Picking at our scars

Clumsy me

So I recently burned myself pretty bad with some boiling water. I have a tendency to be clumsy sometimes. My burn is finally healing. As it scabs over, there is that huge tendency to start picking at my scab. Even though I know I’m only reopening the wound at times, slowing down the healing process and leaving an even bigger scar than there should be, I continue to pick at it. Sound familiar?

This is something that we have all done at one point. As with most things in life, there is the bigger picture. We mentally do this to ourselves on a daily basis. We have all been through some type of abuse, neglect or trauma in our lives. Some worse than others. Yet we all experience pain. The only difference is that we all find different ways to cope.

“If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present”

Lao Tzu

Just let go

One of the most freeing experiences into mental wellness, is understanding we all have scars. But we must choose to stop reopening old wounds. Allowing these things to fully heal so that they may restore themselves naturally. Allowing to let go of past hurts and traumas can be such a fulfilling feeling. Knowing that you are not bound to who you used to be.

Knowing that everyday that you wake up and breathe, you have a new day to make new choices, that will lead you closer to mental freedom. To do over what you could not do yesterday. To reach that mental cloud nine where you can find true mental & physical peace.

Acceptance

I talk a lot about acceptance. I truly believe that this is the most important step. In any type of recovery. Acceptance is key. Once I accepted that it’s okay to not be okay, it began to lift a weight off of me.

One of my biggest problems and one of the reasons that my healing process took longer, was because I kept allowing these things to resurface, to begin reanalyzing what happened and why. Instead of accepting that these things happened, I can’t change them and allowing myself to feel the emotions I needed to feel and just accept them.

I hid the pain, the anger, and the hurt. I put a band aid over them and kept others from seeing my wounds. Yet, eventually it began to seep through and my wounds began to slowly show. Until I took the band aid off and allowed for it to be seen and to air out, that it could finally begin to truly heal.

Allowing others to see that I have a wound, that I hurt, that I feel pain just like everyone else. Being able to air out my story has allowed me to heal, while showing others that they can heal also.

Conclusion

And in the same way that we all feel pain, in the same way we can all heal. Allowing our scabs to close up and heal by sharing our wounds with one another leaves less of a scar on everyone. It allows for us to find healing naturally, so that we may be more empathetic to one another and work to build a stronger community that together can reach their mental cloud 9.