Are you healed or are you distracted/isolated?

You might have come across this question on your feed on social media, or maybe you didn’t. Whether you did or not doesn’t matter. What matters is that if you are here today, somehow this topic interests you, and you know what? It interests me too – so we have something in common 😉

To be completely honest with you, when I first read this sentence it touched me deeply and made me reflect. I stopped for a while to really think about my answer, but I also thought about what others’ answer would be. What I see is that, in today’s society, we often like to distract ourselves, and we do it for different reasons. Not feeling bored or not feeling pain are just a few examples. Some people also tend to isolate themselves, thinking they will heal faster by avoiding people or situations that could trigger them.

Do you relate to said descriptions? If you do, you’re not alone.

Let’s see what the difference between healing and distraction, and healing and isolation is.

Healing vs distraction

Distraction can come in many different forms, but with the rise of technology, it is now more present than ever. When we are distracted, our attention is moved somewhere other than the here and now. Distraction can be anything from keeping ourselves busy, hanging out with friends, working, studying, watching TV or scrolling on social media. It is truly when we stop all distractions and sit with our own thoughts that the painful emotions and discomfort might arise. And what do we do with them?

Because most of us were never taught how to deal with difficult emotions, we immediately look for something to distract ourselves instead of staying with the discomfort. We may fear that if we listen for a bit too long, the pain will never go away. Or perhaps we think that the pain is just too much to process, and too heavy to stand. Distraction can almost be seen as the opposite of healing. When distracted, we never really have the time to stop and check in with ourselves, to feel, or to simply be – which is at the base of all healing.

Healing is thrown out there a lot lately, which means that its use might be confusing. In addition, healing is different for everyone. However, one thing that is always true of healing is that it is never linear. Setbacks will inevitably happen, and when they do, do not think that all the healing made thus far was in vain. Emotional healing is about feeling. It is only once an emotion has been felt and accepted completely that one can heal and grow.

Healing vs isolation

Similar to distracting oneself, isolating oneself is never the best option if the goal is to heal. You may think that by isolating yourself you don’t have distractions, that you have more time to focus on yourself and your pain, and therefore face your thoughts and demons. Essentially, you may think that you are “working” on yourself. However, what isolating yourself is doing is merely removing all triggers from your environment. This means that once you get out there again, triggers might come along. When they do, you’ll realize that you’re not as healed as you thought you’d be.

Isolating yourself is removing the triggers and unpredictability. I isolated myself and avoided close connections with others for years. I was thinking I was doing myself a favor and I was using my alone time to slowly heal from past disappointments and toxic relationships. In reality I was just avoiding situations that could make me feel similar emotions to the ones I had experienced. I was avoiding relationships and friendships; avoiding opening up and showing my true self.

Isolation is a form of defense

What I kept telling myself was that I was better off on my own. In reality I was just scared of getting attached and left behind. I was scared of what could happen if I allowed myself to get to know someone and start caring again. Out of fear I was isolating myself and keeping connections only at surface level. By doing so, I was deeply unsatisfied. I was avoiding healing, not supporting it. I was slowing it down instead of speeding it up.

It was only when I decided to “get out there” that all my fears resurfaced and true healing was possible. I had to get triggered many times again to be able to face my limiting beliefs and past hurts. It was only when I started to feel that things started shifting for me and deep insights came along.

A few lines to conclude

How can you move forward in life if you haven’t moved forward from something that happened in the past? Remember, if your emotions are stuck somewhere in the past, it is necessary to go back to that time and feel the emotions before moving on. Otherwise you will stay stuck there emotionally and mentally.

There is no shame in getting help emotionally if the healing gets too hard to handle on our own. The same way we see a doctor for physical healing, we can see a mental health professional for emotional healing. Very often, we are so focused on the physical and so distracted from our emotions that we don’t realize emotions may be causing our physical issues. Hence, emotional healing is as important as physical healing and, many times, healing emotions will heal the body.

References

Are You Healed or Just Distracted?

Keywords: healing, distraction, isolating, emotional, emotions