Heal Your Wounds by Jayne Warrilow

Heal Your Wounds
By Jayne Warrilow

Imagine what it would be like if you could truly open your heart and feel joy. Imagine being the confident, optimistic, and secure person you know is buried somewhere deep inside of you. Imagine if you could heal the emotional wounds of your heart that keep you closed from deeper relationships, playing safe and small in your life, for fear of experiencing hurt again. Imagine if it could happen to you, easier and faster than you think, what would be possible then?

Every single one of us knows what it's like to have our heart contract, we know the hurt/pain that is caused when someone we love, treats us badly. We don’t like it, it’s painful, we contract away from the pain whether it’s hurt, loss or grief, it wounds us, and we then carry that wound with us as we continue through life. 

Most of us have some emotional wounding that goes back as far our childhood. It might be an event, a person, or a memory that created a cluster of pain and beliefs surrounding that pain. Years can go by, and as long as that wound is still festering, all it might take is a word, or a look on someone’s face to trigger it. Then suddenly you are embroiled in a cloud of turbulence, lashing out at the poor person that set you off, telling yourself a story of pain. A story that seems so true, that controls you so much, that eats away at your happiness. It can literally drain your energy, not to mention the impact it has on those around you in your life today.

Healing your wounds is actually about expansion. It’s about letting go of the past and allowing your heart to open again. Here’s a process to help you when you notice your heart is closed and you want to make the conscious decision to open again…

• You have to understand what’s going on. Understanding at a deeper level of your being will help you to go beyond the judgement of right or wrong and see the reality in a non-judgmental way. You were wounded: you created a set of beliefs that you can explore by looking at the story you tell yourself about your wounding. No doubt you were younger, and had limited understanding of life and your environment, and survival was paramount; at the time you didn’t have all the ways to interpret the events that you do now. So first, look at the story you tell yourself. What are your beliefs around this issue? It’s important to do this so you can start to get some space the next time your wound is triggered and the emotional charge comes up. The charge may still overwhelm you, but now, there is a little, but growing part of you that is watching. 
• Observe yourself within the pain. Watch with compassion. We all have stories, beliefs and the pain that accompanies them. You were younger then, you did the best you could in the circumstances. You created these beliefs to protect yourself and help you survive. You did it to protect yourself from similar experiences. There’s nothing wrong with this, it’s a normal human thing we all do. You’re doing something about it now that will heal you. Now you get to choose - does it still serve you to remain contracted, or are you ready to expand your heart energy again?
• When you feel triggered and an energetic charge comes up, don’t push it away with your thoughts, don’t resist. Just feel the energy in your body. Be with it. Get out of your head where the story about your pain is going on. We tell ourselves our pain story to keep us in our head, and protect us from actually feeling the pain. We also want to remind ourselves that we don’t want another wound happening again. What’s really going on, though, is that the story is perpetuating the pain, leaving you vulnerable, and even attracting similar events. It’s not working, is it? The story about your pain is not in the present moment. It is about your past or how it will affect your future, “NOW” is the place of power, the place where you have the capacity to heal. So, feel the energy in your body to bring you into the present moment. Be with it. Without the story, it’s just energy, it’s not pain. Breathe. It’s okay, because magic is going to happen and every wound has an amazing gift. You want to heal and find out what that is.
• As you get out of your head and climb back into your body, breathe, and feel the energy of your wound, something amazing happens. You are giving yourself the love and attention you really needed when you were younger, the tender love that would have prevented the wound in the first place, and has the power to heal it now. Through the power of your awareness and your love, the energy will start to dissolve. The charge will lose some power and you will feel a shift. Now you are the one loving and healing, not the victim. 
• These charges contain a lot of energy that has been fed sometimes for many years, so repeat this process as necessary. It’s not how many times you fall down that counts, but how many times you get up. Each time you do, you dissolve it some more, and your healing, loving, present moment awareness increases. It may take time, or it may happen in an instant, but the awareness and love in your heart energy will set you free. 
• Ask yourself what you learned from the wounding? There is always a gift. Is it compassion? Strength? Love? A shift in perception? That is for you to discover and enjoy. For me, the ultimate gift is freedom! To be able to see the world as it is, and to see myself as I truly am.

Don’t blame yourself for having been hurt. You didn't cause it and no one deserves to be hurt, it is the inevitable shadow side of love. Feel the energy of the wound. Be brave, it's just energy. Get out of your head. Be compassionate with yourself and others. We are all suffering from wounds. Try to understand what led the people who hurt you to behave the way they did. If the person who hurt you was mentally ill, accept that person could not control their symptoms. If they were good to you and hurt you deeply but it wasn't intentional, it was a misunderstanding, try to forgive them, or reach acceptance and heal. Rethink what happened, and look at how healthy people behaved in the same situation. Put it into perspective, understand the situation. 

If these emotional wounds are caused by an alcoholic or addict in the family, visit a support group and share your experience. Like other support groups, these are very good for identifying what happened and accepting that you didn't deserve it, that their distorted ideas of life are wrong and dangerous to themselves, as much as to you. You didn't cause it and you couldn't do anything about it, or change them now.You can't go back to the past. You can only heal now, in the present moment. Resolve the conflict within yourself. Don't let it turn into a circular argument. Break the cycle. Develop some affirmations and get support if you need it to change your view of yourself, if you were told you were a loser, a failure, selfish, cruel, etc. Chances are the person who told you those things was projecting. Telling yourself how bad it is, and repeating the story of the wound only makes it worse with one MAJOR exception. If you are dealing with the wounds of prejudice, discrimination and other shared traumas, repeating the story with others who've shared the experience can lessen it.

Above all, it is time to let this go. 

It is no longer serving you, and when you find the courage to embrace your heart energy, explore the nature of your wounds you will look at your whole life differently, you will encounter the power of forgiveness which gives you a much higher voltage experience of love.