How you can heal your scars without closure or blame
The other day I noticed a bruise under one of my toenails. I thought it was interesting because I couldn’t remember stubbing my toe or dropping anything on my foot, but here it was a sign that an injury had occurred. And a pretty big sign it was!
Over the next few weeks the mystery plagued me every time I noticed it. I scanned my brain repeatedly for the lost memory that could explain the origin of the blood blister. But nope, nothing! The blister got smaller and moved up as my toenail grew out. But I never did come up with even a ‘maybe it was when…’ explanation.
Can you relate? Have you ever found a scar on your body and didn’t know where it came from. Or maybe you have scars that you once knew the stories to but have long since forgotten them.
Have you ever found a scar on your body and didn’t know where it came from?
What about your emotional scars. That was what kept coming to mind when I noticed my storyless wound. Hey I can’t help it. In my line of work my brain has been trained to find recovery analogies everywhere and I am not one to let a good analogy go to waste ?
As I was saying …. emotional wounds.
Better yet let’s call them emotional scars. We find them in our life all the time. Bitterness, resentments, bad habits, character defects, lingering hurts or things that we are just unreasonable over sensitive to… our scars wear many faces. But what makes them ‘scars’ is the same thing that caused me far too much preoccupation over a spot of blood under my toe.
Our scars wear many faces
The problem is not the problem. What drives us crazy is the lingering feeling that there HAS to be a reason for this scar! Why do I do this over and over again? What am I this way? Those are the questions that let us know we have found a storyless wound.
Sure somethings we can readily accept blame and responsibility for. ‘I ate a whole pint of ice cream because I have low self-control.’ ‘I blew up at my kid because I let my life get too full and I took it out on them.’ These are not scars. They are probably closer to open wounds which we are either bandaging up letting fester (some days both).
Storyless scars are something different. It is the nagging question, ‘Why do I keep choosing men that hurt me?’, ‘Why don’t I let people get close to me?’ or ‘Why do I keep sabotaging myself?’ These are scars so big you can’t help but think there HAS to be a reason for them. Or in other words- What happened me?
Why does it matter ‘what’ happened?
That’s a good question. Why does it matter what happened? Why did I NEED to know what happened to my dumb toe? Why do I need to know the source of emotions scars? Why do you?
The short answer to that question a complicated mix of blame and healing.
Blame. Yeah I know it sounds pretty depressing, but it’s not all bad. We actually look for something to blame so we can heal. Well maybe healing isn’t our subconscious goal. But feeling or doing better is. Our brain doesn’t really care if it is through blame or healing we just want relief.
Your brain is actually hard-wired to do this to keep you safe. When we assign blame we feel better (at least temporarily)- It’s not me it’s my upbringing, my genes, a repressed trauma… Mystery solved. It gives a story to our storyless wound and it gives us a sense of closure. It stops the nagging why? Why? WHY?
In some cases that closure alone may be enough to bring on healing in other cases it may be the start of pursuing healing. But none of that matters for the subject we are talking about today. Instead I have a hard truth to share with you
You don’t always get closure.
Sometimes you don’t ever get the story behind the scar.
Hope Junkie Hard Truthisms
So what does that mean? Is it hopeless? Do we just have to ‘deal with it’? Heck NO! We do the same thing we do with all the other brokenness we face -we work through it! We don’t have to know the source to get over it! Your healing can begin today. This reminds me of one of the core principles of Women in Motion:
You don’t have to where you are today tomorrow…
if you don’t want to be.
Women in Motion Principles
How to start working through your hurts is beyond the scope of this article. It is different for everyone and usually takes a variety of approaches: Finding coping tools, learning new skills, accepting you won’t get the full store, getting professional help, journaling, working through a book like the Motion Manual or something else.
What all of these actions represent is taking responsibility for your recovery and healing. That is one of my favorite things about the Women in Motion program. We are not victims of a disease, our past, our shortcomings, our DNA, our upbringing or anything else. Growth, healing and change is our choice to make even if we don’t know why we are hurting.
What storyless scars are walking around with today that you are ready to heal from? Be brave share below.
We are all in this together! People you know also have storyless wounds just like you. Just like me. Click the icons below to Post/Share this article and spread hope!
