The Healing Process: Not Just for Physical Injuries

Have you ever broken a bone? Or sprained something? It hurts, doesn’t it?! And sometimes even worse is the inconvenience that comes during the healing process for many weeks following – learning to write with a different hand, covering the cast every time you shower, using those crutches that are brutal to your poor armpits(!!), etc. If it seemed optional, we might be tempted to skip past the healing part and just feel the intense pain of the break/fracture/sprain in the moment, but then choose to just ignore that it happened and move on with life. That would sure be a lot less inconvenient and annoying! But what would be the cost of doing so? Perhaps not being able to walk, continual pain, loss of functionality, or, at best, the occasional annoying reminder that things aren’t quite like they used to be.

Though some of us still might resist the process of taking time to heal from physical injuries, I would say that, as a whole, we are relatively inclined to see the value of doing so. The cost-benefit analysis favors that frustrating process of tending to the wound appropriately.

But what happens when we experience an emotional injury? A harsh word is said that hits at your core; you get rejected in a relationship or a job; you lose a loved one; you see or experience something tragic. What do we tend to do in the face of such an emotional injury? We ignore it. We try to “get over it”. We deny it. We shove it down deep to fool ourselves into thinking it’s not there. We feel shame for even being vulnerable to emotional wounds…as if we’re not human. We tell ourselves it wouldn’t be “productive” to do anything but just move on from it. But what are the costs of that approach? Sure, for quite some time we might be fooled into thinking it’s working quite well. But then that pesky anger gets ahold of us again. We develop an addiction. An eating disorder. Workaholism. We avoid anything that might make us susceptible to that horrible wound again, including relationships that we need. Or we put way too much pressure on other people to assure us that we’re okay. And we convince ourselves that this is the best way.

If you resonate with that, I wonder what it would look like for you to do it differently? To give yourself space to acknowledge that something has been hurt, to figure out how you have been wounded, to assess what is needed to heal, and to be inconvenienced by the process of tending to the injury. If this process is new to you or it’s difficult to see the value in it, here are more some thoughts on how to enter into it:

Give space to acknowledge that something has been hurt. Is it hard for you to admit that you have emotions? Or to feel comfortable allowing them to have any influence on you? Or to acknowledge that you can be hurt? Whether you like it or not, you are human and with that means you can be wounded emotionally by circumstances, others, or the consequences of your own actions. If there is shame around that vulnerability, explore it. Feeling the pain of living in this world is no assessment of your strength, character, ability, competence, or resolve. It is part of being a whole human. Give yourself room to accept that (or work on understanding why you can’t).
Figure out how you have been wounded. Some emotional injuries are easier to diagnose than others. Some require outside assistance to explore what has been hurt (I’m talking about a friend or therapist, not WebMD 😉 while others can be assessed with some intentional, mindful time alone. I would encourage you to pursue whichever is needed (or both).
Assess what is needed to heal. The prognosis is different for each diagnosis, but most all prognoses include honesty, introspection, reflection, grief, and time spent intentionally. Again, if you need help determining how to heal, seek help. And remember that healing doesn’t always mean that there won’t be a scar. Scars don’t come from our body ignoring wounds or passively leaving them as they are; scars come from our body’s incredible battle to heal what was broken.
Be inconvenienced by the process of tending to the injury. Just as you might have to cease participating in sports while your broken leg heals or you recover from the flu, you might have to step out of a few obligations for some time in order to give yourself space to heal. This is okay. And it might very well be the best investment you have ever made in others.

We do not tend to our own emotional injuries merely for the sake of finding someone to blame or to wallow in the hurt. We tend to our emotional injuries so that we can heal and move forward as a whole person, able to connect fully with ourselves and with others who are going through something similar.

I know – tending to emotional injuries takes time. It takes energy. And it’s rather inconvenient. But I would argue that it is essential to living as a whole human.

by: Melinda Seley, PLPC