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Self-Healing Method, The First Person That Can Help You is Yourself

We kick-started this year by elaborating and speaking more about how to take care of our mental health and why self-help is the first way to do it. Seek the help of a professional, perhaps is the best way to solve your problems, but sometimes, on certain occasions, we couldn’t have one, that is why, “if you wanna help, help yourself” said a Wiseman on the internet. But isn’t it true? the very first person that can help us is ourselves? The person that is “there” in the lyric of “I’ll be there for you” is always yourself, right?

And, in the spirit of doing so, in the third week of January of 2022, we held a discussion about self-help methods. We’d like to know and discuss the importance of self-help and how to full it off. And we were so glad that Ayu Paramita Antari, a psychologist, wanted to join and spoke about this.

Ayu Paramita Antari herself is a psychologist who graduated from the University of Surabaya (UBAYA) with a Master of Clinical Psychology. She has been involved in many activities around Denpasar, work as a clinical psychologist and Human Resources is her main job, while she has been very enthusiastic to learn about child development, Family Psychology, Career, Health Psychology, and Women’s Issues.

With that background, the one-hour discussion that we held went smooth and filled with laughter and indeed she transferred to us her knowledge about self-help. She starts the discussion by bringing the condition that if something doesn’t work out the way we expect it to, we tend to accumulate negative emotions. She said sadness, disappointment, anger, shame, frustration, jealousy, guilt, or despair is part of that negative emotion that will fill our heads. And as it continues, those negative feelings and the old wound that never healed lead us to depression.

She stated, when we are depressed, it is hard to think clearly. Our train-thoughts will only make us feel bad and sometimes lead to impulsive decisions. Yet, when we need professional help, some people perhaps can afford to have one, that’s when self-help may be the first step to lean out from the situation. “So, that is when we need self-help, but, what is self-help?” she asked.

“Self healing is a method on how we recover ourselves from these inner wounds. Now, if the wounds that we have accumulated, other small wounds can become big ones. Simply, self-help is our actions or our efforts to heal ourselves. It can be done independently, and the idea of self-help is that we are trying to find our inner strength. Because frankly, to the problems we are facing, deep down we know what to do and what is a better solution to our own problems. And the secret is that psychology is only a tool to heal ourselves.” – Ayu Paramita Antari

Then, how to perform self-help? Ayu Paramita answered that self-help is a method to increase mindfulness in our heads. Mindfulness is how we are aware of the things that are around us with full awareness, it could benefit us to realize more of what we’re facing. And as the “Self” in self-help means sole or independent, the help that you need is within you. Ayu said you can perform self-help in so many ways. You can help yourself by writing a journal, exercising, strolling away, yet the point is that the activity you do makes your mind clear. Because when our mind is clear, she thinks it will be easier to make any decisions.

Note: Self-help is only a method, if you really need professional help, go get one, do not afraid to tell your friend perhaps they can help you to find one. 

Written by Harun Arrasyid