5 Steps Towards Healing Emotional Wounds
The painful experiences that occur during life remain in our psyche as emotional wounds. There can be many of them, and we call them all by different names: betrayal, humiliation, mistrust, abandonment, injustice…
It is important to be aware of them and avoid sweeping them under the rug, because the longer we wait to heal them, the worse they will get. When we feel hurt, we constantly live through situations that aggravate the pain, forcing us to wear several masks for fear of responding to the pain.
This is why we want to share with you the 5 stages you must go through to heal your emotional wounds:
1 – Accept the wound as a part of yourself
The wound exists ; whether you accept it or not, the first step is to realize the possibility that it is there. As Lise Bourbeau put it: To accept a wound is to look at it, observe it carefully and know that situations that need to be resolved are part of what it means to be human.
We are not better or worse just because something or someone has hurt us. Building a protective armor around us is a heroic act; an act of self-love that has great merits, but one that will not necessarily serve us in the long run.
In other words, the armor protects you from being injured by the environment, but once the wound is open and you can see it, it’s time to think about healing. Accepting your wound is beneficial because it will prevent you from wanting to change yourself.
2 – Accept the fact that what you are afraid of is inflicted on yourself and others
The will and decision to overcome your emotional wounds is the first step towards patience, compassion and understanding for yourself. These qualities will be developed for you, and you will help others develop them, which will benefit your well-being.
Sometimes you may not realize that you are forcing your expectations on others in the hope that they will live up to your standards and fulfill your hopes. The truth is that this behavior ends with you putting pressure on your relationships and causing great discomfort when others do not respond as you hoped.
3 – Give yourself permission to be angry at people who made the wound deeper
The more you are hurt, the deeper the wounds become and the more normal and human it is to blame and be angry at the person who hurt you. Let yourself get angry at them and forgive yourself.
When you get angry at others for the harm they have done to you, it is as if you are scratching your itchy wound. Feeling guilty makes forgiveness difficult, while freeing yourself from guilt and bitterness is the only way to heal the wounds.
When you forgive, you realize that people who hurt others probably carry a lot of pain inside them. You hurt others with the masks you wear to protect your wounds, so when you take off this mask and forgive yourself, you take a first important step towards being a more caring and less hurtful person yourself.
4 – No transformation is possible without first accepting the wound
Emotional wounds can teach you something, but acceptance of them will probably come at a price because your ego creates an effective protective barrier to hide your problems.
The truth is that the ego normally wants to take the easiest path to healing, and thinks it does, when in fact it makes your life more complicated. It is really your thoughts, reflections and actions that simplify your life, even though it seems too complicated due to the effort required.
You try to hide the wounds that make you suffer the most because you are afraid to see them in the eye and relive them. This causes you to put on masks and aggravate the consequences of the problems you have; among other things, you stop being yourself.
5 – Give yourself time to realize how long you have been clinging to the wounds
It would be best to remove the masks as soon as possible, without judging or criticizing yourself as this will allow you to identify how you should treat your emotional wounds to heal them.
It is possible to change masks in one day or wear the same mask for days or months. The best thing would be to say to yourself: Okay, I’ve been wearing this mask for that reason.
Then you will know that you are on your way and that your guide for the rest of the journey will be the momentum that allows you to feel good without hiding yourself.
