How to Heal: Create the Thing You Are Healing From

Let’s get a little magical.

Stay with me for a moment because I discovered a symbolic ritual for healing by accident, and this thing kinda works?! I’m still surprised, but I hope that if I share it with you all, some of you might try it and report back.

I consider myself to have a high tolerance for the woo. Reiki, tarot, astrology, talismans—all great with me but this ritual…I was like: Wait a minute, is this for real?

Maybe others already know this, and I’m late to the party, but it came to me on a long drive, and I had never done anything like this before.

A helpful strategy for healing is to create the very thing you are healing from.

It sounds so counterintuitive, but there is magic in symbolism.

For example:

If you are healing from loss: you lost a relationship, job, or pet, then create a loss. Except this time, do it from a place of active choice because that’s where your power lives. When we experience loss, it can feel like something is happening to us; like we had no say and therefore no agency or power, but if we create loss from a place of power, it creates a substantial energetic shift. To do that, you can “lose” clutter in your home. Get rid of clothes, books, and that nasty thing growing mold in the back of your fridge. “Accidentally lose” a dollar on the street b/c you know whoever finds it will have a moment of joy or positive surprise. “Lose” that bad habit you know you need to get rid of. “Lose” yourself in music, a piece of art, or a museum.  

Think symbolically.  

The active choice of losing something creates enough dissonance in your brain and body to say: “ Hey, maybe this loss is not the end of me. Maybe this is part of a larger cycle. Maybe it’s the redirection I need but would not have otherwise chosen. This ritual allows for the ACCEPTANCE of the loss. We get stuck in our healing when we cannot accept reality.

Another example:

When healing from abandonment, create abandonment but from a place of power. Abandon bad habits, bad friends, and limiting beliefs responsibly, of course. This doesn’t give you permission to be a jerk to people. Stimulate enough dissonance to create a different reference point for abandonment, i.e., “Not all abandonment is bad, so I shouldn’t conflate abandonment in the way I experienced it with all the ways in which it could manifest.”

One more example:

When healing from heartbreak don’t go breaking someone else’s heart. Draw a bunch of hearts and then rip them up over and over again. Don’t stop until the energy around it feels looser and softer. It might take five hearts or five thousand, but keep going. “Break hearts” but from a place of choice and power.

Try it and let me know how it goes. This ritual has been working for me. It’s a little magical.

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