Would you leave a wound unattended?

When we get a deep wound and do not treat it, our body, if it is well nourished and rested and the wound is not very complex, may be able to heal it over time.  But while the wound is healing, it is very likely that we will instinctively behave in a way that protects the wound.

But if we are not nourished or cannot rest, the body will have a harder time healing itself. Imagine we got a wound in a contaminated environment and we need to wash it well and disinfect it so it can heal, we know it will hurt a lot.  Maybe we need to remove ourselves from the contaminated environment so that it can heal, but if for some reason we cannot get out of the contamination, or we do not know that we are in a contaminated environment, we will only be able to protect the wound trying to avoid further pain.

While the wound is open, consciously or unconsciously we move, protecting ourselves to avoid aggravating the pain.  If the wound takes a long time to heal, those movements will become part of our habits and many times even though the wound has healed we will continue using those same movements, thinking that they are parts of our being.  Unconsciously we develop the belief that if we do not move in that way we will suffer a lot.

We must also take into account that while the wound is not healed, our entire life will revolve around avoiding aggravating the pain caused by the wound.

It is the same with emotional wounds, when we are hurt we learn to behave and develop beliefs that help us protect ourselves and survive the pain.  In the same way, sometimes our emotional wounds are caused in an environment that is unhealthy, but we cannot leave that environment and we learn to cope with situations with strategies that help us avoid aggravating our pain.  We develop beliefs and behaviors with which we learn to survive and unconsciously we think that without these beliefs we will not make it, that without these beliefs we are not ourselves.  

And all our life revolves around avoiding aggravating the pain caused by our emotional wounds.

However, there comes a time when the beliefs and behaviors that initially helped us become toxic to ourselves. They show in the form of perfectionism, victimhood, machismo, distrust, shame, insecurity, anxiety, insomnia, and diseases of the body, to name a few.

Just as we do with our visible wounds, we need to address our emotional traumas.  We begin by becoming aware that something is not right, and pain is our guide, just as with wounds in the body.  It is by attending to the pain, paying attention to it that we will heal.