What my healing journey did to my body

I have noticed a lot of physical changes happening in my body recently, after allowing my body to go through healing from all my previous traumas. They suddenly appeared and there was nothing I could do at the moment but accept them, even after having been prescribed meds for it they're still there. It was only a few months ago that I fully decided to embrace my healing and dig as deep as I could, and try to process all of my issues one baggage at a time. There were countless nights of mourning, crying for hours. Going through grief that I never processed way back. I could say that it is one of the hardest things I ever did and I never imagined I even had the strength to face them all, after having buried all of them for years. My younger self has chosen to suppress and hide them by trying to fake them as nothing real or forget them as much as I could, but eventually, they all came back to haunt me. They blew up this year. I thought I was already over them but that wasn't the case. It's my body's way of waking me up and made me realize that I couldn't go through life just by concealing them and pretending that everything's okay. I had just started going through therapy and had changed doctors to seek more help and it led me to securely open up one issue at a time. There are okay days and there are these very challenging days that I really feel the struggle. I have nothing against the process but it really put a toll on me. It's like me unlearning all the bad habits and mindsets that I had unconsciously formed to help me cope and cover them up, and now choosing to embrace all of them, one problem at a time.

I had a new mantra that I've been doing for weeks now. I don't know how it came about but one day I just decided to do it for the sake of helping me process all the problems I had faced throughout my life. But before I tell you this mantra, first let me share what habit changes I had made. Since I had a change of medications, I am now sleeping early and waking up early compared to what I was used to for years. Previously, I was sleeping from 2 to 3 am every day because of my insomnia and waking up from 11 am to 12 noon because of the heavy feeling of sleeping late. I have been drinking coffee two to three cups a day, and now I only drink coffee once or twice a week. So now with the changes and with the help of my new meds, I now sleep around 10 - 11 pm and wake up around 8 - 9 am. Upon waking up, I do my daily devotional and solitude time before I prepare for work. Before I begin my solitude time, I do this mantra before I pray. I hold my chest and my stomach, close my eyes, and I declare forgiveness to the people who have caused me pain and those who have caused me my major traumas. One by one, I say, I forgive you ___________, and before ending this, I also recite, I forgive you, self (It wasn't your fault). Going through this healing journey, I have noticed some of the impacts it had on my body, like getting nightmares waking up in the middle of the night crying, sweating, and shaking, and even getting anxious just by remembering the memories, but I am truly and genuinely speaking forgiveness to them, even if I don't feel it at the moment. There hasn't been a huge change within me but I do these because I wanna release the baggage and the burden it made me carry all these years.

So what my healing journey did to my body was this. Weeks after starting my new healing journey, I noticed these bad marks on my feet that don't seem to stop in number, it's very itchy and it's causing post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation. Aside from that, I have been getting really bad facial acne that also worsens over time. I have consulted with different doctors and there's still no change. All I could think about is that the skin problems I have been having were contributed by the stress I have been carrying and it's just revealing now. So now I'm just forcing myself not to worry much about it and just accept it as part of my process. Maybe this is the sign my body is telling me that I couldn't handle the stress anymore and I just have to accept everything and go through my healing gradually and not rush anything anymore.

Well, I guess, all I can say is that people heal at different stages and paces. I now choose to experience this healing so that I could stop bleeding to people who did not cut me. I am doing this for myself and I persist for myself. Not for the sake of others, but for my own well-being.

We just need to be aware of the complexities of life, the reality of suffering, and how we relate to God through all of these experiences. And that we are not facing all of these things alone.