My Three Types of Healing

Trigger Warning: General mentioning of alcohol abuse, abuse, sexual assault. 

There is a common thought that in order to excel in life, there is a certain amount of healing required. Whether someone succeeds because they healed themselves or they had to heal themselves after succeeding exposed some wounds, it does seem to be a prevalent discussion. 

In my own journey towards personal success in all aspects of life, I noticed three types of healing. 

• Intentional Fine-Tuning Healing
• Unintentional Belief Healing
• Unexpected Core Healing

Almost all my major lessons and self-work can be categorized into one of those. Now, I’m only speaking from my own experience, but I figured sharing this maybe could shed some light on your own levels of healing. I’m sure our self-work systems are all as diverse and varying as our personalities, I’d love to hear how others identify their’s. These are just an over-simplification of mine. 

Intentional Fine-Tuning Healing 

This healing is going to be the most prominently addressed. This is all about the surface-level, habit breaking/building, toxic cycle identifying type healing. It’s the healing you think about very consciously and intentionally. It’s when you realize eating too much sugar makes you feel like shit so you cut your intake. Or when you realize that hanging around certain people empowers you more than others. And when you notice after a break-up you get black out drunk and that never actually makes you feel better. You are actively considering what is best for you and fine-tuning your perspectives and decisions based off of it. It’s pretty obvious stuff that plays out literally right at the front of your mind and regards basic functioning. You think about it often and try to work your day around it all. 

Unintentional Belief Healing 

As opposed to the previous, this healing often takes you by surprise. It’s when you REALIZED something you hadn’t intentionally considered but it’s like a light bulb lit up above your head. It’s when you see your parent refuse help from a neighbor and you realize that’s why you are resistant to take help. It’s when a partner has to reassure you that they are being honest because you convinced yourself you’d never find someone honest. It’s when you tear up when a retail worker is kind to you and you realized you really needed that kindness. It’s about the subconscious beliefs in your head that you didn’t realize were affecting your conscious mind. You discover unintentionally that you were raised to resist help, that negative stories and bad relationships made you skeptical of trust, and the belief that there is a lack of kindness in the world. And somehow, some circumstance naturally allows that connection to be made consciously. This is my favorite type of healing because once that light bulb is on, you can move it to Intentional Fine-Tuning where you mindfully address those things and make sure those negative belief patterns don’t affect your daily life. It’s so satisfying to shed light on something accidentally. 

Unexpected Core Healing

These are the gut punching, eyes bawling, breaking you to your core healing. And no matter how much you know you have these traumas that require healing, the pain and intensity of it is still always unexpected. Why? Because it affects us to the very core of our being. These are the wounds that we shaped all our unintentional beliefs and our intentional fine-tunings around. These are the ones that when addressed, can change our entire operation. This is coming to terms with your mother’s abuse that you tried to justify your entire life. This is accepting you are not to blame for being sexually assaulted. This is being honest with yourself about the things you tried to suppress for as long as you can remember. These things, break you wide open. They expose your core, and god, no matter how many times you’ve intellectualized them, the feeling of them is agonizing. They can be triggered by the tiniest thing of just witnessing something that bursts it open or by a slow process of talking about it with a professional over weeks. Unintentional or intentional, but the impact will always feel unexpected. I’m no expert in healing trauma, but speaking from experience, accepting that they are gut-wrenching and that they are impactful but also acknowledging that you can still build a life around those sensitive spots has helped me feel less broken. 

I mentioned in my blog post USING INTENTIONAL DISCERNMENT IN ROMANCE that it’s important to have support (regardless of romantic, platonic, familial, or professional) during any process of self-improvement, including Realistic Intentionality, because of the high likelihood of stirring up issues that need healing. At the barest minimum, you will need to address Intentional Fine-Tuning type healing to be able to accomplish your goals and iron out your ideal days. And by being mindful, the likelihood of Unintentional Belief realizations increases substantially as you are actively processing things rather than being on autopilot. As for Unexpected Core Healing, well, being that it is unexpected, I can’t say for certain whether it will happen or not. But, at least now you can know what it is when you feel it… and know you are not alone in it. 

• Dani 💚💙