The Power to Heal

Every now and then I spend a sleepless night talking on the phone, trying to appease a troubled friend. It's amazing how people agonize over just about anything. No wonder psychotherapy is becoming to be a major industry.

People come to counseling clinics and therapy sessions for a good number of different reasons. Often, they have marriage problems, addiction problems, communication problems, or problems about shyness and unassertiveness. Many of them have simply become exhausted or hopeless, and grown too tired to even cope with the slightest everyday challenges.

What ordinary people rarely recognize are the signs of unresolved inner hurt that is the root of the problems that they carry with them into the therapists' doors. Inner hurt assumes many faces: chronic levels of depression, self-pity, irritability, nervousness, high susceptibility to addictions or being too secretive.

Fortunately, we can learn to rein in the power that our unresolved inner hurts have over us. We can reclaim our birthright to a peaceful and happy life as we move forward towards a new serenity and understanding of ourselves. Then we can re-establish relationships that may have been ruined by our erratic behavior.

Bridges burned will be rebuilt as we uncover the hidden needs that have kept us stuck and helpless. On the other hand, whole lives can be wasted when the underlying root of our problem remains beneath the surface. Hidden hurt poisons everything it comes in contact with, both its holder and the others in the hurt holder's life.

Our inner torment takes an even nastier hold in the face of today's stressful lifestyles - for example, being in a job that wears out both mind and body. The person who regularly works long into the night upsets his biological rhythm and begins to unleash the emotional fumes he's been keeping inside. The tricky thing about it, the person himself is often unaware of the brewing problem.

It's good news that we are recognizing the importance of working on our problems way beyond the surface symptoms. We are now more open to the idea of seeking professional help. Many have been able to identify and garnered the audacity to look in the eye their underground reservoirs of resentment and hate.

The bad news is that merely digging up the causes will not solve the problem. In fact, we could end up in much worse shape than if we did not dig it up at all. Just opening Pandora's Box doesn't send the ugly trolls away. Instead, it puts us face-to-face with them - which is actually scarier.

It is a common tendency among us to start working at our problems, but not go far enough. We need to realize that there is no halfway to total healing. While the journey can only begin when we acknowledge that we have as much right to serenity and happiness as we do to hurt and anguish, we need to persevere on the long road until we are completely led away from our ills and end up in the garden of serenity.

Healing, like forgiveness and acceptance, is not a gift we only give to others, but - first and foremost - one we have to give to ourselves. We can't share what we don't have. The question is not whether or not other people deserve our forgiveness, but whether or not we deserve whole lives, psychologically and spiritually.

If only we will all come to accept that forgiveness is a decision that is not always easy to make. That the journey from hurt to healing is a bumpy ride. Then I will no longer need to spend another sleepless night on the phone.

It will be a big relief for me if all my friends are healed of their hurt, and my greatest blessing to be healed of my own. We are each endowed with the power to heal - ourselves and others. We only need to dare to use it.