Paige Vidrine

What Is Healing ?

There are different forms of healing: physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual, relational, environmental and cultural.

Personal or Internal healing is Physical, emotional, and psychological. This is about the connection we have with ourselves and our life experiences. You can split these up into three categories: Mind, body, spirit

Mind: Psychological

Body: Physical

Spirit: Emotional

True healing is a culmination of all three elements.

External healing is relational, environmental and cultural. This is about our connection to that which is around us.

Existential healing is spiritual. This is about our connection to all that is and the creator of all that is created.

What are we healing for? is a beautiful question. We are healing to reestablish our connection to self, others and all.

Healing, in general, is the reconnection to self, others and source or God. It’s a process of becoming the highest and most expressive version of ourselves while also being able to receive what’s highest and best for your life. Who you are isnt just the role you play in life,

It is the energy that you bring to every role you play.

On the first level of healing– personal or internal– When we are stuck in beliefs that don’t serve us, physical ailments that prevent our highest expression and emotional processes that prevent growth, we can get blocked energetically and not fully experience life in the way we were designed to.

Many of us are aware of how to heal physically. In many cases, we rest, hydrate, ingest nutrients, care for the wound with gentleness and return to normal pace with ease. If not ill, we can simply workout, stay active, move our bodies, ingest nutrients, stay flexible and take care of our largest organ–the skin.

In a similar way, emotional and psychological healing require tools and practices that support healthy healing and healthy living. Our culture has a tendency to support emotional suppression, avoidance and lack of intelligence when it comes to how we deal with feelings. Many people have endured deep pain that they have had to “overcome”, but have never truly healed from.

Psychological and Emotional healing go hand in hand. It often correlates to the physical ailments as well. For someone who is just beginning the healing process understand that

Psychological and emotional healing require a mixture of radical responsibility and deep forgiveness of yourself and others.

One might ask, what are we healing from? There are many different answers to this question and the answers are unique to each person’s experience. We could be healing from narcissistic abuse, betrayal, cultural trauma, hustle culture, single parenting, etc… What event or circumstance affected your well being? Because emotional intelligence is not something that is widely taught, when things go wrong, we often cope instead heal.

Our nervous system has two states:

Parasympathetic- resting state, safe state.

Sympathetic: fight, flight, freeze, fawn.

In an emotional event (big or small) our bodies go into sympathetic state, releasing chemicals and hormones to support our response. In a healthy cycle, the sympathetic system is activated and that energy completes a cycle within the body and we return parasympathetic state. What often happens is that we don’t return to a safe state soon enough and the energy gets stored in the system, new belief systems are established to support this lingering state of being and we ignore how we actually feel in order to move forward quickly.

Given the proper tools, ideally, the sympathetic nervous system would be activated and a support system would come in to help us co-regulate or calm down. As we began to calm the body, we would move the energy out through emoting, catharsis, bodily movement or a creative outlet. Then we would shape a belief system around the event that would support a healthy way to move forward without losing our sense of trust in community and trust in ourselves. Essentially we would be able to identify and discuss our emotions with people who could simply listen and understand. We would allow a healthy perspective to take root. As many people have discovered, a Great Spiritual Awakening is occurring. This is simply a radical shift in perspective. This perspective shift can be difficult when we have felt safe in unhealthy perspectives for so long. However, unhealthy perspectives , suppression an avoidance are unnatural. Because we are part of nature, our systems and spirits will call us back to a natural state in whichever way possible. This can be termed, spiritual awakening. It’s the journey of healing the connection to self, others and source.

Often times trauma occurs from community and ironically healing happens in community. As you mature and understand what you stand for and who you are, you can make wise decisions about the community you chose on this journey.

Here are some simple steps to begin the healing process:

START WITH SELF

1. Create a Safe Environment: Because healing happens in community, it’s important to surround yourself with people who have your best interest at heart. You can’t expect to heal if you’re around people who take pleasure in poking the wound.
2. Establish Your Value System: Connecting to yourself means understanding who you are at your core. You are not the roles you play. You are energy. Values are the banks in which your energy flows. Once you establish your values, you can find a community that shares the values. It’s not like minded people you want to surround yourself with, it’s like value people. Differences are healthy, but trust is established in understanding the intentions behind decisions.
3. Understand Your Personality: We are each born with an energetic vibration, code, essence, gift. It’s important to know what yours is so you can understand yourself at a deep level. The tools I have used are the I Ching, Human Design, Enneagram and Gene Keys. I highly recommend taking a day or so to dive into your personal assessment.
4. Get Intimate with Yourself: Often times, as we begin our awakening or healing journey, we need time alone to nurture our own energy. Becoming intimate with yourself is the key in establishing a healthy self esteem and deep love for yourself. Start with your feelings.( https://www.visualcapitalist.com/a-visual-guide-to-human-emotion/ ) offers visuals regarding your emotions like the one below.
5. Recognize the Triggers: Notice your triggers. When do you get angry or go into lower states of emotion? What is happening? Where are you? Who are you around? Knowing your triggers is the begging of working through them.
6. Sketch Your Timeline: Make a timeline of your life marking the biggest emotional events. In the work Ive done with myself and others, I have noticed that many significant events happen in a 5-7 year cycle. Knowing these cycles helps me to notice when I am approaching one and it gives me the clarity to create a new cycle.

None of the steps are linear. As you heal you get better about understanding yourself, evaluating your feelings and solidifying your values. These things can evolve over time. The key is not to get fixated, instead set the intention to learn and understand you a little a better. There’s no “right way” to heal emotional wounds. It’s an internal process that is guided by your inner being, your intuition. You may make a mistake along the way and there’s nothing wrong with that. Every experience offers us feedback. The key is to keep refining your internal experience so that it offers you the highest and best emotional experience in life.

Raising the Vibration of Feeling & Thought

Getting clear about your feelings can feel OVERWHELMING at first, especially if you have been suppressing them. Please seek the guidance of a licensed professional if you feel the need.

I want to take a moment to discuss emotional ascension, which is basically taking a really heavy emotion and raising the thought and story around it until you have released it.

Let’s start with an example. One day I was feeling a deep sense of fear. So I went to the emotional wheel and I started to look at the outer options. It’s wasn’t just fear. I was feeling helpless. So I asked myself, “Am I helpless right now?” It felt like it, but when I began to think I realized that I have help. There are options around me. I can create a community of support. I took that helplessness and found a way to empower myself with it. This is what a good coach is for. Remember that you’re in an emotional experience, advice is of no help. Someone who gives advice is giving advice to their younger self. You need someone to ask you questions about your emotional experience. The better the questions, the more you realize that the answers are within you. You have everything you need within. A truly wise person will always point you back to yourself.

That being said, I don’t advocate for toxic positivity. I believe in completing the emotional cycle. This is done through the mind, body and spirit. Clarity brings comfort and the mind is a good place to begin this cycle of bringing awareness to the feeling. Let’s more thoroughly examine the whole cycle.

The Cycle Of Emotion

Energetic Expression and Reception & Grounding

Side NOTE: When dealing with emotions, first check in with yourself on a physiological level. Many of us get angry or irritable when we are thirsty, tired, hungry or unclean. If all of those needs are met and the emotion remains, then I suggest moving through the cycle listed below.

Energy flows in a cycle: IN, OUT and Ground. Think of it like an electrical outlet. There is a positive charge, negative charge and a ground. The emotional cycle is similar. To move to a higher emotional state we need to move the emotion through the cycle to completion.

Emotions are feelings with energy (energy in motion). It has to go somewhere otherwise it becomes stagnant energy in the body and spirit.

IN Cycle: When we feel the emotion, we need to address all three states of being. Go within and Draw Energy in.

1. Mind: Going through the feeling wheel and identifying the feeling is helpful. Introspection is the key here. Also, being mindful of the content you are watching and listening to is important. Everything has a frequency. It’s like playing a guitar. You’re wanting to play a cohesive piece but when you strum one string is out of tune. The whole song is then messed up. This can happen when we are trying to create a healthy mental state and keep absorbing unhealthy material in the form of social media, podcasts, videos, etc..
2. Body: When you get emotional you can tense up and not even notice. Many ailments like headaches and stomach problems come on after emotional events. Regardless of how each person responds to their emotions, there is usually a physical response. Bringing awareness to the body is important in connecting to your intuition. I like to close my eyes and quiet my mind. I scan my body in my mind’s eye and let it guide me to where I am feeling the emotion. This is the first step in dissolving the emotional energy in the body.
3. Spirit: Returning the nervous system to parasympathetic state relaxes the body and reignites the connection we have with our higher source. Meditation & Prayer remind us of our inner connection to a higher source that can help return us to peace, joy and bliss.

OUT Cycle:

1. Mind: Once the emotion is brought to the light of awareness, we can now talk or journal about it and shape a healthy story around our experience. Affirmations, incantations and healthy self talk are great ways to rewrite the narrative. Our stories should be empowering without having to be delusional. For instance, experience heartbreak is hard. I like to tell myself that those experiences are catalysts for my growth and help love myself even more. A delusional story might be that the person I love still loves me and will forever love me. They miss me and I can be hopeful we will get back together. This keeps me energetically tied to the emotional experience. Even if that is true in some way, it’s healthier to let go, grow and nurture your evolved energy so that the reunion can be even more beneficial to both parties. You see, a healthy mindset is all about a love for self that helps you evolve into your highest way of living.
2. Body: Once you recognize where the body is experiencing the energy, It’s important to have a physical activity that helps you release it. Pushing intensely against a wall, stretching, shaking it out, massage, dancing and many other movement oriented activities help. You have to find what works for you.
3. Spirit: Worship, breath work and other spiritual practices help remind us of our connection to our heart, which connects us to that which is beyond us. This allows us to offer the energy to the universal laws which state that nothing is either created or destroyed. Energy is always in motion. The offering allows that energy to be reorganized.

Remember, this process doesn’t have to be linear. Some of these practices can work in tandem. This is your inner work. You know best and when you can trust yourself, you develop a deep sense of intuition that guides you on a path unique to your energy. I am simply offering you the tools that helped me heal from deep, emotional, and traumatic wounds.

GROUNDING Cycle-

Your body has a biochemical reaction to the Earth’s surface. Put your bare feet on the ground and give the energy to the Earth. There’s a ton of science to support this statement. There’s a reason you feel so good on the beach, in the water or laid out in the sun. Grounding releases the Energy completely and completes the emotional cycle.

Grounding also means checking in with your needs.

NEEDS: In a general sense, many of us desire to be seen, heard or understood. I often ask myself, “What do I need right now?” when I am grounding. Our needs are important and this is how we reorganize the emotional energy into a higher experience. We go within and either meet our own needs or we call upon our support system. Knowing and understanding your needs is the highest form of intimacy with self. Usually, some sort of creation process is helpful for me. Abstract art was my safe space during deep introspection. When you can see the emotion transmuted into something outside of yourself, it can make someone feel hopeful. This in turn creates and In, Out, Grounding cycle of positive emotion. The more we can nurture that, the more we can raise our emotional experience of life. Essentially, this is called ascension. In the book “Positivity”, the PhD discovered through years of research that once you get to a place where you can create positive ascension you will likely have 11:1 positive to negative experiences in life. This is a vast shift from the 1:1 positive to negative experiences that we have when we are caught up in the back and forth emotional swings.

Have you ever felt like you can’t enjoy anything positive because you’re waiting for something bad to happen? When you’re in this belief system, you’re most likely used to the 1:1 positive to negative exchange. However, once you practice the emotional ascension process and begin to transmute negative experience you will find that more positive experiences come to you more often. When the negative comes you have hope that you can transmute the experience quickly and get back to the positive experiences. In turn, most people who move into higher states of emotion and positive experiences, have the desire to help others.

This brings me to my next point: OTHERS

Once you have an established a healthy and intimate relationship to Self, it gets easier to establish healthy and intimate relationships to OTHERS. You see, some wounds can’t be healed alone. For instance, I have an avoidant attachment style which keeps people far away from my heart. I can’t heal that until I start letting people in so they can show me that it’s safe to love. This doesn’t have to be done with a romantic relationship. In my case, my friendships are what has helped me change my stories around attachment and relationships. It can be scary to let people in, but it’s necessary for true growth.

Letting People In:

1. Build a Community: How do I find good people? What are your interests? Start there. Put yourself in environments around people who share common interests. Talk about your values and experiences with people around you. Talk about your stories. When you are living authentically, you attract people who share similar values. Your vibe attracts your tribe. Remember, it’s not about having the same opinions or being perfectly aligned. It’s about building a support system with people you can trust. This make take time and that’s okay. This is a process and at each stage, you learn more about yourself and others.
2. Build Intimacy: There are seven levels of intimacy and again they are not linear. They are:

• Cliche: This is simply introductory conversations.
• Facts: This is about telling them a little bit about who you are.
• Opinions: At this point, bringing non judgment to the space is important. This is where values come into play. If someone is judgmental when you aren’t, that will play a role in how intimate you can be. Not everyone deserves the deepest level of intimacy from you.
• Hopes & Desires: At this level, you let people see what drives you and what you want out of life.
• Feelings: Now that you know your feelings, you can express them to people.
• Fears, Failures & Weaknesses: Trust must established at this level. Here, you reveal the shadow side of your essence and let someone see what’s less than perfect about you. Someone worthy of your intimacy will still you hold you in the highest light and respect all parts of you.
• Needs: What you do you need? Basic emotional

Take as much time as you need during the process of building intimacy.

3. Communication: Communication is the key to healthy relationships. Building these skills can come natural to some, but for many us talking about our feelings, like and desires seems like a foreign language. I highly suggest researching communication and really digging into the topic. Learning to communicate properly is a valuable skill. It leads to radical candor.

Radical candor is honest communication that is caring and straightforwards. Beating around the bush leads to resentment. Radical candor can be uncomfortable but leads to deeper levels of commitment and intimacy with people.

4. Mirroring: The more I began to love and honor myself, the more I began to see others as a reflection of what I put out in the world. The practice of seeing yourself in others, helps you to release judgment and love yourself and others on a deeper level. There’s so much more I could say about this, but that’s for another post.

5. Boundaries: Setting solid boundaries isnt about telling someone what they can or can’t do. It’s about keeping a healthy exchange of energy between you and those you are intimate with. When you are being drained, it’s not healthy to give more just to make someone else comfortable. Removing yourself once your boundaries are crossed is a way to honor your energy. It’s not punishment. If the other person is healthy then they will return ready and willing to respect your boundaries and honor you as well. Remember, boundaries can evolve over time. What you were once comfortable with can change as well. Keeping an open line of communication is important.

Throughout your evolution and your emotional ascension, you will grow more secure with your sense of self and your place in this world. From this commanding state, you can then join forces with the community to turn your healing outward to the environment and the culture. This looks different for everyone. In my case, I heal the culture by creating healthy female relationships and sharing that to those who want to learn from us. I also use my energy to infuse the areas I live with the creative passion flowing through me. Changing the world starts within. It’s all about the baby steps that build massive momentum.

Here’s to healing.

With Deepest Love,

Paige Elliott