How We Heal and Grow

Hi, this is a well-written book that personally I highly recommend for those who like to learn more about psychotherapy or who are already in therapy and want to learn more about themselves. Happy reading.

I just finished reading a beautiful book called How We Heal and Grow, The Power of Facing Your Feelings, by Jeffrey Smith MD.

While I was reading the book, in every single page I found a reminder of my long, painful, and difficult road that after so many years ended up with the reunion of the adult in me and my inner child. 

Doctor Smith uses a story that represents an allegory for how we can face our feelings and gain power for changes. The story is called The Cave, The Bridge, and the Village.

In this allegory, “The Cave is an uncomfortable place that is nonetheless familiar and not easy to leave.  Each person’s Cave is made of layers of tricks and techniques aimed at keeping us far from feelings we dread. The more layers there are, the less clear is their function and ultimate reason for being. And each person’s layers are unique and individual. Difficult feelings and the methods we invented to avoid them are even more variable because they come from different periods of development. Our adult coping reflects the internal end external resources available us at the time we were first challenged.

In its quest to avoid pain and discomfort, our mammalian mind is naturally afraid of change. ………………Fear of change is yet another reason for staying in the Cave and resisting any temptation to venture outside”.

My cave was a very small one, with so many big and dark rocks inside. It was depressing and painful to stay in, but on the other hand I was feeling safe. I stayed in my cave for so many years, feeling depressed, unhappy, with low self- esteem and self-confidence. I thought I was not lovable enough, and I started blaming myself for all the negative events that happened in my life. One day, tired of feeling confined in my Cave, I decided to reach out for help. At that point, my long psychological road to freedom began. With a strong fear, I decided to start crossing the “Bridge”. 

“Paths to the Bridge: In real life, there are four paths that lead to the bridge. Each one requires undoing a blockage of feeling. When we are able to put aside one of these blockages, we find ourselves on the Bridge; that is, in the midst of an encounter with emotions that once were more than we could handle but are now within our reach. Here are the four paths that lead there.

1. Arriving at simple willingness to encounter painful or uncomfortable feelings. (Chapter 3)

2. Change in ideas that block us from believing that healing and growth are possible or even desirable. (Chapter 4)

3. Change in values that stand in our way (Chapter 5)

4. Change in habitual behavior patterns that steer us away from new experience. (Chapters 6,7,8).

The Bridge. In the allegory, the Bridge is meant to capture moment by moment the experience of “going through” a dreaded feeling. I consider this to be the most basic emotional healing process in life. …………. When a painful feeling is extreme, it causes the heart to pound and skin to go cold. It triggers a primitive “fight or flight” reaction. When we share that feeling with an empathically connected witness, it quickly and dramatically loses its power over us. This is the amazing phenomenon I call catharsis. It is the transformation represented by the Bridge”.

Crossing the Bridge for me was a very long, stressful, painful and sometimes terrifying road. So many things happened in my life, some were very traumatic, some were so terrible that my unconscious did not want to remember them.  After so many years of psychotherapy I was able to cross my bridge up to a certain point, very close to the end. I knew that I had to go to the end and there was no going back. I always felt that I had more to face, that was horrible, terrifying.  This time I went to see a psychiatrist, with the hope of remembering all. During my long healing road, so many times in the past I spoke to therapists saying that I felt there were other traumatic events, but I could not remember them. They always said to me, if I did not remember it was because I was not ready for it. With my psychiatrist, after a few months of revisiting my past, I told him that there were very traumatic events that I didn’t remember but lately were creating nightmares. One day while having one of my sessions talking about my desire to remember those traumatic events, I suddenly felt secure, understood and safe. I started talking about my nightmares, and from nowhere I felt like a tsunami of strong emotions had taken over. I felt my heart beating very fast. I started shaking, I felt out control, my voice started to change like a child’s voice. Between my crying and feeling lost and out control, I ended up remembering the terrifying experience in my early life. That was the first time that I experienced Catharsis. A few months after, my second Catharsis happened again. Finally, I felt the inner peace that I had always hoped for.

The Village: “Humans are fundamentally social beings……… In childhood our very lives depend on intensely felt attachments to the people who care for us. In adulthood, we have only to think of the power and intensity of marital arguments to realize that life-and- death quality of our primary relationships does not end with childhood. In the allegory, the Village represents the all-important pull of attachment to lure us out of the confinements of our Cave and to reward us when we arrive”.

Solving my childhood problems was my goal. I found my Village in my inner child. My long difficult road let me to love myself, to forgive the people in my past, and to be a loving mother to my little inner child. Finally, we are part of each other, we are fused together in one.

By Filomena Civitella