How Healing Works: The Courage to Feel

By Nicole Marie

Most of us begin a healing journey because we want to feel better. We want the grief to soften, the anxiety to quiet, the tension to leave our bodies or the painful memories to stop having so much power over us, but healing often asks something very different from us before relief comes. It asks us to feel.

In my own healing journey, as well as in my work supporting others through grief, loss and life transitions, I have found that some of the deepest healing happens when we stop trying to get away from what we feel and begin gently turning toward it. This is especially true with grief. There really is no way around grief. We have to move through it.

We live in a culture that is often uncomfortable with painful emotions. Fear, sadness, anger, anxiety, loneliness and overwhelm are feelings we are encouraged to manage, distract ourselves from, or make disappear as quickly as possible. Yet emotions are also messengers. They communicate something about what is happening within us, and when we can acknowledge an emotion rather than immediately resisting it, something often begins to change.

There is motion within emotion. Feelings are not necessarily meant to become permanent states. They arise, shift and move, but when we continually suppress, avoid or disconnect from what we are experiencing, we may find ourselves returning to the same emotional patterns again and again.

Listening to the Body

One of the most transformative parts of my own healing has been learning to listen to my body. This is at the heart of somatic work. The word somatic simply refers to the body. Rather than only asking, “What am I thinking about this?” we begin asking questions such as: Where do I feel this in my body?; What does this sensation feel like?; What emotion might be underneath it?; What does this part of me need?

Sometimes we notice tightness in our shoulders. Pressure in the chest. A knot in the stomach. An ache in the back. A feeling of heaviness or restlessness that we cannot quite explain. While not every physical sensation has an emotional cause, of course, and physical symptoms deserve appropriate medical attention, but our emotional lives and physical bodies are deeply interconnected. Stress and traumatic experiences can influence the nervous system and affect the way we experience our bodies.

Psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk explored this connection extensively in his well-known book “The Body Keeps the Score”, examining how traumatic experiences can continue to influence both the mind and body long after an event has passed.

I have experienced this mind-body connection in profound ways in my own life. Somatic practices have helped me reach emotions, memories and beliefs that I could not always access through thinking or talking alone. Instead of asking myself to analyze everything, I have learned to become curious: What is my body trying to tell me?

Healing From the Inside Out

There is certainly value in talking about our experiences. Being witnessed, supported and understood can be deeply healing, but I have also discovered that sometimes we can talk about an emotion without actually experiencing it. We can understand our story intellectually while our body continues carrying fear, grief, anger or pain.

For some people, approaches that incorporate the body—alongside traditional mental health care when appropriate—can offer another pathway. In my own coaching work, I incorporate somatic practices, mindfulness, nervous-system awareness and EMDR-informed coaching techniques to help clients connect with their internal experience rather than simply analyze it. The goal is not to force anything to surface. Healing works best through curiosity, compassion and safety. We notice what is present. We acknowledge it. We allow ourselves to feel what we are ready to feel and then we listen.

Sometimes what emerges is an emotion. Sometimes it is a memory. Sometimes it is an old belief: I am not good enough. I am not safe. I have to take care of everyone. I have to hold everything together. When we become aware of these beliefs—not only intellectually but within our whole system—we create an opportunity for something new. Perhaps the old belief no longer fits. Perhaps the body no longer needs to carry what it has been carrying. Perhaps we can choose a different truth.

The Wisdom Within

I have come to believe that healing is less about fixing ourselves and more about reconnecting with ourselves. Our bodies possess remarkable wisdom. When we learn to listen instead of immediately silencing discomfort, we may begin to recognize what nourishes us, what depletes us, where our boundaries are, what we need to grieve and what we may finally be ready to release. Over time, this creates something greater than simply feeling “better.” We may feel more connected to ourselves. More peaceful. More intuitive. More spiritually aligned. More able to recognize what is right for us and more able to move through the world as the whole person we were always meant to be.

This has become the heart of both my personal healing journey and my life’s work: helping people discover that while others can support, guide and walk beside us, much of the wisdom we need is already within us. Sometimes healing begins with one simple question: “What am I feeling right now—and am I willing to listen”?

Nicole Marie, C-LC is a Certified Grief & Life Coach practicing in Chester, New Jersey. For information about her work visit ThroughTheTears.com. See ad on this page.