Several days ago I accidentally touched a super hot kettle (yeah, a kettle, people, not a super hot man, unfortunately!) and consequently, part of my skin near the wrist of my right arm got burnt. It hurt like hell. I started a home treatment as suggested on the internet, such as cooling the burnt area and applying some ointment. 

For the first few days, there were some blisters around the injured area and it felt itchy. I felt like scratching, but thanks to my (occasional) superpower self-discipline, I managed not to scratch it. 

After the blisters got a bit dried, the itch came back, and I wanted to scratch again. Still, luckily I managed not to scratch. I know there’s a wound there. And scratching is bad. And I know that once the wound is healed, even though there will be a visible scar, it won’t hurt or get itchy anymore. All I need to do at this stage is focusing on healing. 

This somehow reminds me of other wounds that humans have: emotional wounds. Unfortunately, healing an emotional wound is not as simple as a physical wound. Many of us can’t see where the wound is. It’s buried inside, covered and distracted by many other things in life. 

We can only suspect that we have emotional wounds when we become unreasonably angry when we hear certain jokes, certain sentences or certain behaviour displayed by certain people.

What is Emotional Wound

Emotional wound, put simply, is a wound in the emotional level. The wound occurs as a result of having experienced deep emotional hurt when facing something or someone distressing. Violence and abuse are the most obvious causes. 

But some everyday, seemingly harmless, behaviour from people around us can also cause deep emotional hurt. 

For instance, a mother who often criticises her daughter as inadequate with the purpose of motivating the daughter to do her best, may actually inflict deep emotional pain and make her believe that she’s never good enough. 

There are two possible consequences of this type of parenting behaviour. 

The first possibility is that the daughter may get stuck in a non-productive, self-defeating hamster wheel of self-improvement in order to please her mother so that she doesn’t throw any hurtful critics. 

The second possibility is that she detaches herself from the mother as it’s too painful to be around her and bonds excessively with her peers. Having experienced episodes of hurtful critics from her mother, she ends up wanting to please all her friends, inevitably forming a people-pleasing mentality. 

Going further, a people-pleasing mentality can attract various types of toxic people into her life, causing more emotional wounds. 

With more emotional wounds and toxic people in her life, it’s easy to predict how messy her life would be. 

This is only repairable once she’s aware of the existence of her emotional wounds and takes action, in this case, to recognise and disconnect from toxic people in her life. 

Signs That You Have an Unresolved Emotional Wound

Every human being experiences at least one emotional wound throughout their life. But if this wound is not resolved, not only it will impede their potential, it will also be destructive over time.

Unlike physical wounds that are visible, and thus, easily treated, emotional wounds are much harder to treat as they’re hard to ‘see’. Furthermore, our mind also tends to play tricks on us, lying that we don’t have any unresolved emotional wounds.

So how do you know that you have unresolved emotional wounds? There are at least 2 signs:

1. You get unreasonably and easily irritated by certain behaviour from certain people

Apart from the possibility of having jealousy/envy, an instinct that tells us that something/someone is dangerous, or a ‘shadow’ (parts of our personality that we’ve been trying to hide or deny), it’s also possible that we may be experiencing flashbacks when we get unreasonably and easily irritated by certain behaviour from certain people. In this post, I will only discuss flashbacks very briefly. I will write about shadow in a different post soon.

There are two types of flashbacks: explicit and implicit. 

With the above example of the criticising mother, an explicit flashback would be a certain tone of voice or word that resembles her mother’s tone of voice or word when she criticises her. With this explicit flashback, an instant emotional reaction would usually be anger, resentment, sad, or all of the above, blown out unproportionally.  

An implicit flashback, on the other hand, is much harder to trace as it involves very early childhood, even may go back to birth. The only obvious sign of implicit flashback is an overreaction to certain things, situation or people without knowing why. 

 2. You Have Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms

A coping mechanism is a strategy that humans use to soothe themselves when faced with stress or difficult emotions such as sadness, anger, or frustration.

The most common healthy coping mechanisms are mindfulness (meditation, deep breathing), taking a walk, talking it out (to the right people, not on social media), journaling, crying or reassessing self-boundary.

The most common unhealthy coping mechanisms to numb out an emotional wound is an addiction to food, sex, alcohol, drugs, gambling, smoking, or all of the above. 

How Do We Heal from Emotional Wound?

Healing emotional wound takes time. It’s a big project as we have to put everything out into words. We may need help from a certified therapist, especially with tracing the implicit flashbacks.

Can We Do The Healing Ourselves?

I haven’t visited any certified therapists to heal my emotional wounds, but I’ve witnessed a significant improvement in how I deal with people and life in general. I wouldn’t say I’m completely healed from my own emotional wounds (yes we all have some!), but apart from journaling as one of the best DIY methods to help with the healing I also meditate regularly every morning.

Scientifically speaking, meditation induces a heightened state of awareness and focused attention. I’ve been able to recognise myself better and be authentic with my feelings. 

By authentic, I mean, I’m not lying to myself anymore. Not that often, I mean. I start to learn how to love myself. Here is a post about what self love is and how to love yourself.

Also, I’m no longer afraid of questioning myself why I feel a certain way, why certain things or certain people annoy me. From there, I learn to recognise the patterns, be aware of the emotional wounds and try my best to find the source of the wounds even though I may not always have an answer. 

It’s not just journaling and meditation, of course, the healing process has to be combined with feeding ourselves with trustworthy, valid information. 

Youtube is one of the best sources (it’s not just cat videos there, people!) to get information about emotional wounds (and many other information about anything, really!).  I’d recommend Richard Grannon, especially this video, and Dr Ramani, with this video.

However, if there’s an unexplainable overreaction to a certain thing, a certain behaviour, or a particular person, we should check with a certified therapist to find the source and work from there. 

Having Said That

Like a physical wound, emotional wound can heal too, but a lot harder if we’re not willing to first acknowledge its existence. 

*****

And here is a photo of my burnt (healing) scar… still tender and itchy. Scrrraaatchhh.