To Heal Your Life, Let Go of Complaining

Article by Angie Webster

If you want to really heal your life you must stop identifying with your problems and your illnesses. So how do you do this? First stop complaining about them. Stop talking about them as if they are the central focus of your life. This doesn’t mean that you should stop asking for help when you need it. In fact, learning to ask for help is an important part of the healing process for most people. However, many times complaining is done as a justification for our problems.

Any time we feel that we must justify something about ourselves or our lives to uphold our worth to others, we have made that thing an important part of our identity. If what you are justifying is illness or difficulty, then you are identifying with that which it makes it harder to let go and heal. It literally puts a block in the path of your healing. That block must be removed or it will hold you back and keep returning you to the old belief patterns that reinforce your inability to be happy.

The same is true if you are using complaining to indirectly ask for what you need, such as help or support. This is often an unconscious reason for knee-jerk complaining. People who do this often have not learned how to ask for help and may not even realize that they are worthy of having a support system. They may see themselves as a constant victim of life, with little means to change things. Yet, if you feel that complaints are the only way to have the possibility to receive help and support, then you will continue to create the identity of someone who has big problems.

Building a support system and learning to ask for help is a skill that can be developed and it begins with practice in small steps. We can also begin to take responsibility for our own world where we can, helping ourselves and others. This will begin bringing balance to what we hope to do for ourselves and what we hope to receive from the outside world. This opens a flow of giving and receiving. That is really important to happiness and to healing.

Maybe you think that you don’t actually complain about your problems, or you justify complaining about your problems. If your healing process feels as though it has stagnated, I challenge you to notice how many times a day you complain about the area of your life you wish to move out of and heal from. In fact, notice how often you complain about anything.

Along with the habit of constant busy-ness, complaining is one of the most energy damaging things we can do, yet it is a habit for most people. Even when we aren’t complaining out loud to others, we are often complaining in our own minds, rehearsing how we will complain to someone later, or thinking about how someone didn’t “properly” receive our complaint earlier. It becomes a habit and the pattern becomes caught in our energy field. The only way to break the habit is to begin noticing it. Then we can start to interrupt the pattern and remember that we each have the power to decide how we will respond to any situation. We don’t have to automatically accept that we have no control over our responses and perspectives, or that it is all dependent on circumstances or other people.

In no way do I wish to imply that our problems are not real. We all have difficulties in life to deal with, of varying degrees. However, when we identify with our problems, then we can’t heal because we are unwilling to let go of a part of ourselves that feels important to us. Especially during times of difficulty, we need to feel that we have support and that we are understood. If we feel that complaining about and explaining our problems will bring that, then we will continue to do it. But complaining and telling stories about our problems rarely works to build supportive networks that really lift us up and empower us. Therefore, we so often feel misunderstood and even further drained when we do this.

Healing is a process, and it begins within you. We each have the power to create change in our own lives. We must let go of the belief that others must experience and understand our problems in the same way that we do. We must let go of other people’s opinions. We must take care of ourselves first and foremost without the attachment to other people’s opinions of how we deal with our lives. We must renew our faith in our own perspective and our capability. We can make changes in our lives. We can ask for help. We can seek those who are honestly supportive of us as evolving humans, rather than as victims. It all begins with a willingness and baby steps out of your comfort zone. One step at a time.

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Article by Angie Webster