The second stage is Understanding. After we have allowed ourselves to feel everything related to whatever we want to heal from (to an extent where we feel that we have exhausted those feelings and left no stone unturned, no dark and frightening corner of our mind unexplored), we need to try to understand what it is that we are feeling, but, more importantly, why.
But, wait, in the first stage it was mentioned that words are insufficient to accurately describe and define inner experiences. This still holds true, but at this point we have allowed ourselves to feel without restrictions and we need to make sense of it somehow.
Before we start doing this however, we need to be aware of something: the mind will constantly want to judge those feelings based on education, upbringing, world-view, values etc. but this is something that we should refrain from. We are not here to pass judgement and decide whether those feelings are good or bad. We have observed them so far, and now we want to understand them. That’s the extent of it. Anything else distracts from the purpose of healing and potentially leads to even more negativity. Therefore, refrain from judgement. And when your mind goes ahead and starts passing sentences for this and that (because it will) simply remember that understanding is more important and adjourn the court.
We need to add labels and descriptions to the feelings so as to know how to move forward. Were we feeling anger, pain, jealousy, envy, insecurity, anxiety, fear, depression, hatred, loathing, guilt, shame? Anything else? Towards ourselves or others? How deep was it, how strong was it? Ask yourself questions to nuance the feelings more and more. Create as clear an image as you can of how you felt.
This shouldn’t take too long (although, depending on the intricacy of the feelings, it might), because the most important stage of this step is why? What were the causes that led to those feelings? Was it something external or internal? What was it exactly? Was it something someone said or did (and in that case you can try to understand why they did that, which requires a great deal of empathy - towards a person who potentially hurt you, which can be terribly hard, but worth it -, but might engender the understanding for their motivations), something that happened, something that already existed? More importantly though, why did we react that way towards it? Was it a false assumption or expectation on our part, was it something that we were holding on to, something we were attached to or was it an opinion, principle or world-view that is incongruent with how things really are? In any case the important question here is why? Move from the outer occurrences to inner experiences through a series of “why?” questions. Yes, that’s right, just like a nagging kid who doesn’t shut up. Embrace that inner child, even when there seems to be no answer. Gradually, we might start to understand that nothing that happens in the outside world has any impact on us, unless we let it. Think of how different people react to different experiences. For example, when holiday plans fall through, some despair and get depressed, others are indifferent, while yet others are overjoyed at the new opportunities this opens up. Why is that? Because each of us has a different psychological make up and our different characters were shaped differently by our life experiences. Our current way of being is the multitude of effects brought on by a staggering number of causes.
Because every effect has a cause. But that cause was initially an effect of another cause. So go backward through this chain of cause and effect. We might find that, the further we go, it doesn’t really seem to be linked anymore, that we start remembering things from our childhoods that are seemingly disconnected from what we’re going through today. But those memories of bad experiences or maybe even traumas, if unresolved, create the reactions that we have today. They’re the ones that keep us chained to these negative emotions, because they’re the prime cause. That’s where we need to go.
This kind of introspection is exactly what psychologists enable us to do by asking us the right questions, but we can be our own guides, our own healers, our own psychologists. Maybe we don’t have the right questions from the start, but, through trial and error, eventually we will arrive at the right questions, and, through them, at the right answers. After all, no other person spends as much time in our heads as we do.
And it can be hard, because our minds might play tricks on us, might send us down false paths and that’s OK. When you’ve lost your way, simply come back to the right path, to what feels true. Sometimes we might just get stuck and not know how to proceed. Don’t despair, this is natural. Simply change the technique you’re using to uncover the truth. Try writing about it, drawing or painting it, making it visible in any way. Try to do some free association with the feeling you’re analysing: allow your mind to make seemingly random connections with the feeling through words and images and see where you end up. Try changing the questions even if ever so slightly. When starting out, there is no right and wrong here. Only trial, error, learning, adapting, improving.
Sometimes, you’ll even stumble on the answer by chance, rather than uncovering it by means of pure analytical reasoning. The more our mind is occupied with this subject, like any other, the more it will be primed to look for answers. Insights might pop up in the most unexpected places, even when we’re not necessarily thinking about it. But, the more we distract ourselves from it, the less likely we are to have those insights. Therefore, even though it’s hard and even though we have to go back to the first step: Awareness, to figure out how we felt, even though we have to sit with those feelings again and try to make sense of them even as they’re clouding our judgement, please stick with it. Results will come in time.
Speaking of time, this is possibly the longest step in the process of healing. Depending on how used we are to undergo such introspection, on how well we know ourselves and our traumas, on how committed we are to understanding ourselves and our feelings this will take a shorter or longer time. However, as with anything else, the more we practise it, the better we become at it. And the benefits are wide-ranging, not merely because we’ll be able to heal eventually, but also because it sharpens our mind, offering new insights into ourselves and others, how to think more efficiently and how to engage and relate to the world. And the more we do it, the easier it gets. And the better we understand what we’re going through and why we’re going through it, the easier it is to let go and heal.