Using Reflection as a Tool for Healing
We use our thoughts to navigate through almost everything we do in our lives; they are our ideas, opinions, and beliefs about ourselves and the world around us. Positive thoughts can lift us up, motivate us, and help us achieve our goals, while negative thoughts can drag us down, create anxiety and depression, and limit our potential.
But how many of us actually take the time to give thought to our own thoughts? After all, they play a central role in the process of reflection. By reflecting on our thoughts, we can gain insight into our beliefs, biases, and assumptions, and develop a greater understanding of ourselves and our experiences.
If our thoughts are so influential in our lives, why do we neglect to give them the attention they deserve so that we can emotionally grow and heal?
This type of self-reflection is better known as mindfulness—the art of being present in the current moment by being aware of our inner thoughts and physical self. Practising mindfulness can be beneficial in various ways, including promoting healing.
There is evidence showing the healing benefits of mindfulness activities—like connecting with nature, meditating, and journaling about thoughts and feelings related to personal trauma—yet it is not unusual for us to keep ourselves distracted to avoid confronting old wounds and anxiety-inducing thoughts.
This, however, is merely a temporary distraction to avoid addressing and working through difficult experiences and feelings, leading to more pain and suffering in the long run. As painful as it may be, learning to reflect on and process past traumas is a crucial step in achieving lasting emotional wellness. Practising mindfulness daily can have a positive impact on our physical, emotional, and mental well-being.
This is why The Dandelion Philosophy believes that helping communities in need requires a holistic approach, where we address both the physical and psychological needs to empower individuals.
The Dandelion Philosophy recognises the power of reflection as a tool for healing past traumas and wounds that can have a significant and long-lasting effect on our physical, emotional, and psychological well-being. We incorporate reflection not only in our healing initiatives in the communities we serve, but we also ensure to practise it ourselves as Practitioners of Purpose™ so that through introspection, we are always learning and developing our work to empower others.
So how do we practice reflection?
Think of your inner thoughts as an untended garden full of overgrown thorned flowers. The flowers are thriving, but the thought of tending to the garden only to get pricked by the thorns is particularly unappealing.
You push off the task until the thorns completely outgrow the flowers and you have no choice but to tend to the garden. You toil through splinters, cuts, and bruises until you are left with a relatively tame lawn with some modest bushes. Exhausted, and with a sigh of relief, you feel easy knowing you will not have to tend to the garden again for some time, all the while dreading when the thorns will eventually creep back.
Every keen gardener knows that the secret to keeping a well-maintained garden is regular work in small quantities. Regularly tending to your thoughts and feelings will make the mammoth task of reflection not seem so daunting after all.
How does The Dandelion Philosophy use reflection as a tool for healing?
Many impoverished communities lack the resources to access psychosocial support, so they suffer from unresolved trauma for years and are often unaware of the effects it has on their emotional and physical well-being. This creates an endless cycle of deep-rooted trauma that goes unaddressed and can lead to intergenerational trauma.
The Dandelion Philosophy’s Psychosocial Support Programme, “Circles”, provides healing to impoverished communities, where the approach is tailored to the community's cultural and traditional values. Our approach emphasises connecting with a larger African heritage, reflecting on past traumas, and collective mindfulness. We use activities like storytelling to help bring closure and healing, as well as encourage creativity so that individuals are empowered to find new ways to move forward.
Our commitment with “Circles” is to heal the whole instead of just treating individual symptoms. We believe that when people, families, and communities address past trauma and painful experiences, they can cultivate enduring hope and positive transformations for themselves and their futures.
Reflection is not just a powerful healing tool on an individual level, but also for communities. By taking the time to look inward and examine our thoughts and feelings collectively, we can gain a better understanding of ourselves and our experiences as one. This, in turn, can help us to process and heal from past traumas, as well as develop greater resilience, self-awareness, emotional well-being, and personal growth as a collective.
Discover more about how we help others heal by reading our collection of blogs.
