One of my all-time favourite quotes comes from the Orthodox mystic St Seraphim of Sarov. It is usually translated something like this: “Acquire inner peace and thousands around you will find their salvation.”

Although St. Seraphim’s quote resonated with me immediately, it has also raised an obvious question, namely how do I acquire that inner peace?

The answer probably has more to do with decades of reflective living than blog posts, but nonetheless I’ve been mulling over a possible piece of wisdom: what if we approached inner, emotional healing similarly to how we approach physical healing? The insight is still inchoate, but here are three ways we might do that.

First, what if emotional healing, like physical healing, begins with identifying where the pain comes from? It won’t do any good to salve the chest if we have a toothache. Likewise with emotional pain, it is worth identifying the source of our pain before we try to deal with it.

This is easier said than done because sometimes we cannot identify the source of our emotional pain. What are we to do?

I have just drawn a distinction between the physical and emotional, but sometimes they’re inextricably linked. Sometimes paying attention to the physical makes emotional healing possible. In what situations does my breathing go off kilter? When does my stomach feel tight?

Sometimes, also, it helps to write down what we think the cause of our emotional suffering might be: I feel abandoned by my parents. I had thought I’d stay friends with Maynard (or Velma, or my former Sunday school teacher or my wife’s second cousin) but now we’ve lost touch. I had thought I was going to be a star lecturer at a university. I had thought…

Speaking of star lecturers, I remember something from Dr. Maeve O’Grady in the last class she taught at Waterford Institute of Technology, in which I was a student. “If you can’t name it,” she said, ” you can’t change it.” She was speaking of naming dysfunction in the educational system, but it also applies to emotional healing; unless we name the source of our pain, we will hardly experience healing.

Second, healing requires time. As with physical pain, we have to come to terms with emotional damage and proceed accordingly. After my brother passed away this past summer, I understood the phrase, “the hard work of grief,” in a new way. Humans are inherently limited. The journey to process emotional trauma is arduous and long.

Just as no one enters a pie-eating contest after a long bout of stomach bug, so also nobody sets up shop to give grief counseling right after losing a spouse. And just as someone with acute thrombosis cannot manage a Fortune 500 company, so also victims of spiritual abuse hardly ought to dive in straightaway and pastor a church.

Although we may be tempted to hurry past emotional damage and “just get over it,” we can’t expedite our emotional healing anymore than we can physical healing.

Finally, pain is never in vain if we use it. To return to my above example, it would be a travesty if spiritual abuse survivors never served in a church in any capacity. They have enormous potential to help others spiritually, perhaps more than people who never held toxic views of God.

Both physically and emotionally, redemptive healing culminates in survivors helping those who are still victims. Contributing to someone else’s healing is better than licking our own wounds. As the Malaysian proverb goes, “If you were abandoned by your parents, beware lest you get caught in self-pity and abandon your own child.” (Actually, it’s not a Malaysian proverb at all, I made it up. But I still believe it.)

I will have to refine my insight. It’s still a little raw–matters related to pain often are–but here is the summary: emotional healing, like physical healing, means identifying the source of our pain, allowing time to heal our wounds and using our pain to help others.

Or, to put it another way, acquire inner peace and thousands around you will find their salvation.