How We Keep Injuries from Healing

 How We Keep Injuries from Healing

Most people don’t recognize the similarities that mental or emotional injuries have with physical injuries:

-They mostly come from environmental sources, which can be treated.

-They hurt when you touch them.

-They both have a natural healing process that will run its course if allowed to.

-They require more intensive treatment if aggravated.

-As with bones and muscles, proper healing often leaves emotion systems stronger than before.

I think the main difference between the two are that emotional injuries are on the inside--they can’t be seen (except on a brain scan, where they are clearly visible). Physical injuries are in plain sight making them easier to identify and understand, both for the injured person and for treatment personnel. I wonder, how would we treat emotional injuries if we could see them?

Well, I do know we definitely wouldn’t (or shouldn’t) say things like this to someone with broken femur:

-I just don’t see what the big deal is…

-I’ve reminded you to do your walking homework 5 times already. Why don’t you just do it?

-All this sitting down is unacceptable.

-All I did was bump your hip. Why are you freaking out? I can’t believe how sensitive you are.

-Walking is easy! I can teach you again if you want.

-I’m not sure if broken bones are a real thing.

The thing is, the emotional injury (manifesting as depression, anxiety, phobia, anger outbursts, impulsive behavior) is hard to identify, even for the person with the injury. Imagine a person walking around in terrible pain all the time, crying and blowing up at random times, and having no idea it was because their largest bone had a sizable fracture in it. In a society where emotional injuries are stigmatized, it can be hard to admit you have one, especially certain kinds (stemming from sex, religion, kids, something regretful you did…).

Therapists use clues from clients to identify injuries and treat them at the source (rather than just using pain pills and band-aids). If you identify, describe, and explore symptoms, you can often find out where they come from. And a great thing about emotional injuries is that they can often be treated just by talking about them! If the emotions can flow out effectively, the pain often goes away, leaving a more resilient emotional mechanism than from before the injury.

And what keeps us from healing? My broken femur would have trouble healing if:

-I didn’t know how to trace my pain to a real source.

-I felt ashamed of admitting I was in pain.

-I was belittled or criticized for having such an injury.

-Well-wishers aggravated it by trying to fix it without understanding or without my permission.

-I felt forced to walk on it before it was ready, making me collapse, making it worse.

-I only treated it with pain pills and band-aids.

-I always tried to distract myself from it and pretend it wasn’t there.

These same impediments keep our emotional wounds from healing. If we acknowledge the reality of pain, even if we don’t immediately understand it, it can start to heal. Listening to expressions of pain may help us find the source of the pain and treat it directly. But, we don't necessarily need to know the exact source of emotional pain for it to heal (See “Treating Nightmares” and “The Natural Trauma Recovery Process”). It often heals just by being allowed to happen, but identifying the source can facilitate this process.

So what does that mean for us? First, we should know the signs of emotional injuries. Besides obvious signs of mental illness, it includes any sort of behavior that doesn’t make logical sense. If you see someone acting inconsistently with their beliefs, you can bet it is due to something emotional. So, please be mindful of any judgments you make about people who seem impulsive, unwise, extreme, aggressive, fearful, or apathetic. They likely don’t need criticism or a lecture to help them, but a gentle presence to help them identify and treat their pain.

See “It’s Actually Not About the Nail,” “The Trauma Tree,” and “It’s Never Just How It Is.”