Step 1 – What You Need to Know

What does one need to know in order to get better? So often, I see ‘courses’ on healing and books proclaiming this or that ‘technique’ for healing.

I don’t believe you need to ‘know’ anything in an intellectual way in order to heal. Do we need to sit down with our bodies and say ‘Okay, now, you see that paper cut? Well, we got to clot it first, then we got to mend all that tissue, with a bit of scarring afterwards. Here’s how to do it-‘. Fuck no! We don’t do that!

So what’s so different about mental illness? Why is everyone proposing all these things to ‘know’ in order to ‘heal’?

Here’s the thing: you will heal, if you want to. You just have to want to. Your body – and your brain – know how to do it all by yourself. The trick is the same as with a paper cut. Clean the wound, bind it, and let the mind/body do its work.

Sure, sometimes we need a surgery to remove a tumor – like a psychologist walking us through a bad trauma. Other times we need medication to help.

I guess my point is that healing yourself shouldn’t be rocket science. Yeah, it’s difficult and painful, but our bodies know how to do it. It will tell us, if we observe, what it needs.  We know how to do this, and we have marvelous tools at our disposal. It hurts, but it’s possible.

I guess that’s why I’m going for a ‘framework’ for healing and not a healing ‘course’. Y’all don’t need to be taught how to heal, you just need to understand how to help yourself by doing things like cleaning the wound and bandaging it. Thankfully, lots of these things are really simple. The whole point is to do it with intention and with the actual desire to heal. This, however, brings us to our next post on the topic, which is “Acknowledging you have a problem”. I may or may not write this up in the next few days. I will definitely try and post it within a week. Take care y’all.