grief

The Fox and the Tiger

February 13, 2024 by Ken Wells

READ IT TO ME: Click play to listen to this post.

There is a well-known Sufi story about a man who was walking through the forest and saw a fox that had lost its legs, and he wondered how it lived. Then he saw a tiger come up with game in its mouth. The tiger ate its fill and left the rest of the meat for the fox.

The next day God fed the fox by means of the same tiger. The man began to wonder at God’s greatness and said to himself, “I too shall just rest in a corner with full trust in the Lord and he will provide me with all that I need.”

He did this for many days but nothing happened, and he was almost at death’s door from starvation when he heard a voice say, “O you who are in the path of error, open your eyes to the truth! Stop imitating the disabled fox and follow the example of the tiger.”

No one gets through life without experiencing trauma. The unexpected happens. Feeling numb from tragedy and loss is a common thread for all humanity. No one will escape it. The Sufi story is universally applicable to all. When faced with misfortune we can respond like a helpless, legless fox or we can address misfortune by following the example of the tiger. Metaphorically, sorting and sifting whether you are responding to adversity as a disabled fox or empowered tiger often determines the impact of trauma in your life.

Betrayal in committed partnerships is an insidious experience for everyone. The betrayer lives a life of deceit and a double life toward someone to whom they promised protection and propriety. The betrayed partner often experiences the edge of uncertainty without knowing the reality of ongoing devastation. Family members are torn with confusion and anxiety watching a horror story unfold in front of their eyes. No one is ever better off when betrayal occurs.

The trauma of betrayal often triggers codependency that exists to varying levels. It would be a mistake to suggest that betrayed partners all suffer the same degree of codependent response or codependency at all. The pervasiveness of codependency is experienced far and wide throughout relationships in our society.

Historically, the essential experience of trauma with betrayal has been under-emphasized while promoting the codependency that is often present with betrayal. Rightfully, many today identify as hurtful the diagnosis of codependency without raising consciousness to the raw trauma that must be treated for those who have been betrayed. There has been an over-emphasis upon codependency and co-addiction when trying to be helpful to those who have been betrayed. The emphasis upon the impact of trauma has been helpful and necessary.

The importance of prioritizing and distinguishing the difference of trauma response from codependent response has been helpful for healing from betrayal. Yet, it is critical that the concern for trauma around betrayal not be blind to the possibility of co-addiction, the idea that a partner can be addicted to a partner, or the existence of codependency during the assessment of what needs to be treated. Each can appear in varying degrees from mild to intense.

So, to be sure, trauma is a universal pathology for all engaged with betrayal. It is hurtful to minimize codependent or co-addictive behavior which may or may not have originated from betrayal behavior. New terminology about these behaviors can be helpful. Melody Beattie was helpful in popularizing the dynamics of codependency in human relationships. It is helpful to build on the foundation of understanding that her writings established. Assessing impact of betrayal trauma will require identifying the consequences of the trauma and then triaging needed interventions depending upon what is presented. This requires much needed process and awareness from an experienced therapist to examine the presence and intensity of trauma and related behaviors.

Helping those victimized by the trauma of betrayal requires recognition of trauma indicators and application of helpful interventions. Those who are impacted by betrayal need careful appraisement and sensibility applied in the treatment of their response to betrayal. Only then can we help the patient move through their trauma of betrayal and help them shift from the paralysis of being a helpless fox to the reality of the empowered tiger.

Hate Management

January 19, 2024 by Ken Wells

READ IT TO ME: Click play to listen to this post.

“There are only two ways: either we love–and love in action is service–or we put hatred into action and destroy.” —Mother Teresa

When I was a junior in high school, a classmate, Chuck Fuller, shot and killed five members of the Cox family who lived in a country house a little ways from town. All the victims were children ranging from ages 5 to 16. He had been dating Edna Cox at the time. The motive for Chuck’s tragic behavior was unknown. Some thought he was upset because Edna’s parents denied his request to marry her. Others thought it to be because Chuck believed that Edna’s parents demanded that she work too hard with domestic duties around the house. I suppose only Chuck knows for sure. A couple of summers after the tragedy I worked at a summer job with one of the surviving Cox children, Tim, who was my age. Of course, he was still reeling from the tragedy with grief, anger, and hate.

Throughout my life, I have reflected upon the tragedies that seem to happen all around us every day. I have wondered how long a person should wallow in the extreme pain of grief and hate when faced with the sheer tragic results of loved ones killed from senseless mass murder, childhood sexual abuse, or any of a number of tragic endings of life. I have often thought that religion and its emphasis upon a relationship with God would insure and insulate people from extreme feelings like hate. Certainly, religious communities encourage people to avoid hate and in some cases to run from its presence. Christians admonish believers to forgive just like Jesus forgave. Yet, it doesn’t seem to work. Maybe, because you and I are not Jesus! All world religions encourage believers to quash and eradicate hate from their lives. However, who doesn’t hate? None of us would be so cruel to suggest to Tim Cox that he not hate the perpetrator of mass murder of his siblings. Be that as it may, what are you supposed to do with this bitter and biting experience of hate that at some level we all experience?

Here are a few suggestions to consider:

1. Lean into hate. I know it is counterintuitive to suggest that someone embrace hate. However, over the years I have learned better to embrace hate because for sure it will embrace you when you face senseless loss, deep disappointment, and dominating oppression. Hate is an energy that cannot be ignored or avoided when facing a serious crisis that alters your way of living. It is a powerful feeling that must be reckoned with. It is uncomfortable, even suffocating in its impact.

I once met with a man who walked into his bedroom with his partner being sexual with two men he did not know. Everywhere he goes in his mind, the image of relational betrayal stalks him like bloodhound tracking dogs. He simply cannot get away from the vile hate he felt. I suggest that you make an about-face from running away to facing the reality that an awful experience has happened and that you need to embrace the actuality that you hate the person, the experience, and the results that exist. Don’t minimize or get lost in trying to explain away your feeling of hate.

2. Direct the hate to the person and the oppressive system that promoted the hurtful behavior. Many people are fearful and hesitant to admit what and who they hate. So they don’t. They walk through their lives with a chip on their shoulder, allowing the venom of hate to spew onto anyone and everyone they encounter. This approach to hate keeps you stuck in what hurts and leaves a venomous footprint of hate wherever you go.

Some people live out the mantra “don’t worry, be happy”. They live the life described by the late John Prine in his song the “The Other Side of Town” and “A clown puts his make-up on upside down—so he wears a smile even when he wears a frown”. These people live a life of self-sabotage. No one really understands what their frown is about because they are always smiling, hiding what hurts. People and systems can be oppressive. Naming the hurtful person and the hurtful behavior is a must if hate is to be addressed. Further, you must identify and call out the oppressive system that allowed the hurtful behavior.

So, for the unfortunate client who walked in on his partner’s infidelity, he must name the infidelity and call out his partner who betrayed him. Further, he will need to draw critical attention to the dysfunctional system in the relationship that allowed for the oppressive behavior of infidelity to exist. At some point, he will need to unearth the way in which he embraced the improbable–the partner relationship is solid–and ignored the obvious–we are in deep trouble. You may need help to see where you were blind to the relational distance that was present and growing over time. Hate is an energy that enables you to address wrongful and hurtful behaviors perpetrated by others toward you.

3. Transfer the hate to what you love. There is a fine line between hate and love. You can only shift from hate to love when you become indelibly clear about what you hate. The experience of hate is an energy that requires responsible adult administration. If you become stuck with who or what you hate, bitterness and resentment will take over your existence. Martin Luther King once said that “hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” Yet, love is not operational by ignoring what is hate-worthy–unfair treatment, domination, and injustice. It requires an adult to transfer the energy of hate by embracing what you love.

Some people say they love others but have not addressed their own self-hate. There is an African saying, “Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.” Maya Angelou once said, “I do not trust people who don’t love themselves and yet tell me, ‘I love you.’ “ When you do not learn to transfer the energy of self-hate to self-love it becomes very difficult to overcome hate with loving acts.

Facing Abandonment

November 24, 2023 by Ken Wells

READ IT TO ME: Click play to listen to this post

Addicts have many anxieties and fears. They grew up with holes in their souls with unmet childhood developmental needs from parents who failed to provide the fundamental emotional needs necessary. Some addicts suffered woeful negligence from physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. For many their parents failed to provide necessary support because they didn’t know how. Their parents loved them but were unable to give to their children that which was not given to them.

Children learn that their parents loved them when they provide clothing, food, shelter, education, and other material possessions. However, children comprehend that they matter when a parent spends sufficient amounts of time with them on their terms, not the parents. Children develop a hole in their soul when this doesn’t happen. Subconsciously they conclude they don’t matter. They don’t consider that something is wrong with their parents. Instead, they embrace the misbelief that they must not be worthy or important enough for the attention desired.

Developmentally they become like a chunk of Swiss cheese with holes. Each hole represents an unmet childhood need. Kids learn to compensate by trying to fill the hole from the outside with a cocktail of relational experience. They learn to please and gain approval through performance or get attention with negative social behavior. It doesn’t work because the depth of emotional need that must be met will ultimately only be fulfilled from within. They become like the little kid who can’t get enough sugar. Their emotional neediness becomes insatiable. Eventually, they organize a dependency upon an addictive substance or process that delivers what it promises. For many, it involves a collection of addictions that are depended upon to assuage their fears and anxieties and to numb out what hurts.

One of the greatest fears that an addict faces is that of abandonment, physically, emotionally, or both. Abandonment is like the metaphor of a pack of wolves that chase you through the woods. The pack pursues you relentlessly even though you create diversionary tactics of avoidance. Eventually, the pack corners you. Either the pack wins and consumes you with addictive behavior or you turn around and face the gnashing teeth of abandonment. In doing so you begin to realize that it is not the terrorizing force that its growl suggests.

Addicts become pleasers, workaholics, and deniers to avoid conflict. Behind their behavior is a pernicious fear of abandonment. They will do anything to avoid feeling deserted. Addiction becomes a lifelong affair to avoid abandonment. Some addicts have described their relationship to their drug of choice as a warm blanket that offers consistent comfort from fear and anxiety. What lurks behind every addictive high is the fear of abandonment. How to address abandonment is critical to the long-term sobriety from addiction. Here are a few steps to consider:

1. Embrace the fact that the fear of abandonment is universal. Abandonment is not just a fear that afflicts addicts. It impacts partners of addicts and the world at large. It is a common thread of life experience. Recognizing that everyone experiences this fear helps to avoid isolation or the conclusion that you are particularly flawed and different from those around you. You are not! We all must face our fear of abandonment.

2. Others may desert you but the key is to learn not to desert yourself. This may seem obvious. Yet, simple things are not easy. It’s an automatic response for a child to subconsciously attempt to capture a parents’ attention when neglected. When children lack recognition for who they are, they try to compensate with what they can do. If the inattentiveness is chronic the child will participate in behaviors that will get their parent’s recognition in order to avoid abandonment. Over time they learn that who they are matters less than how they act or what they do. Essentially, they learn to abandon themselves. Overcoming the fear of abandonment requires that you learn to reclaim the importance of being and parent yourself in healthy ways. You must learn to pay attention to your genuine needs and not abandon yourself through pleasing others.

3. Listen to your triggers, don’t just run from them. Triggered with fear or lust for your drug of choice can be a gift! This is true for both addicts and partners. When triggered, put yourself out of harm’s way and take time to let the trigger talk to you about your unmet needs that must be met in a healthy way. Some addicts spend much of their recovery reporting about triggers and chronic high risk behaviors, thinking that telling another addict when they have been tempted is enough. However, it is a beginning. When tempted think about the legitimate need that is represented in the trigger and then endeavor to self-parent by meeting the need in a healthy way through adult choice and interaction. Rather than abandon yourself by only running away from the trigger, allow the trigger to speak its truth and transform the trigger from a curse to a blessing. Practicing this skill set which takes a lot of hard work is a major step that avoids abandonment of self.

4. Take the people with you who abandon you. People hurt each other and abandon one another. People die. Relationships end through the passage of time, betrayal, and a myriad of other reasons. It sucks to feel abandoned. Yet, it is a broken experience that is common to all. It requires skills to grieve the loss of what once was. Some people live life longing for yesterday’s experiences in order to avoid feeling abandoned. The end result is that they wallow in the abandonment. I suggest that you take the lost person or experience with you. Keep it with you in your heart. It is not necessary to live in the past. Yet, you can bring those experiences with others with you in the here and now through treasured memory. Even in the face of betrayal, you can embrace your truth and the closeness that once was, and the pure intent you generated when others were invested in ulterior motives. Precious memories need not be abandoned. Loved ones who are now deceased can be alive in your heart. We all live in a nanosecond of present time and then it too becomes historical. So we hold precious experience by treasuring its memory in our hearts. Learn to address abandonment by taking your precious personal intents and initiatives with you in your heart. The good in all the relationships you have ever experienced can dwell inside of you no matter what others choose to do. When you consider the power and potential that exists within, you never need to be dominated by abandonment again.

Failure Friendly

September 8, 2023 by Ken Wells

READ IT TO ME: Click play to listen to this post.

It is impossible to live without failing at something unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default. —J.K. Rowling

The Oxford Dictionary defines failure as the lack of success in doing or achieving something. Really! Somehow, with so much emphasis placed upon not failing in our world, you would think they would come up with something more pronounced than that. If that’s what it is, who doesn’t fail, not once but dozens of times every day? I didn’t brush my teeth twice today, I ran two not three miles. I didn’t clean the house, wash the car, read 50 pages from the book I committed to wade through, meditate, and stop eating yogurt! Some days it seems that I don’t achieve anything that I committed to do! Does that make me a failure?

There is such emphasis upon hiding the “don’t be’s” that the things you achieve get overlooked or minimized. You did put your goals down on paper. You did run two of the three miles on your goal sheet. You did brush your teeth one time of the twice-a-day goal. You did read 10 of the 50 pages you committed to read. While there are many things you can do to adjust your focus, strategy, and effort to achieve more, you are less likely to maintain perspective without a more friendly view of the word failure.

Baseball great Mickey Mantle once reflected on the experience of his Hall of Fame baseball career. He said, “During my 18 years of Major League Baseball I came to bat almost 10,000 times. I struck out 1700 times and walked another 1,800 times. You figure a ball player will have about 500 at-bats a season. That means I played seven years without ever hitting the ball.”

The average experience of a baseball player is making an out, not getting a hit. In the presence of striving for success, even for someone as great as Mickey Mantle, there is a compelling story of difficulty and strife to share. Mantle’s authentic willingness to connect with his intimate battle with failure forced him to practice the fundamental basics of self-care. As a result, these commonplace experiences of struggle enabled him to look back at his Hall of Fame career and create a meaningful perspective from his experience of professional failure.

Here are a few things to reflect on when addressing failure in life.

1. Everyone experiences daily failure. It is one of the common threads of everyday living.

2. Make sure you underscore what you did do when you highlight what you didn’t.

3. Fail forward. Wallowing in the mud of failure only gets you more muddy and in need of a bath.

4. Take time to grieve. It’s a bummer to come up short after all that effort! Feel shitty! Embrace the bitterness, anger, disappointment, and emptiness that come with failed results. Express it fully! Philosophical reflection can come later.

5. Funnel your grief into action. Don’t act prematurely. When you embrace your feelings around failure, you will know when it’s time to get off your duff and act. Don’t allow negative self-talk to stymie your view of future destiny. Most achievements are completed amidst the roar of negative talk from the conniving inner critic that attempts to sabotage destiny. Learn to ignore the negativity within like an athlete learns to block out the hostile heckles and catcalls in a stadium.

6. Be a heart champion. Model how to go from blight to beauty. Know that failure is a part of life. Determine never to let an outcome define who you are. Instead, let your definition be determined by the vision of destiny you have within that supersedes any result.

7. Chisel out a North Star focus. Cultivate support from others around you to maintain an “eye of the tiger” pursuit of your purpose and plans of fulfilling your destiny.

8. Re-define prosperity. Rather than scaling back your vision, transcend your pursuit and go beyond concrete results that ultimately you don’t control. Embrace the unconditional confidence that no matter what you experience, you can go down and come back up.

9. Clarify what growth means toward the goal you seek to achieve. There are many definitions of growth. If you only know growth by measuring the end result, you will miss the incremental steps that are necessary to get to the end result. Carefully clarify each step needed in your journey. It will help you to enlighten what you can and cannot control.

Strength and inspiration come through the experience of failure by sharing and connecting with the human spirit of others. You will experience a genuine depth of human connection when you learn to stay in the presence of overwhelming discomfort triggered by failure. The human spirit is resilient and has the capacity to transform agony into poise and healing peace when the discomfort and heartache of failure is embraced and shared.

A Five Tool Relapse Recovery Plan – Tool #5 Stalking and Refueling

May 23, 2023 by Ken Wells

Relapse leaves an aftermath of hopeless discouragement and devastating defeat. Ringing in the ears of every addict who relapses is “I know I didn’t have to do it but somehow I just couldn’t stop!” Other addicts in recovery say, “I get it but there’s something about me that can’t! I am destined to fail!” Then there is the tide of thought that tells you to “Just give up!” The voice of shame says “Addicts like you are destined to fail! It’s part of your legacy to be flawed. You will never get it!” And so it goes.

The 5th tool in relapse recovery is well-known but sparingly utilized. Addicts in recovery know about shame. They have heard sponsors and therapists talk about shame reduction. Maybe they have listened to or read some of Brené Brown’s thoughts about shame. I have written about shame many times. Yet, shame continues to dominate addicts in recovery.

Education about shame is important. The more written about shame the greater the insight and instruction about how to manage it. We live in a golden era of enlightenment. However, what is critical to shame management is consistent action. People won’t rid themselves of shame simply through insight and understanding. It requires taking consistent action steps to manage. Shame is a dynamic that every person must regulate. It is not a dynamic that goes away with maturity, recovery, or spiritual growth. It is a life experience to be supervised and maintained with healthy choices.

Addicts who relapse find themselves in a gulf of shame. Negative cognitions pepper their brain like an unrelenting hurricane. Battered by a toxic chatterbox within, the likely choice is to continue the destructive acting-out behavior. At least, you will have some relief from the numbing experience afterward. Yet like the eye of the storm in a hurricane, the backside of the storm of shame is wicked and devastating. It ravages self-esteem while addicts wallow in the mud of misbelief. For some, this blitz of battering has ended in fatality. A category 5 storm of shame is serious business and requires an all-hands-on-deck approach to manage and regulate. Here are my suggestions:

After you have relapsed, practice doing the next right thing no matter how you feel inside. Absolutely, force yourself to get back on track. Make yourself dinner. Finish the project at work. Go to a meeting. Make a phone call. Focus on one thing you can do that represents self-care. Tell on yourself. No matter what or how you feel, take one step in the right direction and then build on that. You will feel phony. There will be a tremendous war inside to wallow in self-pity. Practice taking one step uninspired. When your insides scream at you to quit, just take one more step in the right direction. Stay the course. It will get better. You will feel different in time. There will be no reduction in shame without this process.

Cocoon yourself with affirmation. This is difficult when your inner chatterbox is telling you what a screw-up you are. That said, write out positive affirmations about your being, not so much about what you do. “I am an unrepeatable miracle of the universe”. “I am worthy of love”. “I am doing the next right thing” etc. Your negative chatterbox will want to swat you down when you affirm yourself. There will be a war inside. You must win the war by regularly training your brain with positive affirmations. Most addicts in recovery overlook the value of repetition and visualization of positive affirmations. It takes work. Greatness comes from consistency. This work will bring you back to center. It is the greatest tool I know toward establishing long-term sobriety. Don’t underestimate its power and efficacy.

Practice ignoring your inner negative chatterbox. You can sit in a room full of people and be very lonely. You can sit in a room full of people and be battered by your inner negative chatterbox and no one will ever know. This is your battle. To overcome your chatterbox, it is not necessary to eliminate the negative voices. What you must do is practice and train yourself to ignore its message. Right now I have a hundred different messages screaming hurtful, discouraging messages about my inadequacy, helplessness, and inept ability to create inspiration and positive outcomes in my life. The key is not to escape these negative cognitions. Rather, what is important is to practice ignoring what they have to say to me. There are times that I will need to address each cognition. However, throughout my day-to-day life, I practice ignoring their suggestions. It is similar to an athlete ignoring the negative booing or derisive catcalls that are screamed by fans in the stands. You simply ignore and focus on the task at hand by immersing yourself in the positive belief that comes from inspiring affirmations that you have learned to feed your spirit.

Take time to grieve your loss and refuel your visions. When failure is experienced most of us don’t take time for effective grieving. When you are in the middle of the intersection and a bus is barreling toward you, it is not the time to sit down and grieve. I am always amazed at how many addicts hunker down and let the bus run over them again and again. No, this is the time to get up and move your ass out of harm’s way. However, once you have gotten out of harm’s way, it is important to grieve. Anger, sadness, regret, misgivings, disappointment, and even despair are all hallmark feelings that characterize appropriate grief. Learning to grieve deeply is critical to refueling your dreams. There is a time to act and function and a time to grieve. There is a time to not mix the two together and a time to function while you grieve. Both are important. You don’t have to feel 100% to be 100% committed to necessary action and function. As you grieve, it will be necessary to step back and refuel your visions. Every mistake provides an insight for future destiny. Be gentle with yourself. Be determined that you will extract meaningfulness from every mistake in recovery you make. Transform your fear of abandonment and nagging self-blame to unconditional confidence that comes when you allow yourself to go down and grieve the losses. You will come back up. Trust this process. This is the place shame recedes, and unconditional confidence rules, not in control of outcomes but within your spirit. You will know that no defeat, no disappointment, will be experienced that you cannot come back up from with greater strength.

Scrubbing the Wound

April 11, 2023 by Ken Wells

One of the most tortuous experiences of healing in life are stories told from those who have suffered with injuries that require their wounds to be scrubbed. Emergency room doctors have shared experiences of cases involving car accidents that have required scrubbing the road rash covering the back of a victim, triggering immense pain. Burn victims describe a healing process that demands cleaning and scrubbing the wounds every day. The pain from the necessary cleaning procedure is unbelievable, yet necessary. Without the cleaning process, infection takes over and provides a negative outcome, including death. As a child, I remember, my mom, washing a wound that I incurred on my knee with a washcloth. I recall the searing pain from the scrub and the application of merthiolate (that red stuff that was later banned) and crying out “Don’t touch it mom” and wanting her to blow on it as she did her cleaning work. No one wants to sign up for this much-needed task of scrubbing the wound.

Since I have been an emotional healer, the analogy of scrubbing the wound is one that has made so much sense. It is one of the first things that is required for emotional wounds to heal. Forgiveness often doesn’t get traction unless the emotional wound is scrubbed and cleaned. The concept of “scrubbing an emotional wound” involves embracing the emotional pain rather than avoiding it. It always includes a deepened embrace of grieving the loss, injustice, despair, and disappointment. While wanting to lash out is a common human response, scrubbing the wound often means sitting with the pain in all of its severity. It suggests that you walk through the reality of violation, tragic loss, etc, and steel yourself with the support of caring others, without escape but with embrace. As a healer, I have observed that when people are willing to do this, the healing of devastation occurs more rapidly. When people choose strategies to avoid the pain through blame, and tactics to find an escape from pain through other relationships or endeavors, then the healing process becomes stalled and at times is never completed.

During my healing journey, I am certain that going through the hell of losing 45 pounds in six weeks in major clinical depression and sitting with the painful reality of sexual, physical, and religious abuse was necessary to stop the destructive life of dysfunctional behavior that included addiction. Through 25 years as a counselor. I have observed that there is an inbred desire to seek instant relief from physical pain, emotional discomfort, and personal struggle. We tell ourselves that life would be better if we could just find that instant fix! Yet, most times there is no lightning in a bottle. Transformation and healing require that we scrub the emotional wound and drain the pool of emotional pain.

It has been my conviction and belief that there is no magic bullet. Embracing emotional struggle and scrubbing the emotional wound is a counterintuitive measure that creates fulfillment in life and clarifies meaning and purpose in the presence of pain and discomfort in ways that are missed by those in search of a magic bullet.

Here are a few practical considerations regarding scrubbing the wound.

You will need a safe place to embrace all of your feelings. For me, it began in a psychiatric ward at Columbine Psychiatric Hospital. It later included Marilyn Murray’s studio office with a tennis racket wearing loose-fitting clothes that were conducive to expressing all of my emotions. Today, it includes my own homespun safe place with plenty of options to express sadness/anger/hate/shame, etc. You will want to be proactive to create your own safe place.
Scrubbing the wound requires a commitment to express all of your feelings around your hurt, unedited and without reservation of expression. Take time to write emotion-focused letters for your eyes only (or a therapist), saying whatever comes out about someone who hurt you without edit or protection. Emoting words of pain with explosive expression (hitting a pillow with a tennis racket, etc) in your safe space and doing it as many times or over a protracted season of time as is necessary will be important. Often, it is helpful to have an unbiased support person present to give “fair witness” to your scrubbing the wound.
Scrubbing the wound will often require more than one healing session. Be willing to scrub your wound as often as needed. Remember, scrubbing the wound for a burn victim is a daily experience. Scrubbing resentment, hatred, and shame will need to be a daily ritual with more intense emphasis on some days and less on other days. It is a process of cleaning out the infection of toxic feelings and that is emotionally healing. Be willing to scrub for as long as is necessary.
Scrubbing the wound calls for you to cultivate the capacity to sit with the pain of your wound and tolerate discomfort. What happened to you was painful. The accompanying emotions hurt and will require conditioning and discipline to embrace. Sitting with the pain is a way of culturing wisdom. Angelina Jolie wrote ‘Without pain, there would be no suffering, without suffering we would never learn from our mistakes. To make it right, pain and suffering is the key to all windows, without it, there is no way of life.” Life becomes meaningful for those who learn to sit with the wound they have scrubbed.
There are many modalities that will help us scrub the wound but ultimately it will depend upon your willingness to go there. Seeking a sensational fix or searching for a magic bullet is a testament to attempts to avoid the scrub. Therapeutic modalities are abundant and new ones are being introduced all the time. Some individuals are great at knowing all the latest therapeutic interventions including all kinds of psychotropics to all sorts of experiential therapeutic modalities. Yet, the only ones that are really impactful are the ones that you have determined to embrace. When it is all said and done, you will have to decide that you are willing to embrace the pain and scrub your emotional wound.
After scrubbing, dress your emotional wound with loving kindness and positive affirmation. Emotional scrubbing is a difficult and vulnerable undertaking. It is an exercise that must be done at various times throughout a lifetime. Once an emotional scrub has been completed it is necessary to cultivate gentleness and bathe your emotional self with inspiring and positive affirmations affirming the reality that you are an unrepeatable miracle of the universe. The combination of scrubbing the wound and dressing it with positive affirmation is key to deep healing.

Leaning into painful experiences, big and small in everyday living is a pathway to meaningfulness and discovery of the depths of human brilliance.

Connect To The Conversation

Are you making the most of your recovery?

Take our short quiz and find out.