Quotes About Healing

When a full-thickness injury occurs to the skin or an incision is made, there is always a scar. The

Maybe she's right," I reasoned. "Maybe I shouldn't worry so much about taking accurate readings. Maybe I should spend more time just relaxing, and looking calmly at the world around me. Maybe that would help me get well again.

Healing means bringing the person into a right relationship with the physical, mental and spiritual laws of God.

By choosing recovery and risking to be real, we set the healthy boundaries that say, "I am in charge of my recovery and my life, and no one else on this Earth is.

From the recovery experience of hundreds of thousands of people, we know that there is an effective way out of this constricting and binding effect of shame: to tell the story of our suffering to safe and supportive others. (51)

Many children from troubled families have difficulty relaxing and having fun. Ability to be spontaneous and to play is a need and a characteristic of our Child Within.

Because they have not healed their Child Within, they are generally unable to be a part of the safe and supportive healing of another. However, we can learn to set limits with these people, so that they do not continue to mistreat us. We set limits both with firmness and with love. We do so not with aggressiveness, but with assertiveness.

However, the nurturing person must be able to nurture and the person in need must be able to let go, to surrender, in order to be nurtured. In my observations of patients, their families, and of other people, this reciprocity is unusual in human interaction. It is not the child's job to nurture their parent, and when this happens repeatedly, it is a subtle form of child abuse or neglect.

The final need is unconditional love. This is a difficult concept for many to understand. I discuss this need further in Chapter 15.

In order to survive, the child who cannot develop a strong True Self compensates by developing an exaggerated false or co-dependent self.

When we allow ourselves to feel these painful feelings, give them an accurate name, and when we share the grief with safe and supportive others over time, we are able to complete our grief work and thus be free of it.

When we are not allowed to remember, to express our feelings and to grieve or mourn our losses or traumas, whether real or threatened, through the free expression of our Child Within, we become ill. Thus we can consider viewing a spectrum of unresolved grieving as beginning with mild symptoms or signs of grief, to co-dependence, to PTSD.

In order to survive, the traumatized child's Real Self (True Self or Child Within) goes into hiding deep within the unconscious part of its psyche. What emerges is a false self or ego which tries to run the show of our life, but is unable to succeed because it is simply a defense mechanism against pain and not real. Its motives are based more on needing to be right and in control.

An important part of successful recovery is learning to accurately name what happened for us and the components of our inner life as they come up for us, including our various feelings, and learning to tolerate emotional pain without trying to medicate it away.

The Child Within refers to that part of each of us which is ultimately alive, energetic, creative and fulfilled; it is our Real Self—who we truly are.

It is also open to that vast and mysterious part of us that we call our unconscious. It pays attention to the messages that we receive daily from the unconscious, such as dreams, struggles and illness.

They are often in a shame-based system, which attempts to cover over and even destroy the True Self.

As we do so, our Child Within begins to awaken and eventually to flourish, grow and create. Virginia Satir said, "We need to see ourselves as basic miracles and worthy of love.

Tim is learning about his high tolerance of others' inappropriate behavior and is beginning to get free of this often subtle form of mistreatment.

No matter which concern, problem or life-issue we may want to work on, risking and beginning to talk about it with a safe person or persons is a way out of the unnecessary burden of remaining silent. And when we tell our story from our hearts, bones and guts, we discover the truth about ourselves. Doing so is healing

We actually have four additional choices, which we may learn as we grow older: (1) to hold it in until it gets unbearable; (2) unable to let it out, we get physically or emotionally sick, and/or we may "blow up;" (3) to blot the pain out with alcohol, other drugs or other addictions; or (4) to express the pain and work through it with safe and supportive people.

Ashley tried to speak. Tried again and still could not find the words. Finally she wiped her eyes, pressed her ear to my chest, and whispered. 'Give me all the pieces.

As strange as it sounds, broken people are fixed by other broken people. It's God's economy.

Maybe piecing is continual. Maybe the glue takes time to dry. Maybe bones take time to mend. Maybe it's okay that the mess I call me is in process. Maybe it's a long, hard walk out of the crash site. Maybe the distance is different for each of us. Maybe love is bigger than my mess.