You can accept or reject the way you are treated by other people, but until you heal the wounds of your past, you will continue to bleed. You can bandage the bleeding with food, with alcohol, with drugs, with work, with cigarettes, with sex, but eventually, it will all ooze through and stain your life. You must find the strength to open the wounds, stick your hands inside, pull out the core of the pain that is holding you in your past, the memories, and make peace with them." —Iyanla Vanzant
If you've been hurt in the past, that's going to affect your present and future, no question about it. The inner wound resulting from that traumatic experience will alter your feelings about yourself, drive your relationships with others, and affect your career. Iyanla Vanzant has given us a very graphic image of the way past trauma can affect us. The image of a gaping wound oozing blood and pus not a very pleasant one, to be sure, but certainly one that we can all identify with, and perhaps one that will give some of us the impetus to initiate a healing process. The time to do this is now, the only time we can ever take action.
Vanzant has listed for us the types of bandages that we tend to use to cover over our inner wounds: food, alcohol, drugs, work, cigarettes and sex. Be honest with yourself. Are you using any of these, or even a combination of them, to keep the pain at bay? If so, it's time to face the music.
While I was working, one of my bandages of choice was work, and for a long while, now, it's also been food. Now that I'm retired, I can no longer depend on work to keep me occupied during the day, and I've realized that, because I'm less physically active in retirement, the food is affecting my health and my weight now more than ever. It's time to get to the root of the problem. I am simply no longer willing to let the past spoil my present and poison my future.
As an ECKist, one of the things that I can do is called a Spiritual Exercise. The most basic one is singing HU (pronounced like the word "hue"). There are other exercises you can use in a book called The Spiritual Exercises of ECK, available on Amazon or directly from Eckankar. The great thing about these is that you don't have to be an ECKist to use the exercises successfully.
Iyanla Vanzant is one of several people who have worked with Oprah Winfrey to create a "Lifeclass" that is presented on the web. If you want to check this out, click on the link.
Other suggestions:
Google the words "emotional healing," and you will get a number of good hits to try, written by psychologists, clergy, and medical doctors. Click on a hit and go for it.
Buy yourself a lined notebook and paste color images that suggest healing to you on the cover of the notebook. Then start journaling every day for at least 20 minutes a day.
I wish you well on your journey of healing! :-)
I found using professional help and talking with a counselor very helpful as well.
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