We Are All Worthy of Emotional Care

Emotional pain is real pain, and it needs space to be felt to truly heal. We need to create more places of emotional safety. Places where it is safe to express our emotional pain. In our society, emotions are often seen as useless and irrelevant. We are encouraged by our families and society to brush them aside. They are in the way of more important work of everyday life.  Even though emotional wounds don’t bleed I believe they are as real as the wounds that do.

If physical illnesses and injuries go untreated, they can lead to complications and longer recovery time. I believe emotional wounds are the same. Sometimes they heal on their own and sometimes they turn into chronic emotional pain, like depression, anxiety or unhealed emotional wounds such as triggers. I like calling them unhealed emotional wounds better because it illustrates why it causes us to react the way triggers do, because the wound still hurts and hasn’t been given the attention and space to fully heal. Emotional wounds can even become infectious; this is when we operate our life out of our wounds, consciously or unconsciously spreading similar emotional hurt to our own.

In childhood we are at the mercy of our parents showing us how to handle emotional pain through example, if our emotional pain is denied and dismissed, we create stories around why our emotional hurts are not being cared for, and every story has the same insidious punchline, I am not worthy of emotional care, I am not worthy!  These stories we create can become part of our identity as they wrap around our heart and soul.

People who cause the most emotional wounds whether conscious or not are those who have been dismissed and made to ignore their own emotional wounds the most. There are emotional wounds all over their heart and soul, the stories are wrapped thick like a callused scab. They spread the same emotional neglect and abuse by reacting to their pain presently, in the now, abusing anyone near, spreading hurt and wounds like an infectious virus. This is often unconscious because the hurt was dismissed so long ago, all they have left is the wounds that hurt and they're reacting to the pain, triggered by outside circumstances now, not from the original source of the wound.

We are worthy of emotional care. We stop the spread of emotional hurt by feeling our emotional pain when hurt happens. Instead of dismissing or numbing out we feel our pain. If someone is hit by a fly ball everybody runs to make sure that the person hit by the ball is okay, making sure nothing is broken. We need to investigate emotional hurt the same way, regardless of fault. If someone, including ourselves, shows signs of emotional hurt we should run to them and ask them what hurts. By acknowledging what happened and how it hurt is how we heal emotional wounds.

We create emotionally safe spaces when we give ourselves and others the space to feel emotional pain. We need space and time to explore unhealed wounds too that still hurt and to begin to unwrap and let go of the stories we have created and feel the pain in those stories too. This takes time and we don’t have to do it all at once but is through feeling our emotional pain that we heal.

I used to think that emotional wounds were messy and that it absolutely needs the person who caused the wound to participate, which can be challenging, because what if they are unwilling or have died. How are we going to heal our wounds? I now believe that all we need to heal emotional wounds is the same as when we have physical wounds, all you need is a caring and empathetic someone to tend to your wound.  This empathetic someone can be a counselor, a trusted friend or even ourselves. Someone to ask:  where does it hurt? How does it hurt, describe it to me. What are the physical sensations?  Where can the pain be felt in your body put your hand there (for example near the heart and/or stomach. Emotional pain can be felt in the body) and just let the pain be felt.  Acknowledge that it really did hurt. The response to our hurt or someone else’s hurt (regardless of fault or intent) is I am so sorry you are hurt. I am so sorry that happened, that really hurt didn't it. I can see you are really hurting I am so sorry. This is how we create emotionally safe places by giving ourselves and others space to feel and acknowledge their emotional pain. I realize now that the pain just needs to be acknowledged and felt. In the end it is all about the pain and the emotional wound is healed with love, attention, and acknowledgment of the pain.

Why heal emotional pain? Emotional wounds and stories created by denying emotional pain hold us back from our worthiness and the abundant gifts of life, an emotionally fulfilled life and relationships.

 Through always being a deep feeler and having no choice but to drown or face them I have come to an appreciation of my emotions, each one of them. I have been afraid of my watery depths of emotion -there was a lot of pain there left to be fully felt. I have been afraid of drowning, even though I have always known, I was made of water and emotion…being afraid of emotions and of water, I was afraid of myself. Through embracing my emotional pain and fully feeling it I have been able to come home to myself and to the gift of my emotions.

When I am in balance and in partnership with my emotions, they are like an energetic forcefield that protects my emotional and spiritual wellbeing. It lets me know what is good for me by giving signals of joy, love, and relief and what could or has hurt me sending signals of anger, sadness, and fear. It shows me where my boundaries are, when in a relationship with another person. I now see my emotions as guidance system always trying to bring me back home to my authentic self. It is through having safe spaces to let my emotions be openly expressed that I have come to this appreciation for my emotions.