Healing Old Wounds
If you know people who have been through therapy, they will often say, “Therapy is hard work!” revisiting past wounds, broken relationships, imperfections, insecurities, and all the dark parts of life can be exhausting. At the same time, this practice can be integral to finding healthy functioning and being able to maximally enjoy life.
A helpful analogy is that of a broken bone. If someone quickly attends to the injury, they can reset the bone and it can heal (which always takes time). Once healed, it can return closely to previous functioning, or sometimes may even grow back stronger. But what happens when you break a bone and it cannot be treated? Your body will repair the bone as best it can, you will develop compensatory methods to maintain some level of functioning, and it will be recurrently painful. You will protect the injury from others for fear of pain and potential worsening of the condition. When someone finally treats it, they may need to rebreak it in order to set it and help it heal in a more functional way. This is incredibly painful. Then you must endure physical therapy, retraining your muscles and nervous system, and relearn how to function with everything in the right place. Once it has healed, you can begin moving toward growth and thriving—an exciting and time-consuming process. That can be how it feels to reopen past emotional woulds: painful, slow, and hard. This is one reason having a trained mental health provider walking through it with you is important.
In her book Wisdom from the Couch, psychoanalyst Dr. Jennifer Kunst (2014) lays out some of the most common themes that come up in therapy. She highlights topics such as unfairness, growth, acceptance, mortality, humility, and more with the beautiful and heartbreaking sides of each. For HSPs, these themes are the same but can resonate more deeply and take longer to process than for non-HSPs. Working through these themes involves a great deal of grief work and letting go of what could have been, past and present injustice, and the belief that you can change people. Enduring that work opens the door to deep beauty, connection, hope, and meaning in life.
As you let go of the things that you cannot change and of self-criticism that does not move you toward improvement or health, it opens up space for new thoughts and experiences to fill you up. When your mind is filled with digesting past events, it can prevent new experiences from settling in; it is important to find a balance between processing the old and experiencing the new. You likely have many cringeworthy memories that make you critical of yourself. These critical responses are helpful only insofar as they move you toward growth and learning. When they stop serving that function, it is time to pivot toward coping. Practices such as self-compassion, challenging and reframing negative thoughts, and gratitude exercises can be helpful, as can working with a therapist.
If you are ready to start working with someone toward healing and change, reach out today for a free 15-minute consult.
