Finding the Language to Heal

Healing isn’t linear. It’s downright complicated, messy even.

Have you ever struggled to find the right words to respond when asked, “How are you?”

On an average day, this seemingly innocent question is easy to gloss over with a hurried, “I’m fine.” Most people don’t pause their busy lives to listen to your response actively. And perhaps, you have somehow convinced yourself that you are fine. Survival is ultimately about preservation, so regardless of how you present outwardly, in many ways, you are f.i.n.e. (facing. internal. neurological. exhibitions), but communicating those emotions during your healing journey can feel incredibly overwhelming. 

Before therapy, I didn’t have the language to express what I was truly feeling. I had been operating in various degrees of survival mode for more than a decade after my attack. My two-year experience with court proceedings left a bad taste in my mouth when recounting the details of my trauma. Yet, I knew my memories were steadily deteriorating me internally (and the physical presentation followed suit).

My first experience with therapy allowed me to begin to identify my buried emotions. As a result of my lingering PTSD, I later sought out EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) psychotherapy, which required me to revisit my hidden memories so that I could reprocess them and start to reprogram the way my mind processed my trauma. During the EMDR sessions, my therapist would have me acknowledge my emotions from the specific memories first, as if I were in the exact past moment. Once we had completed the reprocessing and reprogramming cycle for each memory, she would have me express the emotion I felt in recollection now in the present tense. My therapist would use a Feelings Wheel to aid in providing me with proper language during my identification exercises. 

While several variations are available, the original concept refers to Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions, featuring eight primary emotions (anticipation, happy, trust, fear, surprise, sad, disgust, and angry) located at the center of the diagram. Each core emotion is divided into further specific sub-emotions while positioned with a polar opposite emotion across from it.

The Feelings Wheel is not the “five love languages” where one can quickly identify which category they most resonate with receiving love. Healing journeys are as unique as each individual who must traverse the ever-changing emotional landscape during the healing process. Even when adopting a modality such as the Feelings Wheel, it is essential to recognize that similar tools only aid in identifying potential emotions, but they are not an exhaustive list of the possible emotive spectrum while healing.

There were moments in my healing where I had moved beyond feeling empty. I was void of the motivation to keep pushing through, the courage to continue fighting for justice, or even the capacity to show up as the remaining shell of myself that I was presenting to the public eye. Attempting to express these emotions would have been too exhausting mentally. And I’m not sure my brain could even conceptualize how broken my heart felt in those moments. For several years, I was stuck in this overwhelming darkness, which is characteristic of the first survival stage—buried. In time, with a lot of inner self-work and therapy, I found myself navigating through the Six Stages of Survival to a healthy and thriving emotional state!

Wherever you are in your healing journey, whatever wounds you need healing from, I hope that you truly understand that you are not alone. Maybe you are not ready to express your emotions to another person or even fully admit them to yourself. Like me in my buried state, you may have yet to discover the language to understand your feelings appropriately. May these words serve as a starting point that allows you to explore the realms of your heart truly. 

Your wounds are real. Your feelings are valid. Your soul deserves to heal.

So, I genuinely ask, “How do you feel?”