The Myth of DIY Emotional Healing
If you break an arm or wake up with a toothache do you hop on TikTok or YouTube to understand why your arm or tooth hurts? If you have a fever or feel sick, do you listen to a podcast about your symptoms? The majority of us don’t. We might google our symptoms to make sure we’re not dying, but then we call a doctor. We trust there is a wound because we see the evidence of it, and/or we feel the pain the wound is inflicting. We believe in our body’s ability to tell us something is wrong. We trust that we are hurt, and we find the right professional to help us feel better.
The longer I work in the field of self-acceptance, wholeness, and emotional growth, I often wonder why we expect to be able to treat our emotional wounds with anything less than we would a physical injury. Why do we tell ourselves to just “get over it”, “suck it up”, or that “we should know how to fix it.” I have clients in their 60s who all say the same thing, “I thought I could figure this out by now.”
What's your elephant in the room?
One of my clients describes her fear of inadequacy as a big elephant that is always with her. She’ll be at a party or with friends, and there it is, sitting in the middle of the room or at the table staring at her. It’s a comical scene if you can picture it, but the smallness and insignificance she feels are anything but. My client is brilliant, lovely, and successful, but the wound reminds her daily that regardless of her accolades, at her core, she’s still not enough.
As Dr. Gabor Maté explains in his book The Myth of Normal, “It's a psychic wound that leaves a scar. It leaves an imprint in your nervous system, in your body, in your psyche, and then shows up in multiple ways that are not helpful to you later on.” He goes on to explain that trauma isn’t what happens to us but rather what happens inside of us.
Trauma to the skin creates a bruise or a tear, trauma to the psyche creates a wound we can’t see, but that is just as or more so, impactful. We can’t see them because our emotional wounds live in our subconscious, but all it takes to know they are there is to look at the area of your life you deem yourself to be a failure.
Signs you have a wound that needs healing:
You’re in your 40s or 50s and you struggle to choose a partner that is a good fit for you.
You are a serial chaser. You only want unavailable people. When you get them, you’re no longer interested.
You are attracted to people that don’t give you what you want.
You’re successful but live with a fear that it will all be taken away.
You do everything for everyone and feel burdened by the responsibility, but you’re unable to say no.
You have high levels of anxiety.
You’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop.
You don’t believe you get what you want.
You have control issues.
It’s difficult for you to receive attention even though you say you want it.
I could keep going, but I think you get the gist. Our emotional wounds choose our partners, they choose our careers and are reflected in everything from how we spend our time, to how we take care of our bodies, to how close we allow others to get to us, and to what we settle for in life.
Emotional wounds and the healing around them are no different than physical wounds.
The expectation to be able to diagnose and heal on our own, and the eventual failure to do so, perpetuates a feeling of defeat and hopelessness, which further confirms the insecurities and fears created by the wound in the first place. You wouldn’t tell someone with a broken arm or who had just survived a car wreck to move on, walk it off, and/or get over it. You wouldn’t expect anyone just diagnosed with cancer to create a treatment plan for themselves and administer chemo or radiation to themselves each week, would you? Of course not.
What I want to convey to people struggling with an area of their life where they feel out of control, is that an emotional wound is most likely present, so the right treatment is crucial. When we heal a physical wound we receive a diagnosis and plan for healing from our physician. We might feel a little frustrated at the inconvenience of this plan and the injury itself, but we know it’s necessary to feel better, so we typically don’t resist treatment. We accept the wound is there, and that time and attention are needed, to improve our quality of life.
Moving From Wounded to Worthy Takes Action
When we accept that there is something broken inside of us, we can begin the process of healing. Unless you are a trained professional you shouldn’t know how to do this on your own, and even then it is difficult to see your blindspots. The ego is always protecting us from seeing ourselves as we truly are. With the help of a trusted coach, you can begin to not only identify the wounds driving your choices, but you can touch them, feel them, heal them, and as a result, transform them into a deep sense of self-worth that can never be taken away.
