How to Heal the Emotional Wounds in our Souls
We are always in a rush, far too much of a rush. We try and balance our stress and anxiety, which in turn feeds on the large number of responsibilities and pressure that we carry on our on our shoulders. And so, as time goes by, our burdens increase, and we don’t even notice, and we forget how important healing wounds is.
All of this makes us disconnect from our very essence, from our soul. A disconnection that negatively affects us very adversely. Healing wounds that come from this disconnection is often very difficult. Read on to find out the best treatments for your soul.
We don’t realize that we’re just living on autopilot, and this has become our default way of life. We often just act and react impulsively, without putting too much thought into things and without enjoying the activity itself. This is how we come to the conclusion that there aren’t enough hours in the day, nor minutes in the hours, and no time at all for our souls.
We push ourselves forward with great strength and vigor, but leave behind our consciousness. We’re not worried about getting lost, or losing our very essence. It’s more important (we think) to get there first rather than doing it better. We live on a constant auto pilot that prevents us from focusing on what is really important – ourselves.
Don’t run, let your soul catch up with you
Before explaining more, let’s take a little trip to Africa and consider this story that has a message.
“A long, long time ago, an explorer ventured into one of the most inhospitable territories of Africa. Only his porters accompanied him. All of them carried a machete to hack their way through the thick vegetation. The explorer had only one goal in mind: to get through the jungle quickly, whatever the cost.
If they came across a river, then they had to cross it in the shortest possible time. If there was a hill then they walked harder and faster so as not to waste a single minute. However, suddenly the porters stopped in their tracks.
The explorer was surprised, as they had only been walking for a few hours.
“Why have you stopped? Are you already tired? We’ve only been on the road a few hours”, he said.
One of the porters looked at him and replied,
“No sir, we’re not tired. But we’ve been moving too fast and we’ve left our souls behind. Now we’ll have to wait for them to catch up with us again. “
If you move too fast, you’ll leave your soul behind.
Don’t ignore the pain
This is a beautiful African story that reflects the danger of being left behind when we are only concerned with getting somewhere fast. This becomes our only objective. If we just focus on the goal then it may shorten our journey time. However, the time we lose for the benefit of our senses will be the price we pay in the long run.
Sometimes, we live our lives in a hurry just to try and ignore the pain from all the things that have hurt us. As much as we try to escape from them and ignore them, they never leave us and continue to limit us. We think that if we ignore them then they’ll just disappear. In many cases they might, but in other cases these wounds will need another type of treatment.
We may well need to disinfect our souls, or treat the wounds in a special way. Distinguishing one from another requires emotional intelligence.
Healing wounds needs time
As much as we ignore our emotional wounds, this doesn’t prevent them from leaving their imprint on our brain. In fact, we often tend to drag childhood traumas, or other important emotional events that have had an impact on our lives, into our adulthood. If we can’t see what’s happening, or don’t stop to reflect on what is going on in order to solve it, healing wounds will be impossible, they’ll just remain open.
All our negative experiences leave a deep mark at a neurological level, and will continue to bleed no matter how hard we try to ignore them. Being strong, in many cases, has nothing to do with gritting our teeth and just carrying on. It is more to do with studying the cliff and finding a way of building a bridge to save ourselves.
We’re talking about looking sadness right in the eye to find out what it’s trying to tell us. Or finding a way to use up the energy that comes from our negative emotions, without harming anyone. We also need to try and give a moment of respite to our anxiety for it to be able to recover its normal pulse. In that way it’ll beat at a frequency that will help us and give us encouragement, instead of consuming us.
What happens to our soul?
What happens to our soul when we don’t reflect on things as we should and just continue as if nothing had happened? Well, if the precipice is a very steep one then our normal stride won’t be enough to get around it and we’ll end up spiraling into the void. In this way we transform difficulties that we could have quickly solved alone into very serious difficulties that we’ll need help with and that will require time to solve.
The situations that take us to our limits are the ones we can learn most from. However, if we want to emerge from them stronger then we have to look inside ourselves and learn from everything we’ve experienced.
We need to learn to evaluate our emotions with intelligence. All of them have a message for us, and we need intelligence to be able to decipher it. Our attitude must give us the opportunity to do so. If not, then we’ll end up surrounded by emotions that will make us feel very strange. We lose ourselves in a sea of responsibilities. We sweep our problems under that bottomless carpet.
Moving forward is important, but it is more important still not to miss what happens along the way. Time is what we use to ignore the pain in our soul. And time itself is what escapes from our open wounds. Healing wounds like these needs love rather than ignorance.
Images courtesy of Samantha Gross
