How to Start Your Healing Journey: 8 Tools and Tips for an Overcomer

What does a healing journey look like as you strive to overcome trauma, abuse, or other challenges? Your experience will look unique to you as you become an overcomer. Going through this journey is something we have covered on a 3-part series of a healing peace podcast. You can listen to this series from the beginning with the first episode here. If you are ready to begin today, we have gathered our most powerful tools and tips to help you further your healing journey. We also have resources for you. Put these strategies into place and you will begin a long-term transformation.

Start Your Healing Journey: 8 Tools for an Overcomer

1. Review Your Self-Care

As your body finds rest, so can your spirit. Reviewing how you take care of yourself and what you can do to find rest can make a tremendous difference in your healing journey toward overcoming abuse, trauma, and other challenges. Ask yourself what you do in your day-to-day life to care for your physical and emotional health. If you cannot think of anything, this is a great place to start. If you do have a practice in place, consider how much peace it truly gives you. Small shifts or changes in your routine may help you find greater rest.

Self-care comes in many forms. From resting and taking care of your body to what you drink and what you eat. Exercising or simply finding a positive way to move your body is also important. Taking care of yourself also comes in the form of taking time to yourself to recover from life’s ups and downs. Yes, your healing journey constitutes self-care.

2. Establish Emotion Habits

In your healing journey, it is necessary to establish healthy habits to deal with your emotions so they do not destroy you. It is crucial to identify and seek additional support for those emotions that you may tend to set aside. We are not meant to carry these burdens internally. A therapist or other professional may help you uncover the best way for you to experience your emotions. Do not be afraid to start small and give yourself time to process.

3. Find Your Worth

This is so key as you heal from emotional wounds. If you do not fully grasp or understand your worth, you allow others to decide what your worth is. How those people view you likely pales in comparison to how God views you and how He created you. Also, when you do not know your worth, you can develop toxic relationships.

Consider what your current thoughts are about your worth. Where do those thoughts come from? Whether they come from God, safe family or friends, or a more negative space should change how seriously you take that point of view. If you are unhappy with your current state of self-worth, seek to change it and start with God!

4. Remember Your Relationship with God

God is always with you despite any suffering. No matter what life tells you or what other people tell you, you were created in God’s image, God is always with you, and He always loves you.

You may feel closer in your relationship with God as you study His word, pray to him with intention, and attend worship services that touch your heart. There might also be a certain place that helps you feel closer to God. Consider where you have felt His Spirit before and see how going back to that place may help you in your healing journey.

5. Surround Yourself with Safe People

Even though people can hurt you and may have caused your wounds, there are still positive people who can support you as you heal. These safe people provide the human reflection of God’s love, mercy, and grace.

Through therapy and healing with the support of safe people, you can allow trauma to no longer own your life. As you do this, abuse or poor treatment no longer has the power to control your worth or your outlook on life. As you expose the pain with the right people (most likely a professional), you can diminish the power of trauma and take that next step as an overcomer.

6. Be an Active Journaler

An overcomer’s tool is journaling. Journaling helps in so many ways. It allows us to bring clarity to our feelings and emotions. It helps us to articulate what is truly happening in our innermost being.

Positive psychology research shows that journaling can reduce anxiety and help regulate emotion. It can also help us put a pause on obsessive thoughts and become better aware of a situation or experience. Studies show that journaling has a positive effect on our mental and physical health. This double dose of clarity and peace can help bring great change to your life as you become an overcomer.

7. Allow God to Transform Suffering

With your acceptance, God can transform your suffering into healing. To do this, start to find ways to make God accessible and tangible in your life. That may require digging deeper into His word and believing what He says about you.

Ask the safe people around you how they might have felt God transform their suffering. You can learn from others who have experienced challenges before and turned to God.

8. Do the Work

Overcoming requires investing, consistency, and continually working on these tools and tips. Some days will be good and some will be bad. Little may change overnight. Taking back your life requires persistence and commitment to a new you!

As you commit to consistency in working on your healing journey, you will develop trust within yourself. You become a reliable source of peace and healing within yourself. While getting to this consistency can be tricky at first, it can help to ask for help from your support system. Tell the safe people around you what kind of nudges they could give you to inspire your continual positive journey. How will you begin to be an overcomer? The first step in the journey is up to you. Consider how you might be able to work these strategies into your day-to-day life as habits. You may even need to schedule them in your calendar! Do that work and you will begin to see the change in your life.