You can heal yourself.

In fact, patient-centered self-healing is the foundation of many ancient and modern holistic health and wellness modalities.

Although shamans and traditional medicine women and men provided their assistance, people still had to ultimately heal themselves. Of course, some people bounced back, while others recuperated slowly or never fully recovered.

Although the numbers are still relatively small, some conventional practitioners within the medical and broader wellness communities have observed the benefits of patient centrality as well (National Institutes of Health and Harvard Business Review).

So, take charge. Adopt these seven ways you can heal yourself because how you choose to participate in your own healing determines how you progress on your road to full recovery.

How You Help Yourself Heal

First, Get Clear On What Healing Really Is

Healing is simply the process of becoming sound, healthy, and well again. Or, put in other words, it’s the restoration of original purity or integrity (Merriam-Webster dictionary).

Then, Get Beyond Conventional Thinking

Let’s set the record straight.

First of all, conventional medical and scientific literature can teach you a lot about the many factors that contribute to the rate and quality of patient recovery. And, secondly, conventional practitioners (e.g. medical specialists) offer many life-saving services.

However, they often ignore or downplay the importance of patient behavior, preference, and mental/emotional status. In other words, they underestimate the role patients play in their own process and recovery.

This oversight, unfortunately, can lead to suboptimal care as well as delayed or incomplete recovery. Both are outcomes few people want to experience for themselves. Although, so many do. Perhaps you’ve had or are currently having this experience yourself.

Finally, Embrace These Elements of A Whole New Approach

Each of the following seven points reveals an approach, rather than a specific choice of care. Taken collectively, they will increase your confidence and self-reliance and prepare you to take decisions and make plans based on your own personal preferences and level of tolerance.

This new mindset will support you no matter whether you choose conventional or unconventional care and treatments.

7 Ways to Take Charge and Do It Your Way

1.  You Are More Than Your Physical Body – Wellness Is Holistic

This can’t be stressed enough. You are more than your physical body. You are a holistic and integrated being. That is to say the emotional, mental, spiritual, and energetic are also important. In fact, all issues and complaints have multiple sides or facets. Furthermore, these facets influence your physical expression, i.e., your physical health. Don’t ignore them.

More concretely, this means your emotional state and your beliefs about your ability to heal are significant (NIH). They’re a part of your rebalancing, healing, and life moving forward.

A good holistic approach will address all relevant facets or combine various healing modalities and approaches.

Contrast this with conventional medicine, which is hyper-focused on the body, bodily systems, and what’s physically wrong. This Cartesian approach is similar to auto mechanics: find the part that’s broken and fix it.

When conventional medical practitioners focus on the physical, they ought to integrate their advice and treatments with holistic modalities to provide important complementarities. But, they typically don’t.

If your healthcare provider doesn’t do this, do it yourself. Find other practitioners who can provide complementary and supportive services that you personally consider relevant to the type of care you want and deem essential to your recovery.

The process can take time. Still, if you remain curious and engaged, you’ll learn a great deal about yourself and about a wider range of care options in general. This is an excellent investment in your future well-being.

2.  You Know Yourself Better Than Your Doctor Does

Standard super-quick (five-minute) consultations ignore or downplay significant parts of patients’ stories that reveal what makes them unique and how equipped they are to shepherd their own healing process. Don’t fall into this information void. Instead, fill the gap yourself.

Learn more about your condition, the causes, bodily processes involved, signs and symptoms, and various types of treatments available. Educate yourself on and understand how conventional and alternative modalities could work for you.

This deeper and broader knowledge will enable you to articulate your pertinent questions and challenge practitioners’ views went appropriate. In addition, you’ll be able to glean more from medical diagnoses, doctor opinions, and test results. Now that medical reports are stored online, you can access them and use the internet to decipher your records and test results.

Being more informed means can make better decisions. And, your caregivers and healthcare providers will undoubtedly gain greater insight into your needs and desires.

Educating yourself is worth the time investment.

3.  Healing Is A Journey – There Are No Magic Bullets

If you’re like so many others, you look for magic bullets. They’re quick, easy, and final. Unfortunately, there’s rarely, if ever, a magic bullet for what ails you.

In reality, healing is a journey or a process that reestablishes balance, a holistic balance. That means on a physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, and energetic level. And, this balance is dynamic. Your job is to be personally aware so that when you shift out of balance, you can quickly regain your equilibrium.

In a practical sense, you may submit to a specific treatment to introduce change (e.g., undergo surgery or chemotherapy). However, your various systems will still be tasked to bring about significant change in order to rebalance and heal. And you have to support that process yourself.

4.  By Definition, Healing Implies Change, and Typically Behavior Change

More often than not, recovery without relapse necessitates behavior change (NIH). Allergies are common issues and illustrate this point. If you find you have an allergic reaction to something, especially if the reaction is more severe, you avoid contact, i.e., you change your behavior.

Similarly, cancer remissions seem to endure in those patients who change causal behaviors such as smoking, an unhealthy diet, unsafe sex, and chronic stress.

5. Good Health and Wellness Is About Healthy Lifestyles and Prevention

Good health is associated with healthy lifestyles and good health maintenance. In other words, it’s about prevention and mitigation rather than interventions and emergency treatment.

While it’s commonly known that healthy lifestyles are a key factor in what helps people heal. the average American makes reckless and unwholesome choices nearly every day. Just consider typical food choices, riding a bike or scooter without a helmet, or the hours spent lounging in front of a television or glued to a screen.

6.  Enlisting Others’ Help and Care Is A Good Thing

When you need help, ask for it. Even when you can manage on your own, you can benefit from others’ help. With assistance, you can relax, rest, and restore your health. Plus your support team can share your burden, ensure you adhere to your treatment protocols, conduct research and advocate on your behalf, and uplift your spirits.

If you’re thinking it’s rude, embarrassing, or shameful to express your pain and suffering, think again. Loved ones genuinely want to help even when you’re not at your best. And, caretakers benefit from knowing you’re in good hands and they’ve contributed to your well-being.

7.  You’re the Boss – Embrace Your New Self-Reliance

You can make overcoming the common misconceptions about healing, and their potential impact on your well-being, an integral part of your life and successful healing journey. Choose to play an active and more informed role.

Start by adopting these seven ways you can help yourself heal. Embrace this information, approach, and the self-reliance that naturally arises from it.

In so doing, you’ll deepen your knowledge and understanding of your unique circumstances and options. Then, you can strategically account for your preferences and opinions and make more personalized choices. This will significantly increase your confidence and your chances of securing better care and more successful outcomes.

In addition, expand the universe of people you consider valid caregivers. Recognize that your physician or health practitioner offers just one angle on your health, especially in today’s world of hyper-specialized healthcare.

It’s always good to get a second opinion. In fact, expand your search for information and helpful healing approaches to others in tangental medical fields (e.g., nutritionists as an expansion of the scope of gastroenterology or somatic body alignment (Thomas Hanna) as it relates to managing and overcoming chronic pain). There are also many supportive specialists such as advanced physical therapists or grief counselors, alternative and complementary practitioners, therapists and coaches, and spiritual advisors.

Embrace the responsibility for your own well-being and thrive

For Additional Information or Assistance With Your Healing Journey On Any Level, See:

• my Spiritual Life Coaching and Energy Healing sessions
• active Mind Body Spirt blog