Empowered Healing: Your Resilient Spirit

“Resilience isn’t a single skill. It’s a variety of skills and coping mechanisms. To bounce back from bumps in the road as well as failures, you should focus on emphasizing the positive.”
~ Jean Chatzky ~

Who hasn’t experienced bumps in the road, adversity, and hitting rock bottom? I think it is safe to say that everyone has. The severity of these challenges, how one handles them, what one learns from them (if at all), and one’s ability to withstand adversity and bounce back from it and grow is what differs between individuals.

I say, ‘if at all’ to learn from them because the truth is, sometimes the lessons are not learnt. Why? Well, mainly because certain psychological, emotional and behavioural patterns and traumas are deeply embedded and may take some time before you even become aware of them to be able to learn the lesson.

Whilst most people are often highly resilient, not all are. Traumatized individuals may develop maladaptive coping strategies, which are harmful or counterproductive behaviours in dealing with adversity, stress or difficult situations.

These maladaptive coping strategies could be substance abuse, self-harm or binge eating, just to name a few. This will have a negative impact and reduce the ability to cope with future life challenges.

Forensic healing is a very beneficial therapy for healing trauma and assisting in getting through life’s challenges. I speak from first-hand experience in receiving this therapy and assisting others. Healing helps you to move forward and become more resilient.

Forensic Healing and how healing traumas help develop resilience:

You gain awareness, understanding and clarity to address adversity from a different and more positive state of mind.
Learn lessons = growth and transformation.
Reduces stress.
Restores hope and faith.
Creates a more calm and balanced state.
A place to find emotional support when stress, overwhelm and adversities arise.
Helps break self-sabotaging thoughts, behaviours and patterns.
Builds confidence and trust in yourself.

One of the biggest takes I have personally experienced and have developed a profound respect and belief in is the resilience of the soul. No matter what and how many challenges, adversities, and rock-bottoms I have been through my spirit always rises to the challenge and I get through it. Sometimes it is quick, other times it takes a while.

I have witnessed this again and again with my clients. They have shared many stories, some of them unimaginable, that have created major wounds and scars. No matter where they are on their journey, the fact that they have sought support and are working out a way to feel better and overcome their adversities shows the strength, courage and resilience within. And I make sure to remind them of that every single time!

“We don’t even know how strong we are until we are forced to bring that hidden strength forward.”
~Isabel Allende ~

With regular clients, I witness their growth and advancement through all their tough times. They demonstrate it by not giving up, trying to find the lesson, going within and listening to their soul and intuition.

They take steps and make changes to develop positive thoughts and strategies to overcome their adversities. And the big one is that they believe and have faith that they can get through it. This too takes time but is highly achievable.

Tips on how to improve resilience:

Focus on the solution, not the problem.
Look for the lesson in adversity – learn from it.
Energy healings – they provide help, emotional support, calm, balance and regulate energy and emotions.
Centre yourself – emotional regulation.
Become ok with making mistakes.
Avoid a spiral into negative thinking, avoiding solutions and becoming numb.
Self-care – spend time with family/friends for loving emotional support.

Another key component is to have developmental, emotional, and behavioural flexibility and the ability to adjust to both internal and external demands so that you can deal better with adversity, change, loss and risk.

Emotional regulation will also help as it is a powerful way to rethink challenging situations and reduce anxiety, anger etc. It allows some time to focus on reasons to feel grateful, happy or calm.

Flexibility, adaptability, perseverance and emotional regulation help you develop a growth mindset as it taps into resilience by changing thoughts and behaviours.

Resilience is not only built up during overwhelming moments of adversity, it also builds on everyday stressors. The accumulation of your flexibility and adaptability to those everyday stressors is fundamental as it can lay a strong foundation for you to deal with life’s challenges.

The truth is resilience takes time. It takes strength, help and support from the people around you. It depends on how well you are at reaching out for social support and community resources. It depends on where you are in your personal growth in behaviour and skills, such as self-esteem, morale and communication.

So, as you can see, we all have truly remarkable resilience. But as we grow and experience life’s hard knocks, it can either build upon and strengthen us or decrease our resilience.

One thing to bear in mind and remind yourself during hard times is that your resilience can often expand, wane, and then expand again. Because yes, at times you will feel beat up and without the energy to go on. It is in times when we are raw and feel defeated that we muster up the strength to push through.

That’s how resilience works, how it grows. The more you become flexible with change, adapt to your environment, seek support, heal traumas and emotional wounds, and learn the valuable lessons that adversity presents, the more resilient you become.

The human spirit is strong and resilient, able to endure more than you know. You only have to listen to other people’s stories of adversity and reflect on your own to know this is true.

So, remember, that strong, resilient spirit resides in you… IT IS YOU!

Image by kmarius from Pixabay

Karina Barca, Our Expert

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Regular Column: Empowered Healing

Karina Barca is a Melbourne-based Medium, Healer, Psychic, Reiki Master Teacher, Mentor, Forensic Healing Practitioner and Facilitator of ‘Sistahood Sundays’. Through her own healing and empowerment journey, her passion became very clear. To serve, inspire and assist all who want to grow, heal, and evolve.