Relationships present many opportunities to experience emotional healing. But to heal, you must first become aware of what needs to be healed. This means paying attention to whatever you truly feel. Your emotions tell you what calls out to be healed. Any areas in a relationship where you feel upset, blocked, stuck, withdrawn, or numb are calls for healing.
Many of the feelings that we experience around others are actually by-products of past events – some from as far back as childhood. Any past event, large or small, that resulted in your feeling hurt, afraid, angry, rejected, belittled, or ashamed could still be affecting you now. We all have these inner wounds, which influence us to avoid, be overly sensitive, or react to certain things today.
Only by acknowledging such wounds can you begin to heal them. Blaming a partner for “making” you feel upset only distracts you from recognizing your own inner sources of pain. If you try to solve upset by finding an external “reason” for it, you will only prolong it. Looking outside of yourself for causes of feelings, you fail to attend to their inner dimensions. The card HEALING invites you to go beyond being a “victim” of present circumstances – or past events.
Could an area of your emotional life benefit from healing? Do you truly want to heal it? A requirement for healing is that you truly intend to heal. Healing comes from the heart – from opening to accept exactly what you feel, without judging it, finding blame, or trying to solve it. To heal is to go inward and simply experience your deepest feelings. It is to completely feel whatever is there – without words or analysis, without trying to make it better or wishing it gone, without labeling it “bad” or thinking yourself “wrong” for having that feeling. Simply feel it with the quietness of an accepting heart.
In relationships, one partner can assist another in healing, but not in the usual ways – trying to fix them, reason with them, or make them feel better. These ways only impede the natural healing process. When you choose to assist a partner in healing, the most important thing is for you to be present and available as they feel whatever they feel. Just open your heart and simply be there with them. Don’t try to change anything. You foster healing when you accept whatever they feel, without judging it as “wrong,” “negative,” or “undesirable.”
Healing comes in many forms. It happens when you listen to someone with focus and empathy. It happens in allowing a partner to fully feel what they feel – fear, sadness, or anger – without interruption. One of the most healing gifts could be to sit with your partner and witness them sob with grief or pound pillows in rage. Healing even happens in total silence. We heal whenever we stop pushing against feelings, and allow ourselves to finally experience them.
Love is a sacred ingredient in all healing. Certainly the love of self comes first. But at times, we can and do assist each other in healing. Sometimes partners choose to make healing a theme for a while in their relationship. Is there some area of your relationship where you’d like healing to be a theme? Know that whenever partners share in the process of healing, both receive the healing.
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