SEVEN STAGES OF HEALING

INTRODUCTION
Look at life around you: - a husband walks out on his wife and family / A drunken driver kills a child a mother mistreats her children / An uncle abuses a young niece - a youth is denied a job he is ideally suited for All these are hurts that need healing. We all hurt as we journey through life. Sometime we are able to let go of our hurts. At other times, we hold onto them and blot out the joy and beauty of other experiences of life. Just as we need to attend to physical injury and seek healing, we need to seek healing also when we suffer wounds to our emotions. Not doing so we damage ourselves both physically and spiritually. Emotional hurts have physical repercussions: Precipitate heart disease, Cause digestive problems, Cause high blood pressure, Cause headaches and back pains, Cause mental breakdown. It also affects our entire immune system. Holding onto hurtful memories hampers the bodys ability to fight infection causing DIS -EASE. Spiritual life is also affected holding onto hurts. Because of hurts we keep our distance from people. Our relationships are overshadowed with the memories of past hurts. Blocking relationships we block Christ who wants to relate to us through others. Each of the Churchs sacraments begins with the brief rite of reconciliation. Unless we are healed, the sacrament cannot be fully effective.

1. ADMIT THAT YOU ARE HURT

It is hard to admit that we are hurting. Instead we say I am okay. He/She cant hurt me. I am thickskinned. Nothing happens to me. In the book The Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck says Running away from pain is the source of all emotional illness. Martin Padovani in Healing Wounded Emotions says: The more we are in touch with reality and cope with it, no matter how painful, the better mental and emotional well being we will enjoy. Jesus says: Pick up your cross and follow me. Hurts of our life are our crosses. We need to pick, face and to embrace our crosses. Denying our hurt feelings is a way to give them control over our behavior and us. We sometimes hold onto our hurts for the payoffs we get: - We maintain a Poor Me stance. We put on a protective shield: Dont touch me. I am fragile. It becomes a way of escaping from taking risks. But Jesus offers something better to fill the void. He offers us Gods healing, unconditional, overflowing love. This is what sustained him when people betrayed Him and left Him alone hanging on the Cross.

2. KNOW THAT YOU ARE LOVED

Become aware of how much You are Loved. We can face hurts ONLY to the extent we feel loved. Mathew Lynn and Dennis in their book Eight Stages of Healing say: We have all been loved and cared for or we wouldnt be alive. We need to let these experiences soak in and enter our awareness. If in one day we had five affirmations and one cutting remark we tend to remember and feel hurt about the cutting remark and forget the affirmation. If we allow the light of the realization that we are loved to shine through the darkness of our hurts, we will begin to let go of our hurts. Be aware of Gods great love for you. He values us more than many sparrows. He carries us as an eagle carries its young. The awareness of this love forms a new healing tissue around lifes wounds. We begin to risk living in a present awareness of love instead of living with past hurts.

3. DON T AUTOMATICALLY BLAME YOURSELF FOR THINGS YOU SUFFER

Some of our healing depends on knowing that usually it is not our fault when tragedy strikes us or someone hurts us. Lack of self-esteem makes us take the blame when another person treats us cruelly. People hurt, because they have been hurt in turn. Often their hurt is not from their victims. It is OK to be angry with someone who has hurt us. Anger at being emotionally hurt is a healthy reaction like pain on being physically hurt. If we are unable to get angry we assume a passive-victim role, get depressed, and seek compensations. Jesus was angry with the high priest and the servant who struck him: Why do you strike me? Jesus was an innocent victim and yet he was not everybodys doormat!

4. SHARE YOUR STORY IN THE WARM PRESENCE OF A TRUSTED FRIEND

Henry Nouwen in the Wounded Healer, says: If you can tell your story to a Wounded Healer and allow yourself to be comforted by that person its a big step towards healing and letting go of your hurt. It isnt healthy to keep ones hurt within. At the same time, it isnt right to sound like a broken record. Getting relief from repeatedly re-licking our wounds is neurotic. The sacrament of reconciliation is a source of healing grace and an opportunity to unload the pain of hurt. In telling our story to a priest, in being repentant in expressing desire for reconciliation we find healing. Counseling and therapy also helps us to get in touch with deep hurts and bring about healing.

5. TURN TO JESUS FOR HEALING

Throughout the Gospels Jesus heals over and over again by his touch, glance, word and prayer. How to pray to Jesus for healing? i. Share with Jesus how you are feeling now. Share your hurt, anger, and revenge. Jesus does not judge. He listens with compassion and empathy. He hurts with you and is angry with the sin within you not with you. ii. Then go back to the experience of your hurt with Jesus at your side. Relive the terror, the fright, the confusion, the pain. Stare at the hurt once more. Walk through this agony with Jesus at your side. iii. Now listen to what HE has to say. He may just hold you in his embrace. He may speak to you through the scriptures. He will tell you what you need to know to be healed.

6. BE PATIENT AND PERSISTENT

Realize that healing takes time. The Cananite woman was first ignored, then refused by Jesus but her persistence paid off. The blind man (Mk 8: 22-26): For him first people were looking like trees. Only on the second laying of hands could he see properly. Peter had to answer thrice before his endurance paid off. Sometimes we have a greater role to play in our healing GO and wash yourself in the pool of Shiloah. Love the person who has hurt you. It is possible because love is more a decision than a feeling. We can make decisions that transcend our feelings and trust that in time our feelings will fall in line. John Powell: By behaving as if we love our enemy (even though all the time we keep remembering the hurt) someday we will discover that we have been healed.

7. DISCOVER THE HEALING POWER OF CENTERING PRAYER

Centering Prayer (CP) lets go of everything - words, thoughts, prayer techniques, images, everything... and simply goes very quietly to the center of our being where God is. CP is a deep awareness of our oneness with God. Some hurts are so deep that only this kind of prayer heals. It is like a surgeon who puts you into a deep sleep in order to fix what needs fixing. God uses CP (an awareness of nothing but Gods closeness) to heal our deepest and even unconscious hurts.