on what we can control.

Well, what I tend to find is it also helps to master our stress by practicing being comfortable in the unknown. And what I mean by that is.

Yes, we can. There's things that are known and we can address those. But it's the unknown that creates the most stress. And so how do we get comfortable, more comfortable with the unknown? And I think that the. One of the ways that I've found to become more comfortable with the unknown is to recognize that this concept of quantum physics. That actually most everything is unknown until the very last second. That many possibilities exist and then it's, it's going to be in the, in, in the last moment that it becomes reality. And that means that we have more power than we think we have. We have way more power to. In terms of how we observe our environment and in terms of how we create our future. In terms of what we choose in each moment. How we choose to relate to ourselves. How we choose to allow ourselves to feel how we choose to be in silence. And instead of attaching to a feeling or a thought. Instead of attaching to this way things look around us. To be able to be the observer. And observe all the possibilities. And with curiosity and with acceptance. And to then see, here's what's the reality as I'm seeing it now in the world. And also to see what it is that you would like to create in your life. And to realize that you can get into a state. In this state of gratitude and love. Where you can then actually create a different reality for yourself. You can start to envision here again. So much research on this and books. Amazing. Where the more you can envision. What you want to create in your health and in your body, you can. Then.

The more you spend in that time and space. Of believing it and seeing it and envisioning it. You can create that for yourself. And that's how a lot of people experience.

Healing. Sometimes instantaneous healing, distance healing. Because they're able to get into this state of creating a new reality for themselves in their existence. Using these concepts of quantum physics. And I. I mention it here because I think it helps in terms of processing emotions. I think it helps in terms of. Because sometimes when we feel stuck in terms of trauma and emotions. We feel like the only option is for things to be the way they are. And that's more stressful. So to realize, oh, it's not just about being stuck and dealing with it. It's not just about taking control and. And trying to control our environment. It's about, how can I see what exists? So it's not that we aren't realizing what really exists. We see what exists. And we then.

Are able to connect with ourselves. Feel our emotions to an extent where we can process them so that they're not in the way. Because the thing is, is if we have emotions that are unprocessed. It's like it blocks us from being able to choose something different in the future. The emotional states that are unprocessed. Whether anger, resentment, grief. This. It just sits there and prevents. It sort of like already presets what you're going to experience tomorrow and the next day. So we want to help move that energy, move those emotions, process them so that you can then be free to create and choose a different reality for yourself going forward. And so that's how I see this. This real potential for feeling your emotions and processing them. And being able to then choose differently going forward. We really have that power. I was Going to say that there's this concept called the highly sensitive person that was written about and coined by some, a couple psychologists, Dr. Aaron and Dr. Aaron.

In, in the 1990s and they wrote a book called the Highly Sensitive Person which is now even considered a neuro. Neurodivergent.

Situation condition sensitivity.

It involves more sensitive nervous system being more sensitive to our environment physically, emotionally, spiritually, more likely to perceive things, more likely to react to things. And I want to mention it here because some of you might relate to that. Some of you might notice, oh, maybe you're a type of person who. You see yourself as someone who emotion experiences emotions more or more strongly than other people. And, and that's a real, you know, real thing. I think that some people there in your nervous system is picking up on emotions in the environment more so than others. But I also think that many people have been suppressing their ability to feel their emotions. And so I mention it because to me, if a, if a, if someone who has been assessed or considers themselves a highly sensitive person.

That tells me that the human nervous system has that capacity to feel and to process emotions. So that means to me that others could also access some of that capability if you, if you put your attention to it. Now may I was still. And that's. We don't fully understand. You know, maybe some of us are, are more able to still sense and, and feel and, and, and pick up on signals from our environment more so than others. But it does say to me that it's about allowing ourselves to really fully find out what your capacity is. What is your capacity to listen to yourself and your own signals from within? What is your body really telling you that you maybe haven't been listening to.

But you can look at, enter, you know, even just physically, do you feel pain? Is there emotions? Like sometimes it's when we're quiet, sometimes it's when we're in nature that you hear you. It comes to you. It'll come to you in your dreams. You'll start to pick up on these, this information that you weren't, you were just, you were too busy to notice before. And so I think that this, and it's so valuable because it's in that ability to sense your body and your response to your environment. It's that capability that can really help you heal and, and so just encouraging you. If some of you are like, I don't, I don't get any signals from my body. I don't feel my feelings. It just takes practice and taking those quiet moments Making the space for it in your life and not trying to force it. That's the trick, right? If we try to force something, it blocks it immediately. So as soon as you feel yourself trying to force it or push it or pressure yourself or question yourself or criticize yourself, you just have to let it go and take a breath and try again later. Because it doesn't work, then it needs to be where you just feel. You just completely lose yourself in the moment. Like say you're watching a movie and you start crying, right? It's like you just lose yourself in the movie about someone else's life and you start crying. But when you think about your own life, you're like, I can't. It's not going to happen. So sometimes it's why watching a sad movie is helpful, because we get ourselves to feel our feelings more naturally. And sometimes that's a good place to start. Or watch a funny movie. Watch something that makes you laugh. It gets you laughing again. We know laughter and crying are such healing experiences for us humans. So we need to choose it on purpose. And then little by little, it'll come more naturally to you. You may find yourself. Oh, and instead of judging yourself, when you feel yourself like you want to cry, let yourself cry. If you feel like you need to laugh, let yourself laugh. It's only by practicing our emotions, and at first we're not going to do it perfectly. You, if you feel angry, you might. It might not come out exactly how you'd like it to come out at first. And you might tell the people in your life, okay, I'm going to practice feeling my emotions. And I might not do it perfectly at first, but I would love it if you give me some feedback so you can practice feeling your emotions in a loving experience so that you can get better at it. You can get more comfortable with it. And then the more feelings you feel, the more you'll. You'll discover yourself. You really. It's a practice of self discovery. And again, the more than you process those feelings, wherever they are stored in you, then you. You open yourself up to all different possibilities for your existence that don't no longer have to be determined by past experiences that are stuck in your emotions that haven't been processed. I hope that's helpful for you, inspirational for you. I'd love to hear if you'd like to learn more. And I look forward to the next episode of How Humans Heal and having you join me. So please join or subscribe onto my mailing list so that you can hear about the next episode. I'll see you soon.

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