What It Takes To Heal

Published on April 22, 2013

Healing can happen only in a climate of openness and truth.

This is the tragedy of Mina. Mina was caught in adultery, one which traumatized her husband. Her need to deny or "stonewall" her wrongdoing prevented her personal, marital, and family healing. What's her primary wound? I believe it's not so much the affair as it is her insistence on her own innocence with the resulting cover-up. Hers is a poignant illustration of the life-damaging consequences of being unable to say, "I was wrong."

Medically speaking, if a person suffers an injury, he or she has to acknowledge first having wounds. That way, it allows the doctor to open up the wounds and remove all foreign particles. Once the infected area is uncovered and treated, healing forces can be at work making damaged tissues new again. To deny and cover over the infection invites a more serious disease and even death.

This principle is at work as well in psychotherapy and counseling. The doctor or counselor does not condemn and in whose presence a patient can lower defenses and show the wounds where they really are. The patient can then begin to admit responsibility for his or her own behavior, including shameful acts, wrong attitudes, negative feelings etc. It is in this kind of climate and relationship that psychological and emotional healing take place.


Category(s):Addictions, Attachment Issues, Couple Counseling

Written by:

Dr. Angelo Subida, Psychotherapist

Dr. Angelo Subida is a clinical psychotherapist, author, and speaker. He is author of books "Inner Healing," "Secrets Of Your Self," "Chess and Life," among others, blogs, and articles. He has appeared frequently as an expert on psychotherapy/life recovery issues on national television, radio broadcasts, print media, and webcasts, including GMA 7, TV 5, ABS CBN 2, Q-11, 700 Club, Radyo Veritas, Inquirer Radio, Smart Parenting Magazine, Business Mirror, among others, and has served as resident therapist/counselor for parents and kid-artists in the highly popular ABS-CBN 2 Voice Kids TV singing reality show. Dr. Subida is an eclectic, multidisciplinary therapist and originator of his own revolutionary high-tech, high-touch counseling plus model. His areas of specialization include parent-child therapy, clinical infidelity treatment, relationship/marital counseling, separation/divorce therapy, anger management, depression, addictions, psychotherapy-spirituality integration, and innovative chess therapy. For more of Dr. Subida, you can find him at www.drsubida.com.

Dr. Angelo Subida, Psychotherapist belongs to Dr. Angelo O. Subida Psychotherapy Clinic in Philippines