Initiating your journey to emotional and mental healing may initially bring on feelings of nervousness, yet excitement and determination to make progress. Accompanying this optimism for the journey, is often an unpreparedness for the difficulty that the work brings. Due to the unrealistic expectations of what the journey should look like, many individuals become discouraged, overwhelmed, and ultimately back out of their commitment to healing.

In efforts to better navigate the journey, one must know what to expect and which pitfalls to avoid.

How We Heal

It is important to understand that healing is circular and not linear. There is not a start and stop or beginning and end to the process. Once you jump in the healing circle, the process is on-going and you will continually cycle through it, evolve, and grow for the rest of your natural life.

Using my own personal experiences of healing and growth, and those experiences of my clients and loved ones, I have coined what I believe to be the 5 subsequent stages of mental and emotional healing.

Stage 1: Intense Suffering and Emotional Pain

I have been in clinical mental health practice for 8 years and I have yet to experience a client come in to receive therapy because they are truly happy and enjoying life. Most often, when our phones are ringing, it is because the person on the other end of the line is experiencing a heightened level of mental suffering and emotional pain.

This is not the traditional suffering that the individual has grown accustomed to feeling and has now become their unhealthy norm. This suffering is severe; it is intense. It is so uncomfortable that the individual is typically desperate for relief and understanding. This dynamic is most prevalent amongst marginalized communities where there is a strong stigma of mental health illness and a reluctance to receive treatment due to distrust of the healthcare system.

For oppressed populations born into historical and ancestral trauma, suffering has been internalized as a cultural norm; therefore, it must be intensified to a level that is so uncomfortable that it moves the individual into action. The intensity of the suffering enables the acknowledgment of the need to heal and liberate themselves from their past pain and trauma.

Stage 2: Acknowledgment of the Need to Heal, Elevate, and Ascend

Individuals who live with one or more marginalized identities, most specifically BIPOC populations who have experienced chronic societal trauma, have deeply rooted indoctrinated beliefs of inferiority and internalized hate. Society’s continued intentional psychological assault on Black and Brown minds has embedded survival mentalities that make it extremely difficult to acknowledge that our beliefs are unhealthy and keep us oppressed. These very survival strategies once kept our ancestors alive.

Therefore, the acknowledgement of the need to heal is most arguably the single most important stage of the cycle of healing. We cannot fix what we do not see broken. When we admit that we need to heal and make the steps necessary to initiate the journey, we have defied the odds that have been historically stacked against us and forcefully taken back what is rightfully ours. Our power and independence.

Stage 3: The Receiving of Insight, Revelation, and Wisdom

At this stage of our healing cycle, we may begin to experience more feelings of hope and optimism; however, the suffering has not yet dissipated. To evolve, we must receive insight and understanding of the origin of our suffering. Revelation and wisdom may come to us in many different forms to include but are not limited to therapy; psychiatric medications (if needed);seminars and workshops; self-improvement books; guided journaling; self-reflection; mentors and some (not all) of our elders; those who have started the journey before us; visions; dreams; and spiritual communication from our higher power and ancestors (depending on your beliefs).

You will likely only receive insight, understanding, and instructions that is conducive for the most pressing inner issues you are currently experiencing. Depending on where you are in your overall life journey, you may not be mentally and emotionally able to handle certain issues. Would a beginner weight trainer attempt to lift 300lb weights? No! Don’t place higher expectations on yourself than you can handle. With each new cycle of healing will come new insight and revelation for those deeper inner issues that need to be resolved.

Stage 4: Faith-Oriented Action

Once you have received the insight and understanding to the suffering you are experiencing, you will be given wisdom on what to do to obtain healing. Your healing will not just fall into your lap. You must take it! At this stage, you know what you need to do. You may be experiencing ambivalence about the action steps that you know you need to take, but you are clear on what is expected of you.

Your suffering will heighten to its max during this stage. You will be deathly afraid to do what you know that you have been called to do. You have experienced a threat to your emotional and psychologically safety in this area of your life before. That threat has caused your mind and body to create strategies to protect you and keep you safe. And now you must intentionally expose yourself to whatever it is that you fear most, believing that this time, it will enable you to have the healing and liberation that you have been longing for.

The way that I define faith is to have complete trust or confidence in something unseen and not yet manifested. It involves surrendering yourself to the unknown while believing that everything will work out for your good.

Fear; however, is the exact opposite. It involves a lack of trust in something that is unseen and not yet manifested. It involves control and a refusal to surrender yourself to the unknown due to the belief that you will be harmed in the process.

Despite experiencing your highest level of suffering and discomfort during this stage of your healing cycle, take solace in knowing that if you persevere and continue through it, your healing is right around the corner!

Stage 5: Healing, Restoration, and Elevation

You did it! You stayed the course! The suffering has finally subsided, and you are now experiencing something new. Something different. It’s called peace. As you sit and express gratitude for this new chapter, you look around at all that you have manifested because of your faith and perseverance. You have achieved goals that you never thought you would, and you are in awe of your own newfound resilience.

You will remain in your healing, restoration, and elevation until it is time for you start the next cycle of healing. There is no way to tell how long it will take before it is time to address deeper inner core issues and traumas. However, you will grow to appreciate when you experience discomfort and suffering because you know that there is a new level of healing and ascension awaiting your arrival.