Reading a blog by Anne Hishon ‘Feeling Vulnerable – Feeling me’, I found myself totally agreeing with her words: “When I make a choice to bury how I am truly feeling, I miss an opportunity to heal the hurts/wounds that are sitting in my body and that just does not make sense.”
I saw that in the past when I have been emotionally hurt I would put my tail between my legs and try to ignore it by hiding from the source of the pain.
With physical hurts, surface wounds and aches, I immediately attend to them, seek some form of medical attention, be it a band-aid, antiseptic, visit to the doctor, medical practitioner, dentist or whomever the professional is that I feel is the most suitable for the required treatment.
There is no way I would just let the hurt go uncared for, as I know this would leave the ailment to fester and make me feel very unwell. So, why wouldn’t I ‘treat’ myself in the same way with my emotional hurts and reactions?
I am now realising that I can attend to them immediately, as I would a physical hurt. The treatment I’ve discovered is to lovingly support myself, very gently, and stay with what I am feeling.
What I choose may be as simple as giving myself a little space to ponder and be with me, or speak to the person with whom the hurt has come up and open up to them about how I am feeling. It could be that I seek wise counsel from a friend or professional as required.
The main point is that I don’t turn it on myself and continue to compound the hurt by adding the fuel of uncertainty, self-doubt, self-criticism, resentment and anger toward myself or the other person.
We are so worth caring for, healing all our hurts, emotional or physical. There is no separateness to how we truly benefit from treating ourselves and each other when it comes to caring for our wellbeing.
We are precious beings that deserve the utmost love and attention at every moment, in whatever way is needed.
With a forever deepening appreciation to Serge Benhayon, his presentations and the sharing of life, love and wellbeing.
By Sandra Williamson, Brisbane Australia, Hairdresser
Further Reading:
We Are Not Our Hurts
Giving Power back to Love: Making the Choice to not be Dominated by Hurt
The Truth about Serge Benhayon 
We feel and are much lighter when we let go of our buried hurts.
In the past I would go to see practitioners from many modalities to deal with how I was feeling and yet it still wouldn’t clear the root cause of it all, I was still left with that turmoil or it would fix me temporarily. Back then the feelings of anger pervaded my life, and all along I thought I was angry at the world but at the end of the day it was really me that I was angry with, as I was allowing myself become lesser then I really was.
Since dealing with my emotional hurts with the support of the presentations from Serge Benhayon too, I have never looked back, life started to make sense now. I started to take on something I had never felt before, living my life from the point of my own truth and not of others.
Every hurt whether physical or emotional needs to be dealt with, with the appropriate person, by the purpose of not being fixed, but from the point of responsibility and commitment to the healing, then life is certainly different.
I agree Sandra, all of us … every single person is worth deeply caring for and healing all hurts both emotional or physical so that we can actually start to live and express the love of who we truly are ✨❤️
Yes, we all deserve love, and care, ‘We are precious beings that deserve the utmost love and attention at every moment, in whatever way is needed.’
When we appreciate in Truth we are appreciating our essences and thus we can hold and deepen the level of True-appreciation from what ever we feel in life so appreciation become the glue or substance that holds us between healing and also our moments of glory.
This blog has just inspired and prompted me to send an email to someone to express more of how I feel and to clear a hurt that I have been holding on to. Thank you so much Sandra – expressing this is so much more freeing than holding onto it and allowing it to fester in our body.
“The main point is that I don’t turn it on myself and continue to compound the hurt by adding the fuel of uncertainty, self-doubt, self-criticism, resentment and anger toward myself or the other person.” – When we lack self love and self care, the self bashing is a normal. But once we have learnt to love ourselves deeply the self bashing has no place and we can only say ‘oops’ and get on with more loving. This to me is true growth.
We have a tendency to annihilate ourselves when all the ingredients of self love, self worth are missing. When every worth is within us, then nothing can bring us down and we can only observe what is coming from the person and depersonalise it, instead of thinking the whole world is against us. Life is joyful when we live from this point onwards.
Self love, care and nurturing are really essential to support us to stop old patterns of self bashing.
Sandra, this is a wonderful analogy – why would we neglect ‘dressing’ our wounds be they physical or emotional in nature? This alone said out loud really does give us permission to love ourselves up more deeply.
I can really relate with this blog right now as yesterday a hurt came up. The beautifull thing was I literally could not ignore I had to look at it and get underneath it in order for it to clear, there is still a little bit more to go with this that I can feel in my body but I appreciate how much I am loving me in this process and long long a go I would have not acknowledged it, not wanted to feel it and therefore left it to fester instead. As you so rightly say we would not do this a physical wound so why on earth leave an energetic one?
“The main point is that I don’t turn it on myself and continue to compound the hurt by adding the fuel of uncertainty, self-doubt, self-criticism, resentment and anger toward myself or the other person.” This is when we really begin to hurt the body by adding more reactions to the hurt and letting it spiral out of control. I’ve been there myself many times so I appreciate all you have shared here to care for ourselves and treat ourselves preciously.
We can be so belittling of ourselves at times, when support, love, care, and understanding are what we really crave.
When we bury things do we take them to the grave? and maybe with an understanding of how we are to pass-over we can celebrate life! Then in our passing over phase of life we have a celebration and as they are still with us everyone can express, leaving no one with whom we do not feel complete. So our next incarnation will be free of any hurts as we get a chance to dig up the rubbish we have buried by openly expressing the Truth!
If we were taught that reincarnation is a fact then maybe we would change the way we live our lives? Maybe we would live a more responsible life knowing that how we live will impact the next life to come. So is it possible we don’t want to believe in reincarnation because everything would change and is it possible we don’t like responsibility because then we are accountable?
Absolutely True is reincarnation, and being responsible sets us up with good karma (accountability) to live our next life from our soul-full-essence.
This is a great approach Sandra, to honour our hurts and take appropriate action to support ourselves, similar to how we would immediately attend to a physical wound – “The treatment I’ve discovered is to lovingly support myself, very gently, and stay with what I am feeling.”
Treating emotional hurts with the same immediacy as a physical ailment is really such common sense, though it is like not being able to see one’s own nose.
Ha ha – hilarious jstewart! I love the obvious of the unseen – what a great analogy.
“When I make a choice to bury how I am truly feeling, I miss an opportunity to heal the hurts/wounds that are sitting in my body and that just does not make sense.” Every time we choose to bury more of our hurts our body has to deal with it, and eventually if we choose not to deal with them they expose themselves through illness and disease, well worth taking the time to heal our hurts.
It’s very true Sally, it could be that the more hurts we bury the more they accumulate in different parts of the body, including our organs, and place pressure and stress on the body.
Sally this is true if we know the hurt is there but many people are carrying hurts from past lives that they have no awareness of. So is it possible that it is these hurts that are buried deep into the energetic part of our body that then gets exposed as an illness or disease? I remember being taught at school that energy cannot be destroyed Human-beings are made of energy and so through reincarnation that energy comes back into a different body with all the imprints from its previous lives.
Hurts buried and left to fester inside is like having a raw infectious wound somewhere in the body, both of which could have consequences further down the line.
The first part of healing a hurt is admitting that it’s there.
Wise words Andrew – for how many times do we carry hurts that we pretend are not there or have never addressed? If we could see them as little post-its attached to us, we would be like billboards walking around, and yet how simple it is to sit with the hurt and acknowledge that it is there and then hold ourselves in love to feel it and let it go. So simple, and yet it feels so difficult initially and hence we ignore them or worse yet bury them deeper.
Attending to the emotional pains and reactions is equally important as the physical. I know if I don’t then my life gets very tense and ugly very quickly.
I like the idea of seeking counsel with no outcome just the choice to connect with someone in love.
The more understanding and awareness we can bring to our lives the less hurt we will feel, if we can understand that what another chooses while it may directly impact us does not mean that it was or is about us. If we can begin to read what is going on for people rather than living only considering ourselves I suspect that we would get hurt a lot less.
A beautiful self-help remedy to heal emotional hurts and reactions to not let them fester but treat them with the same prompt care as any physical hurt.
Dealing with emotional hurts as they arise asks us to be truly honest about what the hurt is and what truly caused the hurt in the first place; as we slowly unravel our feelings we are often surprised by how small the hurt actually is and yet how big we have made it.
By nature no one is ever their hurts. With this being the case it highlights how deeply damaging and extremely retarding it is not no only live with a hurt but be convinced that it is in fact who you are.
And the thing is, everyone of us, every single particle of humanity, has to heal, to be able to return, and eventually we all must return to who we truly are.
Although it sounds crazy I used to indulge in hurts! Like drag them on and on and on thinking that the hurt was me .. I was the hurt and that is all I could feel. A hurt is an energy that we allow in through a reaction it is not innately part of us and so easy to let go of. My lesson – to respond instead of react and when I do react to deal with this quickly so I no longer drag this on and on and on and on. With thanks to Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon in helping me to see and feel this and so much more, more clearly.
What would it be like if we could see our emotional hurts just the same way as the physical ones? Then not only would it be harder to ignore them but maybe we would start to actually deal with and address them an emotional hurt is just the same, if not worse, as a physical one. They still affect the body and our wellbeing in a harming and very detrimental way if left. However, this is not sci-fi stuff in fact it is super simple for us to do this using our clairsentience and having the willingness and honesty to go there and feel what is there rather than ignore, deny, hide or bury it .. and far more self-loving for us to do.
It takes a good amount of self love and of self worth to address emotional hurts.
So true – a non-physical hurt gets left unattended more often than the physical ones and we all know how so many of us carry our childhood hurt well into the adulthood, if not to our grave.
We deserve to treat ourselves with preciousness, ‘We are precious beings that deserve the utmost love and attention at every moment, in whatever way is needed.’
Thank you Sandra, this has so much common sense to it, especially how we attend to a cut or physical ailment immediately so why not an emotional hurt? “We are so worth caring for, healing all our hurts, emotional or physical.” Very true.
To not attend to a hurt and go into resentment, self-doubt, anger and judgement is like putting salt in an open wound or forcing yourself to carry something heavy with a broken arm. Probably no-one would even consider that, yet with emotional hurts it is exactly what we do.
To ignore the fact that we can get hurt in many more ways than just physical will make life very hard to understand as we are and this at times changes how we feel and act.
Sometimes the simple acknowledgement “I feel hurt” is all that is needed to begin that healing process. We can go on forever pretending that we don’t feel hurt and therefore burying even deeper the hurt we are feeling. They all start to compile then. Acknowledging that we feel hurt give us some needed breathing space.
I agree, Jennifer. Pretending that something doesn’t hurt or even worse shouldn’t hurt doesn’t start the healing process. Awareness, honesty and acceptance are crucial ingredients.
When we hold onto our hurts we limit the amount of love that we receive and we express to others. Learning to let our hurts go is a deeply healing experience that opens us up to feeling more of who we truly are.
Burying our hurts only allows them to fester all the more.
Very true, as we do care for a physical hurt we need to care for our emotional hurts as well as otherwise, they will wear us down just like physical hurts would do.
I loved the simplicity of what you shared Sandra, not to allow our emotional hurts to be buried or allowed to fester, but to treat ourselves with tenderness and love for the precious beings we all are.
In healing the non-physical wounds and hurts in the same way as we care for ourselves with physical ailments makes so much sense for healing the whole.
It is so important to understand that we are always worth being deeply taken care of, no matter what we have done or the situation we are in, deep care and love are the foundation for all wounds to heal.
Thank you Esther, it’s true, we don’t need to be conditional at all with our own self love.
Our hurts have never served in the long term and the sooner we get to realise they are causing issues in what ever-way the simpler they are to heal. When we realise our loveless ways have taken a foot-hold we can then look at the root cause and undress it so we can get to where we can heal that issues from the inside out. In being more Loving we are bringing a way of living that responds to situations so we do not take on ill energies in the first place.
Emotional hurts stay in our body affecting our future movements if we do nothing about them, or if we simply opt for finding relief. By doing either nothing of trying to cope via relief, we say yes to them and the come to live with us.
By not feeling our heart, and so being in a reaction to them in whatever way — we actually foster and make them more thick than they in truth are.. Once we feel our hurts, feeling the roots and having understanding for them, we can start letting go of them which gives us only more space to ourselves to truly be..
So very true Sandra – we would not leave a physical wound festering, why do we do the same with the unseen wounds?
Thinking about this more, I love how the physical body makes us feel a pain or discomfort. There is no getting away from it and in terms of feeling well I can outrightly say that it’s easy to feel. This blog beautifully illustrates to me that they are the same – emotional and physical hurts. I’m also understanding, with the reminder of this article, that we need to feel the hurt to heal it- whether the cut finger or a childhood hurt. If we pretended that we hadn’t cut ourselves and just walked around doing what we were doing before, then the pain would no doubt increase as we hurt the wounded area even more with the movements of whatever activity we were doing. It may even get infected or the wound would open even more. Either way we are not healing it if we don’t feel it.
When we are physically hurt, we stop immediately. We might sit down and give ourselves a moment to see if we are okay, to check the damage and to tend to ourselves. If it’s a cut then we stop immediately, drop what we are doing, find the source of the pain, check the damage, get the appropriate dressing/ plaster. We absolutely recoil from the thing that just hurt. How many times have we dropped that knife when we have cut ourselves chopping, jumped back from that table we just walked into. how vocal we can be about that hurt, If we stub a toe we might even hop around while shouting about the pain. I always want to tell someone about it, even days after.
No amount of theatre stage makeup could be used to show the wounds- bruises, cuts, burns, strains etc – that we inflict on ourselves every day. But we stay silent and we don’t show it. In fact we try our hardest to hide it.
This is a very beautiful and sensible way to look at our emotional hurts, they deserve as much attention as any physical wound, because as you describe, when they are not tended to they fester and become worse or might leave you with very hard and even more hurtful scars.
So true Esther, as all we have to do is look at what is happening in the world with mental issues including anxiety being on the rise. So could it be this is the festering of our “emotional hurts”?
I agree Sandra, we are worth caring for, and worth healing our hurts, whatever form they may be in.
In the past I have refused to acknowledge so many hurts to others and even to myself. As you say it is so much better to not let them fester, where there is always with the possibility of misunderstandings happening and further damage being done to relationships.
Hurts affect us far more than most realise, many times they are buried and not even obvious, it is paramount to heal and let go of our hurts.
Yes Anne we are so worth caring for and that can be in a multitude of different ways. I never used to see it as beneficial to feel my hurts. I would want to bury them, or pretend I did not feel them, or make it about the other person. Feeling them now gives me the opportunity to face what is truly going on and heal, so that I can bring closure to the issue.
Such a timely reminder for me that hurt won’t go away just by ignoring or burying it and pretending as if it is not there, it needs to be looked at and healed.
“We are precious beings that deserve the utmost love and attention at every moment, in whatever way is needed.” I so agree Sandra. Yet, like you I had a tendency to bury my emotional hurts, which of course returned at a later date to bite me. Nowadays I give myself the time to deeply feel the hurt, yet not wallow in them . Also to ask for support if needed – tho this has taken a long time to manifest! When we feel precious and worthy why wouldn’t we want to address everything that gets in the way of that?
I completely agree we are all very precious and deserve the utmost love in whatever way is need, whether it be confirmation, appreciation, rest or a kick up the backside metaphorically speaking.
No different to clothing or dirt that needs to be removed from a wound emotions can cover hurts. Being with my body and accepting the hurt/tension is here with me rather than crying, getting emotional, angry or judging what I feel there is space for the feeling to clear. And sharing it with another in a way that doesn’t want it to be covered in sympathy or ‘push through and ignore it’ type conversations is a great way of ‘airing out’ hurts
It can be much easier to tend to our seen physical hurts rather than our ‘unseen’ emotional hurts.
It is indeed very interesting to see the difference how we act on physical and emotional hurts. Does this say anything about our relationship with life? that we give precedence over the physical in the ignorance of the energetics that we live with too and in fact are the the forerunners of the physical. We are in ignorance of a reality to life and do not to take our responsibility to that level that belongs to that way of being, in fact we are rejecting it greatly.
As with physical wounds, it’s very hygienic and liberating to feel the healing of the emotional hurts. It’s worth to offer the same importance to all of them, as their healing has a clear impact in our true welbeing
Essentially this blog is about responsibility and taking care of ourselves and others to the level of truth-full energetic responsibility. We cannot expect another to fix an issue for us without us equally making the effort to do so ourselves. We can all be honest and deeply open to ourselves and how we are feeling and this is the first dose of true loving medicine we can take. Guaranteed to support in any condition. Maybe not the symptoms but certainly the underlying cause.
Thanks you Sandra, for the timely reminder that we ALL are precious, every singe one of us, all of humanity carries the spark of the divine, and everyone of us can return to the full fire of love
The choice to heal our hurts is life changing in so many ways – to honour and respect ourselves in this way deepens the relationship and connection within ourselves that always offers us a beautiful opportunity to evolve.
The greatest hurt is when we are not living the love and truth that we know we are. There needs to be deep understanding and patience in that, the process of this return is not instant, but the awareness of it and our willingness to take every step with love, is a step closer to being ourselves again.
Emotional pain often hurts so much more and for so much longer than physical pain that it really doesn’t make any sense that it is not cared about in the same way.
It’s a great question to ponder – why we don’t treat emotional hurts with as much care as we do physical ones. When asked in this way, there is no rational explanation and yet we have come up with a saying to help us dismiss and bury the hurt even more ‘what the eye doesn’t see the heart won’t grieve’. How damaging is that!
What a great analogy most of us wouldn’t walk around with a bleeding wound as it is messy, likely to get infected and we know that we will get weak and die if we keep losing blood – so why do we do that with emotional hurts which have similar consequences just we don’t always see them so clearly.
Thank you, Sandra for your reflection of what Healing our Hurts means and what it can truly offer us.. A full healing in self-integrity and relationships with all people (including ourselves).
As we have to learn to notice we have hurt our body physically: seeing the blood, feeling the pain etc., we also have to learn to notice when we feel hurt from experiences or what we see in our day. I noticed that when I am feeling not myself, can’t feel my lightness and joy, get reactive to others, am snacking around without feeling satisfied and start to beat myself up for everything I do whether it is good or wrong, I know I have felt hurt about something and let it in without clocking it. Nominating the right hurt is the only thing that then helps me feel myself and lightness again, the other unsupportive behaviours fade away naturally after that. It is pretty amazing.
Such great point Sandra which for me illustrates just how far we have descended to living in a world that only believes what we see. Yet in fact we do know and deeply sense that there is more to us than meet the eye. Bringing our attention and honesty to our emotional hurts when they arise, what lies underneath them is what will allow us to heal and let them go. As this will greatly free us to then live in a way that is far more real and truly reflective of who we in essence.
I agree totally with what the article is saying here and also reflecting on how we are, how I am at times with physically ‘hurts’ or injuries. I have watched myself and others push through the pain and not really give myself the direct attention I need. I still see this and whether it be a sharp pain, a scratch or an ongoing aliment many of us learn to live with things in place of taking more and more care of them. This is more evident as you get older, it would seem more things go wrong while at the same time maybe they are things that haven’t been dealt with at the time and now they are literally all catching up with you. I would say there would be a link between dealing or not dealing with actual physical hurts and deeper more energetic hurts. If we took the time to care for one then possibly it would be the same for the other.
When we choose to let go and heal our hurts, we are given an opportunity to really surrender and allow space for the new to present, for their to be clarity and openness to what is next.
Healing hurts and letting go of our pains is super important. We let go all that is simply holding us back from loving or harmony – which is extremely healthy I would say. Observing in my job as a nurse this is a very needed subject to address in life on physiological and physical level.
Thank you , Sandra, that is beautiful, a confirmation that we can heal our hurts by embracing our feelings, allowing them to be, accepting them , and appreciating you being you with them .. so eventually that which is not you, the hurt itself, you can let it go.. What a wonderful way of approaching life and your own choices & hurts. Very very cool, lots to work with, if we apply this wisdom into our lives.. Inspired by the works of Serge Benhayon.
“We are precious beings that deserve the utmost love and attention at every moment, in whatever way is needed”. How true your words Sandra. The question I ask myself is “how can I not care for this precious being in every way shape and form”.
From my Livingness I have felt many pains in my body and I can fully appreciate that pain is a marker of healing. As I appreciate what my body is sharing and the deeper my levels of healing have become the less physical pain I get in my body.
Sandra I often see myself and others hiding how we feel as if there is a right or wrong way to be, instead of accepting ourselves exactly as we are and in all that we feel. There seems to be a pressure to put on a certain face, be polite etc, but what we have ended up with is a not very real environment within human relationships and our relationship with ourselves, and a lot of human pressure cookers. Bottling up what’s really going on never works. Starting to be open with ourselves in a loving, gentle, and understanding way is a great start. I can’t help but feel that the sense of wrongness we can have about how we feel can lead to quite a rough, hard and neglectful attitude to our needs and at a time when we need our own love and care the most.
It is gorgeous to see and treat ourselves as precious beings who deserve the deep care and love you offer yourself. It is crazy that we would we deny ourselves this at our own detriment, when healing is only a loving choice away.
Our physically hurts tends to heal very quickly as our body is amazing at this but our emotionally hurts can stay with us for our whole life if we do not choose to heal from them. Our physical hurts heal naturally with love and care yet our emotional hurts requires us to take responsibility for the healing process which no one can do for us. It is ultimately up to us to embrace this responsibility to heal.
Thank you Sandra for the much needed reminder to deal with our hurts, instead of burying them, which in the long term end up being a physical illness if not dealt with. So long term it does us absolutely no good what so ever to not address our hurts, and it keeps life so much more simple.
Great blog Sandra – it is quite ironic that when we are physically hurt we seek treatment to heal the issue at hand but yet neglect to be equally attentive to our emotional hurts and reactions that we more often than not do not seek support to heal. As I write this I also cannot but wonder how much the accumulation of these unresolved hurts and reactions impact on our long term physical health too.
Staying with what we are feeling, especially when it comes to perceived hurts, is super important. If we don’t, we go into the reaction to the hurt and that, in my experience, doesn’t feel great at all and usually involves some behaviour directed at ourselves or others or both. And it buries the issue deeper into our body only to come up again, sooner or later, with the same intensity and pain.
Thank you Gabriele, it’s a great comment you have made about how staying with the hurt we feel breaks the cycle of it constantly being re-buried and reappearing.
What I noticed happens when I bury a hurt is I go into denial, pretend I wasn’t hurt as a form of protection, but this creates tension in my body and I then express in hardness and disconnection. This way of expressing hurts myself and others. But when I allowed myself to expose this and admit I was hurt and reacted, great healing can take place because through honesty and willingness to be transparent the tension dissipates from my body and I have an opportunity to learn and grow. What I realise when we hold onto our hurts and what follows is more hurts being hurled at others around us, and often to the people closest to us.
Its a great analogy that sandra has used here, to deal with hurts in such a way. She is spot on, would we ignore or delay dealing with a physical injury, so its important to also deal with any emotional injury promptly too.
Thank you Sandra for showing so clearly that any hurt, whether on our outer or inner self needs attention and dealing with to prevent it festering and causing further harm.
I love the loving care you give yourself Sandra, thank you.
It seems the worst part about any experience we have is judging and dismissing it out of hand. Whether you consider what you feel to be good or to be bad, doesn’t matter so much as the way we chuck them away. This locks us in a prison of our own making which as you beautifully show Sandra, need not exist at all if we just learn to observe.
Our emotional hurts need tending to as much as our physical ones. I like the way you describe being willing to look at the hurt and resolve it without indulging in it.
Sandra a great reminder not to add to our existing hurts, and to allow ourselves the space not to react when someone brings up an old hurt, or does something we allow to become another hurt. When we take a moment to breathe it then gives us the space to not react, but bring whatever is needed at that moment.
“We are precious beings that deserve the utmost love and attention at every moment, in whatever way is needed.” And that attention is our responsibility to initiate.
I like how you show Sandra that paying attention to how we’re feeling and being aware of hurts when they arise doesn’t mean that we have to indulge in them but can actually just be an opportunity to learn more about ourselves and how we relate to the world and to let go of emotions that may be weighing us down or shutting us off from others.
When we get hurt it is really important not to react or turn the hurt in on ourselves. ‘We are precious beings that deserve the utmost love and attention at every moment, in whatever way is needed.’ When we don’t allow the hurt to take hold, there is nowhere for the hurt to hold on to.
Our emotional hurts are what gets in between the connection with self and relationships with others, so the benefits are enormous when we heal hurts
Sandra, the main point you highlight, that you do not let your hurts escalate into further frustration or resentment but rather take the space to be healing with yourself first is such a great tool for us all. Compounding our hurts with more and more hurtful ways of expression and emotion are not only not the answer they really do only serve to cement further the disharmony we are already deeply feeling and to honour this in the first place for what it is makes for a great start.
To be faced with our hurts is uncomfortable and there is definitely a tendency of wanting to hide them as they expose that we have not allowed ourselves to be all that we are but have reduced ourselves to something less. If we then choose shame, comparison, doubt, critique, we are just staying in that reduced state rather than, what is suggested here, bringing us back to the loving stillness, holding ourselves with understanding.
“With physical hurts, surface wounds and aches, I immediately attend to them, seek some form of medical attention,” This is true for me too, but in the past I definitely did not give the same level of care to the hurts that I was carrying, which in turn remaining unhealed began to rule my life. I have finally learned to treat any hurt, no matter how big or how small, whether physical or emotional, with the same level of loving care, and what a wonderful difference that has made to my life and I am often amazed at how quickly and how easily the hurts are able to heal.
Thank you Sandra, you inspire me to express something to someone, something I was going to leave. As you say expressing how you feel with something or with someone is so important, otherwise it will be lingering there forever and might cause you to resent or dislike the person or maybe just choose to not connect with him or her any more. We all deserve to be expressed to so that we can learn and grow and heal whatever is there to be healed, however small we think it is.
A very cool parallel you have drawn upon here Sandra, thank you.
‘There is no way I would just let the (physical) hurt go uncared for, as I know this would leave the ailment to fester and make me feel very unwell. So, why wouldn’t I ‘treat’ myself in the same way with my emotional hurts and reactions?’ Great point Sandra.
If we really live this it would change the world “We are precious beings that deserve the utmost love and attention at every moment, in whatever way is needed.”
Totally agree, even if this was common in the awareness of mankind it would be HUGE – let alone if it was lived.
This is so true Sandra, observing that there is a difference in how we treat our physical hurts compared to our emotional hurts is fascinating. Yet the hurts we can’t physically see often gets neglected, which affects us in more ways than we think. If we don’t attend to them and allow healing to take place, they stay stuck in our body and worse, these undealt hurts can easily project onto others. This then perpetuates more hurts, acting like a ping pong ball effect, bouncing back and forth until we take the responsibility to heal our emotional hurts so we do not harm ourselves or others.
“We are so worth caring for…” – what a gorgeous reminder Sandra. That which we let fester, is that which we let rule us if we do not pause to take stock of the poison we have allowed ourselves to be filled with when we do not seek the source of our hurt.
One of the most powerful things that we can do is heal our hurts. When we do we discover that there is so much more to us than our hurts and that the potential we hold within us to be magnificent lives inside every single one of us and can be activated when we are not using all our energy to hold onto hurts.
The more we choose to heal and let go of hurts the more space we create for that which is love to constellate in our lives.
Great point Francisco, when feeling tenseness in my body I can feel I’m holding onto a hurt, any sense or connection to spaciousness or the magic of god can start to disappear, only because I’m choosing to hold onto something lesser than the love and lightness we truly come from.
So very true Sandra, wise words, that we wouldn’t allow a physical hurt to go untreated and fester, we would tend to them. So why do we allow our emotional hurts to go untreated, they can just get bigger .when buried and left.
It seems so easy to pretend our hurts aren’t there, we sometimes pretend so well we are convinced they aren’t there. But there they are, waiting to be see so they can have the light shone on them as they are dissolved.
Thanks Sandra, A great reminder to give ourselves space when needed and appreciate that we are love already, its just that we’ve placed a few things in the way.
Just as psychical wounds can fester if untreated so too can emotional wounds. Reading this blog and comments again brings back the simplicity that these non-psychical wounds can be treated and there are ways and means to do such. Thank you Sandra.
If we really think about it, human life is made to support hiding our emotional hurts, If we don’t want to deal with something there are lots of avenues to go where we want be challenged, but dealing with our emotions and what hurts us leaves us feeling very open and vulnerable but ultimately we are very sensitive and have to choose whether we will live in reaction or acceptance of what we are always feeling.
A beautiful unveiling of the fact that unseen hurts are just as real (and possibly more harmful) as physical ones – Thank you Sandra
Dealing with our issues is as essential as learning to read and write.
Our roundness of a personal and ability to freely engage with the world benefits enormously when past issues don’t taint our present movements.
It’s interesting to see how the majority of us say that we attend to physical hurts. However, I am not sure if this is just me and the people around me but I have witnessed a lot of numbing of physical pains and wounds. If a man injures himself physically, the first reaction is “man up, it’s not that bad”. Women constantly suppress their pains to come accros as stronger and more powerful. So my question is, if we as a society so easily repress the physical, how on earth are we to expect to heal the non physical…
It is true that is almost a default program to go into managing life when we feel hurt, that which will make us feel better without taking responsibility and dealing with the root cause which is to feel it, process it and let it go.
“We are so worth caring for, healing all our hurts, emotional or physical.” I am really learning to stay with a hurt when it comes up and feel deeper into the cause. I am now more aware in my body as I can feel anxiousness and tension flagging to me something is wrong. Before I use to cover it up with being busy.
Brilliant blog Sandra. That we care for our physical wounds far more than our emotional wounds and hurts is making me wonder if this could well be a major contributing influence on our societies statistical rise of anxiety, depression and other mental health issues. Perhaps this is something for us all to ponder on.
Thank you Sandra. I know I have tried to hide my emotional hurts many times and this really is absurd when I consider that I take care of my physical hurts. It feels very freeing to give myself permission to simply feel what I am feeling and support myself when an emotional hurt arises.
‘We are so worth caring for, healing all our hurts, emotional or physical.’ Absolutely, we are all worth caring and honouring ourselves right to the very core.
Sometimes I think as a human race we give our hurts way too much power, what if we simply addressed them and took responsibility for them and moved forward initiating a more loving way of living?
‘The treatment I’ve discovered is to lovingly support myself, very gently, and stay with what I am feeling.’ It feels for me that I take myself lovingly by the hand, not judging (which is not always easy)and to be there for myself, to feel what I need and to know I am responsible for healing the hurt and I am fully equipped to do so.
So true Sandra, we are worth caring for in every way, in every moment. And that is true medicine, how we live every day and take care for ourselves.
The more we connect to what is false and let it go, the greater the space there is to fill it with all that is True.
Deeply accepting ourselves and taking responsibility for our part allows us to see everything in perspective. There is no room for blame or victimhood when we clearly see each situation for what it is and the investment that we had in it.
Tending to our every hurt as you say, enables them to be let go of and for us to no longer carry them with us. How freeing this is considering in many cases, we have been lugging them around with us for eons.
Healing our hurts brings forever greater freedom and ease; it stops the reactivity which is otherwise always ready to pounce on anything and anyone who might have stirred up an old wound,
So true Gabriele, there is a freedom and joy felt in the body when we let go of hurts.
Until I met Serge Benhayon I continued to accumulate hurts that were not dealt with. Each new hurt would layer upon the last hurt and I would carry these hurts everywhere I go. It is so simple to sit with and feel hurts rather than bury them deep within in just the same was as it is to heal an external hurt. Both need loving attention and care.
I find when I allow myself to stay with and feel my hurts so much more is revealed and through the revelations I feel lighter and empowered to deal with whatever has come up.
The more I am willing to heal my hurts the deeper the commitment that is required. There is a is always the call to be holding greater love and understanding for ourselves and each other. Appreciation of everyone, myself included in our essence is a true way to allow hurts to pass on by without attaching and being identified by them, as I understand more and more hurts are but a fleeting illusionary picture that are exposed.
This is gorgeous Sandra. I know that I can easily let go of issues when I appreciate another person in full and this shows me how important it is to appreciate myself as most of my emotional hurts have arisen from the way I treat myself.
Healing hurts is simple. It just requires an enormous amount of responsibility.
It makes complete sense to treat our emotional hurts in the same way we do our physical hurts otherwise they are easily buried or overridden, though not gone forever as they may arise in the form of a physical ailment later. All aspects of ourselves need equal attention. Thank you Sandra for presenting this way of being with ourselves 🙂
We sure deserve the utmost love and attention, we are precious. Why should we not start with looking after ourselves first, tending to both emotional hurts as well as physical hurts?
The tending of a physical hurt with an emotional hurt is a great analogy and one I needed to hear! Thanks…no festering.
‘We are precious beings that deserve the utmost love and attention at every moment, in whatever way is needed.’ Truly feeling how precious we are requires the commitment to letting go of what we are not.
Sandra – I love and agree with what you share here ‘we are so worth caring for’ – not only ourselves but each other. It is so healing to not hold ourselves or others in hurts or behaviours, but rather to appreciate each other for who we are first and foremost. And as you say – we get cut – we feel it instantly, but the emotional hurt is what we don’t bring to the surface. To start to talk about this is huge and can start to help us let go of any baggage we might try to hold onto that is not actually us.
It is a good point how you say that we care for a physical hurt yet do not always pay the same attention and care to an emotional hurt. This is something I had not considered before in this way – thank you Sandra.
Thank you Sandra, I agree our hurts need to be tended to and cleared so we are not clouding our every movement, our interactions with others, how we view the world and how we conduct our relationships with them.
If you could physically see the emotional wounds we impose upon each other in society, then there would be the frank admission that society is continually at war – only it is a war we do not see.
I love what yo have shared here Sandra – it is so true that when we bump ourselves, cut ourselves or break a bone etc. we often pay attention to that and put on a bandaid and do what is needed to address the situation. However, when it comes to our emotional hurts or our feelings being hurt we often struggle to really address this! And yet it is just as important a part of our wellbeing!
It is our responsibility to work on healing our hurts, as our hurts effect others as well as ourselves. As we are healing the hurts we are deepening our love.
Thank you Sandra for sharing the importance of healing our hurts, this great line really stood out for me ‘The main point is that I don’t turn it on myself and continue to compound the hurt by adding the fuel of uncertainty, self-doubt, self-criticism, resentment and anger toward myself or the other person.’ So true when we abandon ourselves in this way all sorts of unloving thoughts can enter and complicate things. Giving ourselves the permission to feel our hurts with deep care and love and without the judgement allows us the space to truly heal.
You make a really great observation about the discrepancy that exists – because we choose it that way – between attending to our physical hurts yet burying emotional ones. And yet this is an avoidance that hurts us way more deeply, particularly over time when our unexpressed emotions remain stuck in the body with no outlet but through eventual illness and disease. We think we are our hurts but we’re not. We’re just the carriers, letting them play out once we choose not to express them and learn from them.
Healing our hurts require us to observe them rather than react to them. We put up walls thinking they protect us, but they are harmful to ourselves and those around us, letting this protection go is a first step in healing.
What has come up for me recently over healing hurts, is something very old and deep. I realised that when I have felt some-one has hurt me deeply, I immediately go into protection, and I close off from that person (as they might hurt me again!). Underneath that lies the attitude; now that you have hurt me, you don’t deserve my love….or to be in my life, thus I keep them at a safe distance. I can feel as I write this, that the only person I am hurting here is me, if I close my heart to just one person, I am closing my heart to everyone.
I have come to realize without a shadow of a doubt that hurts are not who I am and whenever I have felt a hurt in my body and let it go it has shown me that it was something I had created. It is such an illusion to think that who we are is based on our hurts.
Anne I have to repeat your line here as it is so so true and we as a world wide society are no where near living to the level of tenderness we know is true. Blogs like this allow us let go of protection and truly deal with our hurts. “We are precious beings that deserve the utmost love and attention at every moment, in whatever way is needed.”
Sandra, it is so true that we treat our physical hurts differently to healing other emotional hurts in our body. And yet all our hurts are connected for when we bury our emotional hurts they will eventually be manifested as physical symptoms in our body so really we need to be treating our emotional hurts with more love and understanding to break this cycle.
This is absolutely true Ann, and is my experience. I have much pain in my lower right leg at the moment and have been a week on medication without much improvement. In a conversation with a friend where I shared and released some emotions over a certain relationship in my life, my leg felt lighter, and I could walk easier. But I am still holding onto this old pattern of mine, that once someone has hurt me, they don’t get a second chance…..which feels very hard and is a reflection of the hardness and the rigidness in my leg! Time to let this go, as clearly it hurts my body.
Healing our hurts and all that goes with them, letting go of the protection and reaction, enables us to connect more deeply and know who we truly are in our fullness.
It is very self honouring to let ourself feel the hurt and not choose to bury it. I feel very strongly that it is about allowing ourself to not be perfect and feel that we do get hurt. And it is so much easier to just let it go from the moment that it happens than waiting and let it affect our further life.
Wow – ‘With physical hurts, surface wounds and aches, I immediately attend to them, seek some form of medical attention’ – that’s such a great point, you would never leave a gaping wound unattended, so why leave any kind of hurt uncared for?
Healing our hurts is the most evolving thing we can do for ourselves. This has enabled me to move beyond living emotionally and protected, also built tolerance, love and understanding not only for me, but for all. This is forever unfolding.
Beautifully said Sandra, I first heard the saying ‘heal our hurts’ from Serge Benhayon and how important this was to truly heal and move forward. I didn’t quite know what this meant initially until circumstances in my life gave me a stop where I needed to look at my hurts and address them and to eventually let them go. This process has been incredibly power-full and has transformed my life in many ways. Blogs such as these are a great support and inspire others to bring more understanding, love and appreciation to ourselves in each moment, thank you for your open and honest sharing.
This is a beautiful article Sandra, so simply put and it makes so much common sense. Why would we treat hurts that are unseen any differently than those that are on the physical level.. That in itself is a wider question of course because as a society en masse we tend to dismiss what is unseen and even more so what we feel. When I honour how I feel and express this to myself and to others, not squashing those feelings down I feel how healing this is for me and for others — for I would say that one of our greatest collective hurts is not letting each other truly in, not standing real and unmasked in front of the other without any fear of being judged or dismissed.
And what is being written here is so at odds with what we learn throughout our lives that it behoves us , when we start to realize this deep and abiding truth, to live it in such a way that will inspire others to understand their own precious.
I love your “treatment” Sandra to lovingly support myself and stay with the feeling when an emotional hurt arises. Thank you for sharing.
Our ability to observe and hence truly understand that which hurts us, can only be done if we don’t react to this hurt by identifying with the pain that we feel. For the reaction exists to prevent us digging deeper in order to peer behind the wall we have erected to safeguard ourselves from this hurt. This wall is an illusion for it is not there to stop others hurting us, it is there to stop us healing the hurt behind it. Thus why it has been said that our greatest tool in arising out of the loveless way of living we have encased ourselves in, is to ‘know thyself’. For by knowing our true self (Soul), we instantly know God and therefore all we have put in place to stop us connecting to him.
The illusionary wall of protection is very worth ‘getting to know’ and honestly understand that it is us who put it up in the first place. Hurts can be understood as learning, growing, getting to know our true selves and a discarding of what ever is not us. We don’t need protection for this we gentleness and loving understanding then we have opening for healing if we allow it.
Thank you Liane, awesomely expressed. Which is why in that deep inner connection nothing appears as a problem or an issue and all hurts are seen for the little prickly bobbles that they are which can so simply and easily be picked off and chucked away through our own choice.
I used to always bury my hurts by not being honest that they even existed in the first place and then burying them and pretending that they didn’t exist. It didn’t work as all I ended up with was a very hurt me, with layers and layers of hurt that to see each hurt was just too much…and I then thought the hurt was me and I became identified with them all.
It has been great learning from Serge Benhayon and many of the Esoteric therapy practitioners that the hurt, the sadness or even anger is not actually me but just an emotion that I am feeling and is running through me.
The minute I am honest and identify this, it no longer has a hold on me and I am free. I am not the hurt, it is just something that I am working on.
An important point comes to mind when reading this Sandra. We may be hurt from the situation before us but what actually hurts us more is the constant pounding of self-doubt, self-loathing, distrust and all the other emotions we go into out of reaction to what happened. It keeps running around and around and it is our behaviours/movements that perpetuate it
So true Liane our hurts stop us healing. Hurts don’t protect us this is a great illusion we need to see and feel for ourselves. When we do we can choose what heals and offers us the choice to re-connect to our true selves. With this we connect to All with a deeper loving awareness and understanding.
Our ability to observe and hence truly understand that which hurts us, can only be done if we don’t react to this hurt and identify with the pain that we feel. For the reaction exists to prevent us digging deeper in order to peer behind the wall we have erected to safeguard ourselves from this hurt. This wall is an illusion for it is not there to stop others hurting us, it is there to stop us healing the hurt behind it. Thus why it has been said that our greatest tool in arising out of the loveless way of living we have encased ourselves in is to ‘know thyself’. For by knowing our true self (Soul), we instantly know God and therefore all we have put in place to stop us connecting to him.
Emotional hurts deserve our love and attention too, ‘I am now realising that I can attend to them immediately, as I would a physical hurt. The treatment I’ve discovered is to lovingly support myself, very gently, and stay with what I am feeling.’
‘We are precious beings that deserve the utmost love and attention at every moment, in whatever way is needed.’ Absolutely, we deserve to be treated with love, care and tenderness at all times.
Without a doubt emotional hurts need to be addressed with the same level of attention as physical ones. The following is such a sound and practical approach by Sandra that is truly supportive to heal the hurts, “The main point is that I don’t turn it on myself and continue to compound the hurt by adding the fuel of uncertainty, self-doubt, self-criticism, resentment and anger toward myself or the other person.”
True Sandra, as we deserve the absolute best – the best care, the greatest bunch of love, and the greatest love for thyself. And so , we must ask ourselves the question: Is there a lack of love towards myself in my life? And so, is this dis-ease in my body, then later carried out in my body? For example by showing me through illness and disease?
Yes well rapped up, but to note that the best care can only be found in one’s heart…
And that by giving ourselves this love back – we are able to offer others the same level of love – we are giving ourselves. That is a journey worth taking. As I am a student of The Way of The Livingness , every single day, which leads me to this exact same thing. Love for thyself. As lacking it in every step we take is a hurt for all.
When I read the first paragraph, I started to understand that a medical condition comes with a certain hurt we have experienced and we have lived from thereafter. Either trying to numb it away or dissolve in it. This then reveals to us, and makes sense why we have certain problems and our neighbour for instance has not.
And.. that when illness and disease is rising up in our bodies, we should actually embrace it, and embrace the opportunity to heal what has brought us to that point.
And that we must seek deeper within ourselves, to unravel why our health has come so far to the point of resorting into illness and disease in our own bodies. It is then no hard play, but actually a true wonderment of how much power we have in our hands to make choices that either bring us good health or not. And so can we heal the hurts, we might at first did not want or knew how to deal with. Therefore letting go can be our greatest form of healing, when we truly understand our responsibility of what is behind our choices.
What I am learning is that by only truly feeling our hurts, and going to a deeper level, and not masking over them, will we be truly able to heal and let them go, otherwise we are masking them over and covering them with a bandaid. It takes space, no pressure and a deep tenderness, willingness, love and care for all to do this.
” by hiding from the source of the pain.” I have often this, but it doesn’t work. I am learning it’s much better to be gentle and tender with myself, and honour this, rather than harden or try and ‘push’ being the operative word, the pain away. It’s way more than okay to feel and be vulnerable and fragile and allow other people to feel this.
I love your words Sandra “We are so worth caring for, healing all our hurts, emotional or physical.” In fact I feel a tear well up as what you say is so true and should be absolutely natural to us all, unfortunately society is not there yet and is still lost in self abuse yet with Universal Medicine and blogs like these humanity can see there is another way, a way that is indeed our true way, a way that is about true healing. As you say – we are so worth caring for- deeply so.
It is absolutely natural to us all to be tender and caring. I know the feeling of having tears when people showed me tenderness in the past. I recognised but wasn’t used to it. These days it is very different – I tear up when I’m not this to and for myself.
True well-being is the ability to deeply care for the being within our body, as well as the body that enhouses it. This means that when something presents physically, we need to look at what happened energetically that allowed this hurt to precipitate into the physical ailment. By dealing with our hurts, we prevent them from presenting physically. And so, if we are serious about ‘prevention being better than the cure’, this is where we need to be looking. The future of our health as a humanity depends on it.
sure is Brendan. The understanding, however then brings with it the responsibility and until we are ready to be responsible we shy away from the understanding.
They sure do follow you. I can attest for that. I have run from a hurt for the last 20 years, and have found that the hurt now meets me at the running point. Waiting for me. Time to deal with this hurt
Heidi this also makes me realise that once a hurt is truly dealt with, cleared and no longer able to affect us then it will reveal a strength and power in us that has been waiting to released and claimed once again. When we hold on to hurts we prevent access to a much deeper love and expression. This understanding alone makes me inspired to be open and willing to living without these hurts.
This is one of those blogs I could read over and over again. Each time I read it I feel my heart expand. Reading it today, this touched me ‘We are so worth caring for, healing all our hurts, emotional or physical. There is no separateness to how we truly benefit from treating ourselves and each other when it comes to caring for our wellbeing.’ Beautiful and so true.
Staying with our hurts and feeling into them with the focus being on ourselves and exploring the dynamic and our role in the scenario is key in resolving our hurts. Feeling into the picture I created as a result of my ideals and beliefs I formed to cushion the pain of my hurts and letting it go is my responsibility.
This is an amazing blog bringing understanding and simplicity to our lives with a wisdom and honesty of what is going on. I love the way you show how simple it is if we make the choice from a knowing that healing our hurts is essential to moving on with clarity and love as the quality needed in our life.
This is beautiful Sandra. It is a good reminder that self-care includes looking after the way we feel and is not just a physical act.
“We are so worth caring for..”. We totally are Sandra and often it is not until we start the caring for ourselves that we realise that we either haven’t been or there is more ways to care even deeper than before.
Yes Matthew, we have to start with ourselves to see that, perhaps, our normal, is not normal and there is a deep well of love awaiting us.
Healing our hurts is a responsibility that we all have for to think that our hurts only affect us is mistaken – as long as we carry them around with us unresolved they will affect how we are with others too..
They undoubtedly affect others Fiona, this is the depth that we need to take responsibility.
So true and the bit we have to take responsibility for is that we choose to be unaware of this fact thereby giving permission to ourselves to behave badly with others but justify it because we have been hurt. Too often the situations are unrelated but there is a trigger and the unresolved hurt and reaction come racing the the surface.
This is so true Fiona, we need to understand that walking around carrying our hurts not only taints how we see and interact with the world but also creates a hardness in our bodies in order to not feel the devastation from not being the love that we innately are.
You make me wonder why we do let emotional hurts fester when we don’t approach physical hurts in the same way. It seems there is a hierarchy of hurt and the felt but unseen is more grubby and complicated so it goes in the too hard basket. I suspect it has enabled me to feel a victim of circumstance for many years. Much easier to blame someone else than to consider I had a choice, but I will keep an eye, ear and nose out for it now!
We really do know in our bodies whether physical or emotional hurt, that when we don’t heal them, they have a tendency to grow. In the past, it felt a lot easier for me to address a physical hurt but not look at other, simply hoping they would go away. I realise now that burying any hurt does not address it, it feels so much better to get it sorted because otherwise it is felt and carried along in the body with everything we do.
so true Gill, not only does it feel better it clears the way for healing of other buried hurts.
It’s amazing Sandra that we don’t place the same level of importance on emotional wounds as we do the physical even though they are often more painful. Growing up I often said that I would rather have a broken bone than experience any form of emotional pain – it’s just unfortunate that in society most don’t yet know how to heal their hurts which is why Universal Medicine and the tools it offers are so invaluable.
“We are precious beings that deserve the utmost love and attention at every moment, in whatever way is needed.” To appreciate this beautiful and important sentence is key. Understanding that we deserve love every second of every day is something we are not taught, which is no wonder why there is so much lovelessness in our lives, as we expect nothing more.
In the past I put hurts aside to deal with later. I did this because I did not trust my reactions and I did not give the way I felt credibility. Now everything has changed. I trust what I feel and know what I feel is true. Now I know that hurts need to be addressed when they happen and I know how important it is to do. I allow space for this and by allowing this I also allow this for others. This can be intense but so much more worth it than carrying this tension around in my body.
Thanks Amanda for sharing trusting and knowing what you feel is true. This is such an important part of supporting ourselves when hurts do come up. The not dismissing ourselves or being dismissed by another allows us the space and grace to discern what it is we are feeling.
This is a great point Sandra… exposing how we treat emotional hurts differently to physical hurts, when in reality, it is so obvious they both need as much attention as each other. Both will fester if left unattended – it’s just that the emotional hurts are not so obviously seen but they can certainly be felt by us and by others. We can only ignore and or avoid them but our bodies feel the impact of our hurts every day until they are truly healed.
“We are precious beings that deserve the utmost love and attention at every moment, in whatever way is needed.” We are indeed precious, and it is for each one of us to give ourselves those loving details in every moment, and the more consistent we are, the more love there is for ourselves and for others.
The treatment I’ve discovered is to lovingly support myself, very gently, and stay with what I am feeling.
Yes, this is key Sandra isn’t it, to stay with what we are feeling so that we get to fully feel in our bodies what is and what is not. I can too easily momentarily visit how I am feeling and then quickly move on, not getting the full benefit and honouring of all that I am feeling and the healing that can come from that.
It’s the not realizing what we are walking around with buried hurts that I found was keeping me stuck in a repetitious cycle. If we can support anyone at any age to attend to a hurt in the moment we are offering pure gold. Imagine if all children are ‘treated’ in this way. Yah what a difference they will live when growing up, they wont keep falling into the same old holes and traps.
Giving ourselves space to feel, heal and understand ourselves lovingly is the most beautiful gift we can give ourselves in life with an openness, honesty and simplicity. A beautiful blog, full of wisdom – thank you.
Beautifully said Tricia… the simplicity of being open and honest can open so many doors, bring so much love, healing and magic in life – truly a gift for us all.
Along with seeking perfection in everything we live and do.
Most definitely Brendan. And Universal Medicine has been the key for me to being able to truly deal my hurts simply because I am learning what life is all about. Understanding gives us the space and opportunity to respond rather then react and to feel rather then bury…
I love how you describe the way we tend to physical hurts yet we tend to leave and bury the emotional ones. Addressing all of our hurts immediately and equally and with the love and care we deserve makes for a whole new experience of health and wellbeing. Thank you Sandra.
I agree with you Sara, Sandra has beautifully described the difference between tending to our physical needs and our emotional hurts. Being open to addressing our hurts as they arise, lovingly and tenderly, is certainly the answer to living a healthy, joy-filled, loving purposeful life; along with appreciating all that we truly are.
I think that is very possible Brendan. Could it be that hurts can also be caused by our own expectations – when we have an ideal of how a situation will play out and then when it does it’s different to the image in our heads, thus resulting in feelings of disappointment and let down.
Love that you have brought in our own expectations here Susie, when we have expectations of a situation or another we are ultimatly setting ourselves up to fail. I can see on refection how imposing it is when I want a person to behaviour in a certain way. Expectation leaves no room for understanding.
Absolutely Samantha. No matter how much we try to shape a situation like our expectations, it will never meet the mark and we will always be left disappointed. This is how images, ideals and beliefs work.
I agree Susie, so the more we let go of expectations and images the better.
Yes very possible Brendan. Understanding brings truth and in truth there isn’t space for mis-understandings that lead to reactions that can lead to hurts.
I so agree Nicole, when we don’t want to feel our hurts, they do follow us where we go. Into one relationship or another, a partner, a friendship, family, work colleagues. But if we do feel our hurts, then relationships can evolve, be supportive and loving and allow for growth on all levels.
Love this Raegankcairney it offers us the opportunity to see the true gift in healing our hurts is the chance to grow, evolve and deepen our connection to self and others.
I know for me as I grew up I learnt to hide my hurts. I was still very aware that when another person rejected me, it still hurt but there was no way I was going to show it. Exit vulnerability stage right! Enter protectiveness and guardedness which prevents any real connection in relationships. In the last few years I have come to realise that I have fooled myself into thinking I am stronger by not showing or admitting that I feel hurt and that I am denying myself my natural ability to heal it by doing this and also denying myself of the level of connection and intimacy that I want in all my relationships.
Great point Andrewmooney26, when we deny ourselves the opportunity to feel our hurts we cut off our ability to deepen our connection and intimacy with others. So often in my life I have simply run, shut down and cut out anything or anyone that I felt had ‘hurt’ me. What I am learning to live is to feel the hurt and not see it as me but as a choice I am making to seperate or shut down from another. I have chosen it, but I can also make another choice and in that am learning that looking at these hurts as opportunities to grow actually does allow our connections with others to become more intimate, honest and true.
What I am learning to live is to feel the hurt and not see it as me but as a choice I am making to seperate or shut down from another. I have chosen it, but I can also make another choice. Jade, your response here was absolutely perfect for me and stood out like it was bolded on the page. Our soul is asking us to make one choice and that is to reconnect back to it, so I see it’s not another choice, it’s the only choice to make. We are love and we do know it, so let’s move in a way that confirms we are divine. After all, there is only love or not and our movements confirm us or not.
Thank you Julie for highlighting that we are love and our movements confirm this – it is our choice every moment and every moment we can re-choose, it is truly the simplest gift in the universe.
True strength comes from our willingness to be vulnerable and intimate with ourselves and others.
How true Sara, the willingness to feel and be vulnerable and intimate with ourselves and others.
My feeling is that the inner emotional hurt of rejection of who we are hurts far more than any physical bump or scrape and we do not like to admit that we have been hurt by that rejection.
I agree, Andrew. Rejection is something that hurts us deeply, but it is something that we do not want to admit we feel. I have found that this is especially true for myself and other men as well, but it is in no way only felt by men.
Hear hear to what you share here, and yes, rejection does hurt us deeply.
It’s seems like the fact that there isn’t visual proof then perhaps it doesn’t exist. We possible aren’t even believed because it can’t be seen by another. We have tunneled ourselves in to a culture of needing visual proof. What about our ability to trust of energetic sense – why don’t we use this inner-sight and trust it more?
We can only feel rejected by another if we have rejected ourselves first. Knowing who we are in full erases any doubt that may arise by another’s dismissal of the truth. Our greatest pain is turning away from the love we are. If this is not healed then we will forever feel rejected by a world that is not set up to support us. This is the perfect recipe for the wayward spirit within us that seeks emotion to confirm our turning away from all the love we are.
I agree Liane the inner hurt of rejection begins with us rejecting ourselves and who we truly are, which sets us up to feel rejected by the world.
What a great analogy to compare our ‘internal’ emotional hurts with our ‘external’ physical hurts. It is indeed true that we would not leave an outer physical injury unattended in the same way we do with our emotional hurts.
I agree andrewmooney26, great analogy and one that I will come back to often as a reminder…
I love what you are recommending as a response to emotional hurt “I am now realising that I can attend to them immediately, as I would a physical hurt. The treatment I’ve discovered is to lovingly support myself, very gently, and stay with what I am feeling.” Such a loving and responsible way to be in life.
Attending a hurt immediately as you would any type of hurt is essential to healing. Or else it festers and the wound remains uncared for.
Yes it does Kathryn and in my experience if I leave a hurt unattended to, it remains in my body and can really effect how I respond or react to people or other situations thereafter, therefore creating more hurt for me and for those around me. So it does feel very important to deal with a hurt straight away.
What I have learned from Serge Benhayon is that healing our hurts is possible. This may sound inane, but it is huge considering we live in a world that tells us we will never heal from many things, like some addictions or certain experience. To be open to the possibility of healing supported me to override those beliefs that say it is not, and actually heal some childhood hurts.
If we acknowledged the true effects of emotional pain, we would be more attentive to what is happening on the internet these days, and would treat cyber abuse more seriously than we do now.
Absolutely, well said Adam.
It’s back to that old saying ‘sticks and stones may break my bones but your words will never hurt me’
When did we decide this? Cyber abuse is hurting so many which essentially affects us all. And what does this say about the state of our society as a whole?
What a great point you make around how we are with physical hurts and wounds. When we have emotional hurts we don’t want to look at them, understand and heal them. We think that if we just bury them or just leave them, that they will be healed, but that is not the case. We do try to avoid them, which doesn’t make sense. If we do feel them when they come up, and deal with them like we would a physical hurt, we would have a very different society.
I loved the simplicity and profoundness of what you have shared Sandra. I had never seen the connection between physical hurts and emotional hurts in the way you have presented. They are the same yet we treat them very differently. It seems that we consider it ok to care for a physical hurt yet we tend to avoid and hide our inner hurts which can only fester when left unaddressed.
I found that the best way to heal and deal with hurt is to actually feel and acknowledge there is hurt. With physical pain this is a little more obvious than with emotional pain but it keeps amazing me that when I allow myself to feel the hurt it eases and the way to heal in becomes clear, which mostly is to feel my heart and love for myself and for others.
Yes Mary, these effects of emotional hurts are deeply underestimated in the world. If we would nurture ourselves more and honour that we feel hurt by a situation there would be much less reactions, arguments and disharmony in our interactions with others.
Gorgeous comment Lieke ‘when I allow myself to feel the hurt it eases and the way to heal it becomes clear, which mostly is to feel my heart and love for myself and for others.’ We can make it all so complicated in our search for solutions yet the truth as you share is so much simpler.
“What i realised though, is that you can’t actually run from your hurts.” – Yes great point! And I would add that we don’t need to. Everything we need to deal with them and let them go is within us we just need to be willing to see what’s there to be seen.
Yes indeed Fiona – the hurts are not an enemy but rather an opportunity for deeper self awareness and self development. It is an opportunity to learn and grow on a personal level.
Yes, so when they come up, they are in a way a blessing, because we now have the opportunity to heal them.
Burying hurts has two effects: they gradually erode away confidence in yourself, or you can turn the other way and react to the hurt and live in constant reaction, like being angry, sad or bitter. There is no middle ground because if there are hurts and pockets of emotions tucked away in the body, they will always be a drain on our vitality.
So true Matthew hurts require fuel to store – yes they constantly drain us. Because we bury them we miss the connection between why we are tired etc. and the possible root cause. Liberating our hurts to the light and truth is a natural restorative for our vitality.
Yes carrying hurts is exhausting. It takes a lot of effort to store that stuff in your body. And if you are a storer than there are usually more than one.
“The treatment I’ve discovered is to lovingly support myself, very gently, and stay with what I am feeling.” This is an awesome tool for healing.
Susan your offering of ‘if it isn’t seen it doesn’t count’ reminds me of one of nature’s major reminders – the ice berg. Energy is another one, we can’t see it but it is the principal power behind absolutely everything.
‘We are precious beings that deserve the utmost love and attention at every moment, in whatever way is needed.’ Something for everybody to hear and be confirmed with over and over again. Something to bring up our children with, always and forever letting them know and feel that they are super precious and that they deserve deep care and love in every moment of their life regardless their age and that this preciousness never ceases.
It can feel painful to express when we have a hurt, even when not buried in it or expressing from the emotion of the hurt. Yet if it comes from honesty and ownership of what we feel, it always supports taking the next step and such expression seeds forth the strength to proceed.
Simon what you write is so beautiful and powerful. “Yet if it comes from honesty and ownership of what we feel, it always supports taking the next step and such expression seeds forth the strength to proceed.” So many times I have sat on / ran away from / buried with food or drama but when I have actually been honest and lovingly said…just sit with it, tears have come and the strength always comes forth to proceed. And the process is usually super quick where as the burying and avoiding takes HOURS.
So very true Sarah and just what I needed to read this morning. When we first connect to a destructive behaviour we might have as a result of not wanting to feel a hurt it can seem almost overwhelming, the behaviour seems bigger than us. But it isn’t. It’s actually tiny… In acknowledging the hurt we’ve been holding onto, being lovingly honest with ourselves and understanding, we release a massive piece of baggage from our body and free ourselves from the associated pattern as well. Responsibility is truly precious.
So true Katerina – often I’ve wanted to run for the hills when presented with an unhelpful behaviour, based on a hurt I’ve avoided feeling that I ‘think’ is going to take years to sort out. But when I actually start to face it, it starts to melt away pretty easily and quickly, and I feel so much more spacious. Responsibility is truly precious – it gives us back our freedom.
Learning to stay with the hurt and not cover it up or rush it away but really exploring our role in creating the dynamic is a really useful way of unpacking difficult scenarios. Even though it is almost instinctive to bury and ignore and defend the hurt and make it go away.
‘Learning to stay with the hurt and not cover it up or rush it away but really exploring our role in creating the dynamic’ … love what you share here, Nicole, …. ‘exploring our role in creating the dynamic’ …. this is something we choose to ignore. However, we felt the hurt in the first place as we chose to react …. the question is, why? When we answer that and take responsibility for our part, the hurt is healed.
This is key Alison staying with the hurt, feeling it, nominating it, and, ‘exploring our role in creating the dynamic’, by being responsible in this way we start to heal and release these hurts.
Your comment is so spot on Nicole. l feel this advice is golden to assist when there’s definitely a disruptive energy flowing through me…”The main point is that I don’t turn it on myself and continue to compound the hurt by adding the fuel of uncertainty, self-doubt, self-criticism, resentment and anger toward myself or the other person.”
I have had the experience of turning a hurt that felt like it was the size of a pea into something that was the size of a snowball.
Love this sharing Nicole, as it reveals the true healing is in learning to deal with our hurts and see our role in them. I can see more clearly lately that any hurt we create is often as a means for not truly seeing our choices or part in a situation and when we peel this back underneath it all is simply a choice to choose love or not.
This is indeed a great learning and on that completely changes our understanding of true health and wellbeing…
Sure is Sara and helps us understand that when we stay with the hurt we continue to carry this into every aspect of our lives which in turn indirectly harms others.
It is truly remarkable to understand and discern the quality of what we allow to pass through us on a daily basis. I am forever grateful to Serge Behayong for all he presents to support my development and understanding of the Ageless Wisdom.
Nicole, this is so spot on – the only way to truly heal a hurt is to acknowledge that we feel hurt and not sweep it under the carpet and pretend everything is fine.
This is so true. And I have experienced, learnt and seen through the healing modalities presented and shared by Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine, that the more I am willing to let go what is not truly me (the hurts, pain, sadness) the more solid and claimed I feel with who I really am. My relationship with myself has deepened so that now if a hurt does come up I can physically feel within me that it is something separate from who I truly am, it does not ‘own’ me like it did in the past, therefore easier to understand and get to the root problem of why I allowed it in the first place so it can then leave.
Understanding that although these feelings are not actually me and that I choose how long they stay in my body was a massive key to healing.
The pattern of ignoring what is energetically being felt I can feel is a form of stubbornness. It’s wanting to hold onto not being able to feel and address what is being felt, but why? What if in the past when we did this it disturbed others and they reacted, what if that same result is not necessarily going to repeat? and holding onto the ‘it might happen again’ is the issue that is affecting us more so?
I so agree Leigh, that sometimes it is what occurs after or how we deal with things after we’ve felt a hurt that can actually end up being more damaging for ourselves. When we become abusive towards ourselves, self critical, judgemental. This then radiates out to others. There of course is a fear, potentially from past experiences that stops us from accepting the issue or ourselves in that process, we do hold onto it. This definitely can affect us more so!
What a great way to approach emotional hurts with a treatment plan as one would treat a physical hurt… the treatment being to give yourself space and not to “… turn it on myself and continue to compound the hurt by adding the fuel of uncertainty, self-doubt, self-criticism, resentment and anger toward myself or the other person….” Brilliant discovery, thank you for sharing this way of approach!
It seems so obvious when we equate emotional hurts to physical ones that they too need healing despite the lack of physical signs of injury, the damage is still there.
I used to think we could put aside emotional hurts and maybe deal with them later. This never worked and would just make the hurt more convoluted and difficult to pin down or I would forget about it sort of, and it would eventually make me sick. It is so much more sensible to consider that this is the same as if we had something physical to deal with and the best time to deal with it is immediately.
We all make mistakes. What we do next is crucial. If we put ourselves down for it, we have lost almost our entire capacity to learn from the mistake and are very much liable to do it again. When we accept that but do not let the mistake affect our self image, our life transforms. The more we confirm ourselves when we are doing well, the easier it is to accept making a mistake without affecting our self image.
Is our ever growing illness and disease an indicator towards not healing our hurts? More so, evident in rise of mental health illnesses?
I like it very much Sandra that you wrote: “There is no way I would just let the hurt go uncared for, as I know this would leave the ailment to fester and make me feel very unwell. So, why wouldn’t I ‘treat’ myself in the same way with my emotional hurts and reactions?” For me that was such a comprehensible example and it showed me on a very simple way how most of us are living. To be honest that is a bit weird to live by choice like this so thank you for not holding back and being such a good reflection.
A very good reflection, how we are living and the openness of our choices, how much awareness we have developed and want to take responsibility for. This is key when hurts are presented.
“When I make a choice to bury how I am truly feeling, I miss an opportunity to heal the hurts/wounds that are sitting in my body and that just does not make sense.” This is a beautiful quote by Anne, thank you Sandra for highlighting its significance and wisdom.
I also love this quote……that when we make a choice to bury what we are feeling, it doesn’t go away, it stays in our body, this is toxic in the body. It is finding ways to come back to oneself, to reconnect to the part in ourselves that is solid and is our essence, that way you can see the hurt not as something that is a part of you, but from more of an observation. This can sometimes be a challenge, but it is worth it.
Amazing blog Sandra, thank you for sharing. I often thought of my emotional hurts as less or a nuisance that I did not know how to deal with. I have also found out that through simply feeling the hurt, even if I do not want it to be there, a lot changes already. It often disappears or the answer is revealing itself. Through your blog I can feel how caring it also is to do this – to just sit with my feelings and give myself space to feel it and have a ponder on it.
To be able to sit for a moment with our feelings does feel like one of the most precious loving gifts we can give ourselves. It is an honoring of the connection to our hearts, our own humanity and our divinity.
Yes it is that. It is so easy to look for advise outside of ourselves by friends or family and even though this is lovely, at times it feels the most nurturing to sit with ourselves and ask ourselves what we are truly feeling about a certain thing that happened.
I love the simplicity of the point you are making here Sandra and makes absolute sense. Whilst we would immediately deal with a physical hurt it makes no sense to not do the same for an emotional one. It’s like society has dismissed emotional aches because the damage to the body is not seen. We need to acknowledge that they are deeply felt and therefore deeply harming to the body as well. In this context why would we not want to deal with the pain straight away rather than burying it away? Thank you for this super little blog – very awesome point made!
Being present is so healing, it also makes me vulnerable. And being vulnerable is the safest space to not accumulate hardness and further hurts.
We are so worth feeling vulnerable but sometimes I feel myself running away from this vulnerability to not feel what it brings up in me and yet it is one of the greatest gifts I can give myself.
I love feeling the surrender in your wisdom Felix “being vulnerable is the safest place to not accumulate more hurts”.
This blog made me realise that so often in the past I may have not admitted I have been emotionally hurt or I just put a band-aid on it when full blown surgery was required, it is a great way of looking at it that whether it be physical or emotional, the hurts both require attention.
Undealt with emotional hurts drain the life out of us the same as blood dripping from an open physical wound.
This comment powerfully brings home the extent of the damage and devastation caused in our lives when we do not deal with our hurts. “Undealt with emotional hurts drain the life out of us the same as blood dripping from an open physical wound.” Well said Shelley. This is a caption in itself.
Perfectly said Shelley. This is something we need to introduce to our way of living, learning that emotional hurts need to be taken care of with the same attention as we do our physical hurts.
Sandra what an inspiring blog. You wrote: “We are precious beings that deserve the utmost love and attention at every moment, in whatever way is needed.” To do so is the best medicine ever – and I like to add it is also the cheapest.
Brought to the point Ester. It is the best medicine, it is simple, effective and low in cost.
I love the simplicity of what you share Sandra as it makes such sense that we treat our emotional hurts and reactions in the same way we give time, care and attention to the physical. It is a matter of feeling, allowing, honouring and nurturing what comes up for us and not allowing these types of hurts to be buried. I am forever amazed how by choosing to honour what we feel we are able to quickly allow such hurts to be healed. It truly is first aid for the soul to listen to, honour and heal the emotional hurts and reactions that we can so often choose in the body.
I love the simplicity of this blog to take those loving precious steps towards self ever-so-delicately. You are a child of God even as an adult. It is by divine design that what space you allow yourself to be held in is an understanding that is unique only to you and each circumstance. It is in your interest that you do this, no one else can do this for you.
I sometimes get twisted up in a recent or past circumstance of being exposed that is not loving towards myself or another, and because I have held onto it it now becomes a new identity I run with. Most of my life to date has been the focus on my issues (lack of seeing myself as being worth it) instead of appreciating myself. When I am not appreciating myself the focus becomes my issues. Appreciating myself is the best medicine to any issue or hurt that comes up. Hurt coming up is the composition of love in activity, it is the issue we create there-after that can cause the problems. It is more loving to embrace the opportunity to appreciate yourself when any hurt is exposed.
Rik I love the wisdom you share when you say “Hurt coming up is the composition of love in activity, it is the issue we create there-after that can cause the problems.” When we hurt we know that we have separated from the love that we are (there is no hurt when we are connected to it, no matter what is going on). When we recognise this and take steps to deal with it the hurt is cleared and there are no issues. When we hurt but take no steps to clear it, as you say we start to identify with it and all sorts of complications start to creep in to life.
The more loving we choose to be the more the hurts come up into our awareness, this has certainly been my experience and it breaks down the beliefs that love is passive and doesn’t ‘rock the boat’ – not only does it rock the boat but flips it upside down as we were never originally intended to remain on the surface of life with our issues and problems and identifications. Appreciating ourselves to come to this situation when a hurt arises is saying ‘I have chosen to see and feel beyond this hurt, but first I need to walk past it in order to understand what’s behind it’ and getting that close can be uncomfortable but once past we feel lighter for it.
When dealing with my hurts I’ve observed how I’ve avoided actually healing them by either indulging in them, or going into my head and understanding them from an analytical perspective thereby completely by passing how I feel so I end up feeling numb or hands in the biscuit tin.
Indulgence involves lots of crying and not looking at my part in how I set the situation up to expect something from someone without any consideration of where they were at and judging them accordingly. The poor me aspect I used to excuse whatever behaviours I wanted to indulge in. I felt hurt, it wasn’t fair so I’ve every right to go to comfort food scenario.
I am gradually learning to be tender with myself, to bring a loving understanding and willingness to feel whilst staying connected with the love that beholds us at all times.
Addressing my hurts there and then is far more responsible than allowing them to infuse all my relationships for the rest of my day, or my life. The rawness of a hurt is a great opportunity for healing because it’s exposing some expectation or judgement we’ve been carrying and demanding from ourselves, or God or or another that is setting us up for being hurt. But here it is ready to be seen and let go of if we take the opportunity.
Wonderful how you have reflected that our choice to face our hurt provides a great opportunity to see how “some expectation or judgement we’ve been carrying and demanding from ourselves, or God or or another that is setting us up for being hurt.” I find with such realisations, my understanding, confidence and relationships deepen.
I love how practical you’ve made dealing with our hurts – that ignoring them doesn’t make them better but allows them to fester and infect. I speak for myself here – these hurts can affect all of my day if I leave them unattended. Indeed these hurts can colour my whole life casting a shade over it so I seek comfort or something that makes me temporarily better or distracts me.
And have a tendency to blame the world for the hurts that we feel.
As I read your blog Sandra, I could hear that old saying “toughen up”. How often has that been used with children and adults alike when we are feeling hurt, sensitive or even vulnerable. No wonder most of us have buried our hurts deep down, which does not mean they are not ever present in our daily lives influencing our daily interactions and choices. So as our unhealed hurts influence our lives, so does it influence our lives when we are prepared to look at them and heal them and how we support care and nurture ourselves very much supports this and helps us recognise that we are not our hurts.
Bingo Brendan! No freedom at all, more like a self imposed prison.
We have wars and political tension all around the world because of undealt emotional hurts of people, ethnic and religious groups and nations.
Our emotional hurts usually involve another person or persons. Hiding my hurts is a false form of protecting myself and staying in comfort. But this is not comfortable in my body at all. I am at a point that the discomfort in my body, may it be a hardening in my arms or back or my nervous system going wild, is getting more disturbing and I therefore find myself choosing more often to deal with my hurts directly or sooner than I used to. Instead of creating distance by going in protection, I am allowing intimacy by being more open and share whatever I am feeling.
‘We are precious beings that deserve the utmost love and attention at every moment, in whatever way is needed.’ Indeed we are, when we don’t hold ourselves as precious we inhibit our ability to appreciate those that do treat us with this depth of care.
I used to think that I had to go deep into ‘problems’ in relationships and analyse them or at best express through creativity and then interpret that. Now I realise it is about being love and that is enough. It is about being true love, and as I practice being love my understanding of true love evolves. My growing awareness in this regard I am allowing to expand through attending presentations and workshops with Universal Medicine and then living with this growing awareness on a daily basis implementing the insights and inspirational teachings.
Speaking a hurt, and attending to it, no matter how small or large, stops it from having to reside in the body. We can load ourselves with unacknowledged hurts that then change the way we would naturally move and express. They are therefore a real impediment – just as debilitating as a twisted ankle or a sprained wrist.
All too often when we do choose to take care of our “unseen” wounds – our emotional traumas or minor scrapes – we have had them piling up on us for quite a while. It is usually only when things get to the point where we cannot handle what is going on that we seek help, or have a breakdown which means we have to do something about it. It is so important to recognise that we can be hurt by things that happen in our lives. It is not the point to never feel hurt by something, but to be able to know what to do about it so that you do not end up carrying around a scar. As you describe here, taking the time to make some space for ourselves and feeling what is going on is invaluable in this, mainly because it acknowledges to ourselves that we are worth the attention!
True inspiration. Yes we are so much worth the care and I feel that it is equally important be it physical or emotional. It’s all the same, a hurt that needs to be healed. For me it is new to open up to this and showing me as fragile and vulnerable as I am. There is still a lot of hardness and protection. I understand that it is a process of healing and all the hurts and traumas were not created over night so I chose to be patient and more and more understanding with me and then accept and let go. Thank You for sharing Your wisdom and lived experience here.
Great point Brendan. We think we can bury our hurts so that we don’t have to deal with them but life doesn’t work that way. I have noticed how there will always be someone to trigger them…..and in the past I would have been great at avoiding these people. But like you say there is no freedom in that, dealing with our hurts is the only true way to being free.
If we go a step further and look at how our emotional wounds are influencing our communication with others, then we would see that we are not truly meeting each other but only reacting by our hurts. No wonder so much calamity is possible in the world. That’s what we need to ponder on.
That’s very true Sonja and we feel very hurt by the world too. However tending to ourselves with great care and tenderness is the way forward. For this changes how we are in the world, and then in turn how the world interacts with us. We also begin to see clearly that our hurts have filtered everything. So not an always easy place to go to, but healing them is really essential for us all to move forward together.
I agree totally, Brendan. Often we can observe this in older people who still hold onto hurts from decades ago.
What a good example! We do care in general immediately about a physical hurt in a way that is needed for the wound, but we do not do this with our emotional hurts, though the pain may be very intense. Imagine not caring about a physical wound but ignoring it. What would happen? It would get inflamed and cause even more pain up to an amputation perhaps. Emotional hurts as little as they seem should be addressed otherwise we cripple our psychological wellbeing which again has an affect on our body and its health.
Great sharing here Sandra. We can hide our emotional pains far more easily than those of a physical nature but in truth we can never hide them. We only have to truly connect to another from love to feel their emotional pain and to think another is fine when emotionally they are not reveals our lack of true connection with them
Well, there is nowhere to go with this article except responsibility. Taking complete care of ourselves (affording the same attention to our emotional hurts as our physical ones) because the part we play in the big picture has an integral impact. This has been simply and clearly shared here. Thank you, Sandra.
I had to chuckle at the title of this blog, because for a moment I thought it meant that “healing hurts”. In other words, it hurts to heal. Which of course is not what was meant, but which actually is sometimes true. The process of healing often does hurt, and thus why we often avoid it. What we do not allow ourselves to realise, however, is that it actually hurts more not to heal.
Thanks Sandra, to expose how we can choose to not want to attend to our emotional hurts , in comparison to physical hurts . To be open to even nominate the hurt or read the situation with understanding and wisdom ,can stop the denial or burying taking root .
Beautifully expressed Sandra. Often I find I react to a hurt – and looking at it from how we treat physical hurts – reacting to a hurt is like pouring acid on a wound – you would never do that, so why treat the emotional hurt like this. Because that’s what it feels like I do to my body each time I react to the hurt.
Yes, great point Gina. Many times when we are emotionally hurt we then go on to add to it by treating ourselves badly by making choices that do not support us in letting go of what has hurt us in the first place!
How crazy is that trick we play with ourselves Kate! We add to it with the beat-up – that is why building the self-love for myself has been paramount – so I can now go to understanding rather than judgement and critique. I am learning to live with no self-judgement. It’s been challenging! Such an inbuilt program.
I love what you share Sandra, so simple. Before I met Serge Benhayon I treated my physical hurts and emotional hurts in the same way – ignored them and hoped they would go away eventually. I now know that I am worth caring for in every way – that ignoring and burying physical and emotional hurts just allows them to fester and grow, resulting in bigger more complicated issues to deal with at a later stage.
Very true Carmin and eventually the ignoring and burying of our hurts will eventually come alive in our physical body as illness and disease. So really we eventually have to heal our hurts whether it be at the time in expressing our hurt or our body will accept the responsibility of this task.
Great point Sandra. Love that – we would seek the appropriate way to deal with physical injurys but when it comes to our feelings, we tend to bury them. Thank you for beginning to make dealing with our hurts normal.
So simple yet so powerful Sandra. I actually woke up with the similar question, of why would I ever continue to allow abuse of myself no matter how slight it may appear comparatively to the level it once was. Clearly the hurts surface to be cleared, when I’m not prepared to feel them there is no way I allow the space to clear them and for healing to take place.
Thank you Sandra for a great blog, I found too in the past I would have no problem dealing with physical pain, but emotional pain I would just want to sweep under the carpet, pretend they were not there, so as not to feel it. How beautiful that we are learning to be honest about our pain, allowing it to be felt and heard so that true healing can take place.
We can continue to sweep our hurts under the carpet, but eventually the carpet will no longer be able to hide them as the mountain grows, trapping us until we begin to clean out under the rug.
That is a very interesting point Sandra. When we have an emotional hurt why do we deny it avoid feeling it, blame another for it, we will do anything not to face it, unlike a physical wound we would tend to straight away. I like your attitude that both wounds need healing and admitting as much is a big part of the healing.
The moment we judge what we are feeling emotions or reactions we have to find ways to ‘manage’ life as we don’t want to feel that, so we go to to behaviours and patterns that will numb us and distract us from feeling what is there. Instead of judging we need to allow ourselves to feel what is there and surrender to what is to be healed knowing that by doing that we are creating more space to be who we truly are.
That’s very true and very beautiful Francisco. When we offer ourselves this level of understanding, that in itself is healing.
“We are precious beings that deserve the utmost love and attention at every moment, in whatever way is needed.” Beautiful sharing Sandra so true and so needed to be heard in the world as this is not the way he world teaches us to be. However with the reflection from Serge Benhayon and his family we are being offered this and many like you are making loving changes that really does make a difference and is definitely changing the balance to more love on earth every moment.
Perfect to read your blog Sandra, thank you for sharing this :
“We are precious beings that deserve the utmost love and attention at every moment, in whatever way is needed.”
“We are so worth caring for, healing all our hurts, emotional or physical. There is no separateness to how we truly benefit from treating ourselves and each other when it comes to caring for our wellbeing.” A beautiful blog Sandra, indeed we are all worth caring for deeply.
Not wanting to admit to the hurt is often due to the picture we hold of who we are or think we have to live up to.
Yes, Alex, the self-created picture of who we need to be gets in the way of being able to see the hurt for what it is, and returning to the grandness we truly are.
You’re right with that one Alex, those pictures can definitely lead us astray.
Absolutely Alex, dismantling and dissolving the images of ourselves that really have little to do with the truth of who we are, allows for the space to access all that awaits our attention in allowing ourself to simply feel.
Not taking care of our emotional wounds is obviously due the lack of love we have accepted. The more we develop a loving attitude towards ourselves the more we will have the willingness if not the impulse to deepen the care for ourselves and even face those emotions we have tried to avoid for most of our lives.
Each time I stop running and face stuff I have been trying to avoid, I am shocked by the energy I have put into not being honest and not taking complete care. The ‘thing’ I have been trying to avoid is always smaller than I expected and so the learning on offer is to responsibly, firmly and lovingly choose to feel very deeply where I am still hiding, shirking and therefore being dishonest.
It makes perfect sense to heal our hurts but the problem is many of us do not know how to do this or think it cannot be done because the majority of people around them, if not all, do not model this behaviour. We learn to bury our hurts from a very young age as a way of coping and then it becomes ingrained and normalised as adults. I would have loved to have someone show me it is possible to heal when I was a little girl as it would have saved me so much time and effort trying to avoid feeling!
Burying our hurts, because we don’t know or have never be shown how to deal with them, has also become very ‘normal’ for most and a normal way to get through life. But if we begin to really look at life, we can see that this is not working well for us at all. One very beautiful thing is that we can learn to heal our hurts, even our childhood ones, at any time. So it’s never too late!
This raises the question – why do we not attend to all our hurts just as we do with our physical hurts? It is the other hurts that precipitate illness and disease so why avoid going there and bringing the love so deeply needed? Love your analogy Sandra between physical and emotional hurts and reactions – a true call to be energetically responsible.
With emotional hurts we can’t physically see them so at times we think we are addressing them when we are further burying them. Being honest and transparent with ourselves and others helps whilst not holding ourselves in judgement.
True Anne, and sometimes we think they just will dissolve by themselves which is not the case, there has to be a conscious addressing of the hurts we carry. And only then they have chance to be healed.
Humanity at large has this belief of ‘when I see it I’ll believe it’… I wonder if this has to do with the fact that we don’t register or treat emotional wounds and ill behaviours with the same urgency or severity as that of physical ones.
Perhaps if we were able to see and feel the emotional hurts and wounds we cover up we might discover that we are battered and bruised all over! The simplicity of tending to them as they occur, though not generally encouraged, seems such common sense.
Absolutely, Jeanette. Common sense and our obvious responsibility. We can do this very lovingly as long as there is a willingness to be as honest as is possible every moment and really uproot (heal) those things that interfere with living well together.
‘The main point is that I don’t turn it on myself and continue to compound the hurt by adding the fuel of uncertainty, self-doubt, self-criticism, resentment and anger toward myself or the other person.’
Wow, this is so poignant to me right now Sandra, as I can easily get caught in these emotions instead of feeling what ever is there. Reacting to a reaction is like rubbing salt into a physical wound, it seems like it would heal it but stings and makes the hurt worse!
Some (if not all) of the greatest battles in the world would I imagine come down to a person not dealing with their hurts.
‘I am now realising that I can attend to them immediately, as I would a physical hurt.’ Sandra what you point out here is crucial, if we attend to our emotional hurts immediately, by acknowledging what we feel in that moment rather than suppressing it, this is true healing.
Yes, Eva. True healing that keeps us away from adding to the emotional soup we are so familiar with but know is not the way forward.
I love the simplicity and clarity that you bring with your words, Sandra. As you say we would not ignore a physical hurt but have learnt to ignore the inner pain – much to our detriment. It feels really healing when we spend time with ourselves and allow ourselves the same attention that we would offer another – and as you say to speak with the person that the pain has come up can mean we can both learn from our interaction and gain understanding and love. As we learn a more gentle and loving way to be with ourselves we let go of the pain and open up to a wonderful and forever unfolding world – and wow, does that feel great.
Lovely parallel, treating emotional hurts just like fysical wounds: take and seek care.
There is a real depth to what you share Caroline “Take and seek care”.
I love the “take care”. Often said so casually as a far well greeting but means so much more when read here.
“I am now realising that I can attend to them immediately, as I would a physical hurt. ” what a different way to look at our emotional hurts, we would easily stop to take care of a wound yet we walk around getting wounded and covering them up daily when it comes to emotional wounds. I love the simplicity of the link you have made.
Sandra, I can relate to, “I saw that in the past when I have been emotionally hurt I would put my tail between my legs and try to ignore it by hiding from the source of the pain.” This is a familiar pattern that I have used to bury what I do not want to feel. This is a beautiful reminder to attend to any emotional hurt as I would a cut or a physical aliment.
Well said Rachel. I find I also react to a hurt; someone very wise said to me years ago, when I feel the hurt, if I’m not sure what to say, don’t say anything. Give the hurt space to be felt and soon enough you will find the right words. I am still trying to put this fully into practice and it feels lovely to reconnect to this advice today.
It makes me wonder why we have this pattern of not expressing when we are hurt and pretending something hasn’t affected us. Lets face it how often do you hear people say something like ‘The way you spoke to me was very hurtful’. Instead we keep it all inside and feel resentful.
Aboslutely Julie – and how deeply ingrained this pattern is in most of us, we put on a corteous smile and pretend that everything is all fine.
Gosh I LOVE SHORT BLOGS and this one is amazing and to the point so BIG Thank you Sandra Williamson. I reckon you should give all your customers this blog and what a topic to talk about at the hairdressers. We all have our stuff if we are honest and what I love is when you talk about your realisation that dealing with your hurts – “I can attend to them immediately, as I would a physical hurt.” This is a game changer if you ask me.
The million dollar question here dear world is to you –
Why is it that we do anything and everything just to avoid emotional hurts?
I recently had a client say to me that the physical pain and her behaviour was far more worse than just dealing with the hurt.
In my own case I have found there is no other way. THANK GOD FOR SERGE BENHAYON. He presented that it is good medicine to deal with our hurts and this is something I now choose to live. So when something minor came up last week and it bothered me, I knew there was hurt. Any self talk that goes on longer than a few hours is my big fat sign that I am hurt and need to deal with it. Moving my body helps, a walk always works and then I nominate. (learnt that from Serge Benhayon). I actually say what has hurt me and bingo it just goes. Really. It is that simple. No post mortem needed after and phone a friend business. Just move on and of course share with my partner or anyone I feel to if it feels important and may support them.
I am finding that what works is to be super practical, loving and succinct when dealing with hurts that come up, leaving no space for indulgence and over focus. Being honest and taking responsibility for my patterns and reactions is key. Thank you, Bina, for another no-nonsense sharing.
“We are precious beings that deserve the utmost love and attention at every moment, in whatever way is needed”. I totally agree Sandra, the more we see and treat ourselves this way the more love we will naturally have in our lives.
This line stood out for me too. Thank you Sandra for sharing this heartfelt blog.
Absolutely James. To feel the awareness to hold the love and expansion when we get hurt, which comes through Sandra’s blog and your comment, is a stark contrast to the contraction and shrinking I can feel happens to my body when it feels a hurt.
It is something that takes time and is a continual evolvement. The more we can live from our body out rather than the world in the less we will react and get hurt by it.
I can feel how, when I’m upset, in the past, I would go over it again and again, being self critical or worse, blaming them. I’ve recently cut my left forefinger – I washed it, put cream on, covered it up with a band aid to keep it clean and I know that the more I care for it in this way, the quicker it will heal in just a few days. If I ignore it, let it get dirty, it will become infected, go red, swell up and hurt more, taking longer to heal, and possibly leave me scarred for life. That’s exactly what happens when we don’t take care of our emotional hurts, so taking tender care of ourselves allows the healing to take place. Beautiful analogy, thank you.
What an awesome way to look at our emotional pain, why would we want bury it deeper, ignore it and let it fester? When we can as you say Sandra take the time to attend and heal it.
After a while of working on our hurts, we can see how we planted the seed for them in the first place, and that they are always ours to heal (and not anyone else’s).
It is true we can stay stuck in blaming others for causing our hurts and just bury them. Much better as Sandra describes to simply acknowledge them as it is felt, rather than bury them and let them fester.
“The main point is that I don’t turn it on myself and continue to compound the hurt by adding the fuel of uncertainty, self-doubt, self-criticism, resentment and anger toward myself or the other person.”
If I incorporate what you describe here into my life I know it will be incredibly powerful. I have spent so much time playing the game of being less and compounding my hurts it is wonderful to feel that I can simply let that go-feel the truth and move on.
I agree Leonne. I also have allowed myself to reduce and feel it can by my fault; now I can connect more strongly to knowing there is another way to deal with them – to feel the truth and move on as you say. My usual pattern of reacting to them or remaining quiet and silent now feels irresponsible and sometimes indulgent. But no self bash in that either; they are just comfortable behaviours I’ve been used to but now I know there is another way. 🙂
‘We are precious beings that deserve the utmost love and attention at every moment, in whatever way is needed.’ This is not what we get reflected that often in our word today, this blog is simple reminder for all of us to appreciate who we truly are and to take care for in every way possible.
That is a great point you bring Sandra. i too tended to give more attention in caring to physical hurts than to emotional hurts. Emotional hurts did get their attention though but not in in a caring way but in an abusive way like you wrote “to compound the hurt by adding the fuel of uncertainty, self-doubt, self-criticism, resentment and anger toward myself or the other person.”
Isn’t it quite wonderful that we are developing the awareness that we can actually nominate that we have been ‘hurt’ in some way by a comment, innuendo or critique. I recall a question put to me a very long time ago after being on the receiving end of hurtful criticism in relation to some endeavour that I had put time, energy and loving effort into. Yes, in those days I would ‘sulk’ or go very silent for hours. The question then put was asking me to confirm that it was necessary and indeed very helpful to be criticized so that I would ‘get it right’ next time. Much water has flowed under the proverbial bridge since those days and now a loving truth offered in this blog is felt. The sentence that stood out for me this morning was “The main point is that I do not turn it on myself and continue to compound the hurt by adding the fuel of uncertainty,self-doubt, self-criticism, resentment and anger toward myself or the other person.” Thank you Sandra.
Amazing Katie! If we could see our wounds, then we would really want to a-dress them!
Very powerful Marika – is it possible that we choose to not acknowledge and heal the hurt within ourselves because the approval, recognition, justification or evidence has not been given by others – because others cannot see the physicality of the hurt. Is it possible we are looking for this ‘permission’ before we will ‘claim’ the hurt as something valid or ‘true’ for ourselves. As you have said – the choice is ours.
Even just being honest enough to admit that you are hurt in the first place can be a major step in the right direction. I know in the past, I would not allow myself to feel it let alone deal with it.
I know Rosie, we spend so much time pretending we are not hurt, putting effort into covering it up, proving to everyone that we are fine, but how does that serve anyone?
Indeed it serves no-one Judith, not ourselves or others, just adds another layer of protection and reason for not letting others in.
We stay hurt and our friends get a false version of us. Its a loss for everyone.
‘We stay hurt and our friends get a false version of us. Its a loss for everyone’ …. this is the devastating consequence, apart from the harm we do to ourselves, we are projecting a false version of ourselves to everyone else. Our collective divinity is dulled and to compound that, we’re confirming to each other that it’s safer to just bury our hurts.
Yes, that’s true, what are we confirming each other in…. now thats another level of responsibility that we can all be aware of. Are we staying in our hurts and confirming that to others…. we have done this for many many years… I sure am glad that I have been inspired by others who have shown me that there is in fact another way.
Absolutely Mary, “bottling things up” as you describe only deepens the insecurities around any emotional issue especially for children and as children, is this where we learn to not be open to true love?
But what is not lost on us is the fact we do this as all our art, music is showing the disconnection and the hurts. We have our sayings describing burying our heads to not deal with things – we are masters of pretending we don’t know what is going on yet we are fully aware. We just choose to ignore it.
Yes we would definitely be much more attentive if we were to have our emotional hurts out on display for all to see! In some ways a lot of our illnesses and accidents are a result of not looking after our emotional hurts – we bury them in the body and the body has to clear them.
This is a great point Mary as we have allowed a culture of overriding our hurts to develop and be deemed as normal. We have been told that expressing how we feel is considered a sign of weakness and bottling our hurts a sign of strength. This is crazy and clearly not our natural way of living as we are existing is dire times of where we can see the increasing illness in general and with children self-harming, eating disorders and suicide on the rise. It is true what you have shared that we need to take responsibility for healing our hurts, express how we feel so we can support and lead the way for others to know that there is another natural way of living where our tender Love is our true strength.
We mistakenly think that it will be too painful to feel what is there to be felt but really we are just facing spiritual pride, an unwillingness to take responsibility for our selves in a way where we can meet and understand whatever is there for us to evolve with.
The simplicity of your blog is important Sandra, as it IS simple and an unemotional exercise to simply be there for our selves when hurts arise. It just takes practice and developing the awareness to support our selves, tenderly and with care in this way. And a choice to deeply value our selves and our preciousness.
This brings up a wider pattern of a tendency to play roles, keep ourselves ‘together’ and keep each other at bay. We are leading a guarded life where we guard our essence at all costs and mostly do not show this to the world – how can we truly connect with each other and live in brotherhood if we are hiding our divinity and keeping our true self from others.
Our walls encase us – they offer us no protection but keep the most precious jewels from the world.
We have certainly been sold a lie – toughen up, chin up, man up, soldier on and creating the barrier so life cannot ‘touch us’ when all the while we are receiving energy, absorbing others poison and in constant reaction to life – it is little wonder that illness and disease is on the rise and rise.
True – we are the dealers and the self-made players
When I deal with my hurts or imagined hurts and reactions I sometimes find they are not even real or mine. Sometimes that are just the results of an energy I have let in or that I have disconnected to myself and got caught up in something. If I take those moments to reconnect to myself, have a short walk or simply change my posture, sometimes that big thing that was bothering me just evaporates and I can see it is really not true.
At other times there may be some old pattern, wound or reaction that I need to deal with. Even when it appears to consume me, at another level it still feels unreal but it does need me to look deeper and bring more awareness to it. A bit like letting in the light on something that has over the years or even lifetimes become rather damp, smelly, mouldy and jagged. It can look and smell a bit scary in the dark but once I bring the light and of course love to it, not such a big deal. Everyone wants love really including hurts and scary monsters.
Love and light lighten up everything and often bring exactly the simplicity we need to let go.
I can relate to this, Nicola, often a hurt or an imagined hurt is not real or mine and they are just a storm in a glass of water, although if I hang on to them they influence everything I do.
We certainly have a tendency to respond to what we see with our eyes and to give this sight emphasis over our feelings and inner knowing in all aspects of life.
Gorgeous Sandra! Our emotional hurts require tending to as well, as obviously if these are left undealt with, they will cause pain that is not usually spoken about or admitted. When we are younger we learn that getting hurt is bad or a mistake, it’s something to be upset about. It is taught that you have to hide your emotions in, which hurts even more!
When we focus solely on our physicality we diminish our greater awareness of our true power that presents through the Love we are, our majesty that is unseen by the eye but is known, realised and felt through our hearts.
The preciousness that we all are comes through in your blog, just reading the words inspires me to give myself more space to lovingly heal my hurts.
Yes Doug and we look to all the physical things that make us unwell without considering all the emotional. If we dealt with all our emotional hurts I imagine we would feel a whole lot lighter and our health and well being would improve dramatically.
Sandra, this is brilliant, why would I not heal my emotional hurts the same way I heal physical hurts, with care love and attention? It’s bonkers, just because I don’t see an emotional hurt I can pretend it’s not there, put on a brave face to the rest of the world and bury it. I’m going to remind myself to treat all hurts with the same love and care I would a physical wound. Just lovely.
Sandra, reading your blog has helped me to see that addressing emotional hurts is an extension of how we look after ourselves.
Love it Sandra, thank you for calling us to bring awareness to why we address and take care of our physical hurts, mostly without question, yet with our emotional hurts we tend to leave them un-addressed and un-cared for. We are so much more than our physicality alone yet we only seem to pay attention to that which is seen with the eye. It is through our physical bodies that our emotional hurts are made manifest. We are quick to apply a band-aid or administer relief to our physical pains but not so quick to address the cause even though it is our emotional state that gives cause to our physical well-being. Our society is currently driven by our emotions, our hurts unhealed and this is why we have such a high state of illness and disease that is increasing throughout our age groups. The responsibility is ours to take care of our hurts, address and let them go with love and understanding so we can then support and inspire each other to realise that we are not our hurts but rather the Love within that awaits to be lived.
What a great observation Sandra. I would never let a physical hurt or a medical problem go unattended, so why do it with emotional hurts? I love your practical tips on how you are addressing you emotional hurts.
A physical hurt we can’t deny, there is blood or a fracture, but an emotional hurt we can pretend it is not there, harden ourselves and keep going. The effect this has on each of us is immense as we are very sensitive and delicate beings who need intimacy to deal with our hurts.
Spot on Marika, it just goes to show what our ‘intelligent’ minds will choose if left to their own devices. The intelligence and loving wisdom of our hearts would never choose this for us. Which one do we respond to?
When “emotionally hurt I would put my tail between my legs and try to ignore it by hiding from the source of the pain” I know this one so well and also what I see in society is the other extreme of lashing out in retaliation, the other side of the same coin. There is a million miles from this to realizing that the truth of our relationships and expression is love and harmony, and anything that does not hold these qualities requires care and attention. Deepening the level of love, understanding wisdom and responsibility.
Beautifully said Golnaz, anything in our relationships (including the one we have with ourselves that does not hold love and harmony), needs our care and attention, lovingly so.
I agree Marika, I remember clearly as a child that when i was crying and expressing a hurt, my parents would often become uncomfortable, and tell me i was overreacting. This made me feel like it was not acceptable to show my fragility and hence i quickly learnt to swallow my feelings and toughen up.
When we become honest about our hurts and keep it light, they seem to disappear more quickly. Hurts don’t like simplicity.
I agree, Mariette, it is like hurts can’t stay when there is simplicity, there is nothing to hold on to.
Well said Mariette.
True – living from a framework of hurt requires much energy and complexity to sustain it.
When we live simply, it is very easy to see our hurts for what they are and to recognise that they have been added to sanctuary and never do they belong.
Love that Mariette, it is very true that hurts don’t like simplicity. They need the fuel of complexity and drama to keep them alive.
Very true, Mariette, ‘hurts don’t like simplicity’ – I want to put this one on my fridge to remind me – love it. As you say it’s about being willing to be deeply honest and let go any ideas or images of how we think things should be. Once we drop those investments, it’s easier to address our hurts.
“The main point is that I don’t turn it on myself and continue to compound the hurt by adding the fuel of uncertainty, self-doubt, self-criticism, resentment and anger toward myself or the other person.” Before I met Serge Benhayon, I was regularly choosing to compound my hurts and dig myself a big pit of self criticism, today when i do begin to turn in on myself, i support myself to be totally honest and open with the feelings that come up, just giving myself this space to feel is a huge commitment that is honoured by the body.
“There is no way I would just let the hurt go uncared for, as I know this would leave the ailment to fester and make me feel very unwell. So, why wouldn’t I ‘treat’ myself in the same way with my emotional hurts and reactions?” Indeed Sandra, there really is no difference, there is a will to care for ourselves but the world does not reflect this back when it comes to emotional hurts and reactions and so we bury our feelings….only for them to reappear further down the line as behaviours or ailments.
It’s odd Sandra but what you describe going away with our tail between our legs has been a long standing reaction to hurts which I’m learning to undo slowly and steadily, and that remedy you describe staying with ourselves and feeling everything is key. And reading this today reminds me of the crazy contortions I can put myself through rather than being honest about what I am feeling – I would not willingly or intentionally do this to another yet I can do it to myself and I don’t need to – it’s healthier, cleaner and simpler to address each hurt as they arise, and this is the exact medicine it needs.
Tail between the legs and off into the cave to lick my wounds, preferably curled up in the foetal position – anything but face what needs facing and addressing; I do remember that pattern well but it got me very, very stuck and more and more uncertain and unsteady.
Yes Gabriele, it’s super disempowering and wallowing, and you choose to loose confidence in yourself, but it is a choice and over time I’ve learnt how it plays and yet it’s familiar and can seem comforting but it’s a dead end and it undermines the foundation of the love I am and that I build daily.
Stuck is the perfect word, Gabriele. To be bound by our hurts is a hideous place to be, small, contracted, mulling over what is not, rather than the divinity of who we are …. very stuck indeed.
Yes Monica, facing up to situations that hurt us, I had experience of that this week where I felt hurt by someones behaviour. I knew that the only way to address is and move on was to discuss it rationally and consider my own role, and that the “tail between the legs” burying it was a pattern of behaviour that just won’t cut it anymore.
Beautiful blog Sandra, healing our hurts is supporting us to live our life in harmony. And it is not always easy, but so worthwhile to support ourselves in this way.
That’s a big yes from me – definitely worthwhile dealing with our hurts for this brings much harmony within and without.
Your blog is a beautiful reminder Sandra of how very precious we are, Yes, we are ..” so worth caring for…”
We are worth caring for, in many ways that often we have no awareness of, but once the path of self-care is started, the myriad of ways seems to naturally appear.
Absolutely Heather. At first it can seem difficult, but soon it becomes apparent, well it did to me, that there are millions of ways to care for myself and I really began to understand the impact of the tiniest amount of care that I give me, can have profound effects on others.
Very beautiful, Heather … ‘once the path of self-care is started, the myriad of ways seems to naturally appear’. As alien as it may initially feel, it’s the most gorgeous path to follow.
“We are worth caring for…” – isn´t it shocking that we need to be reminded of our worth and often need to learn from scratch to care for ourselves in an honouring and appreciative way ?! When we finally start to self-care and develop a more loving way of being, in hindsight we recognise the level of self-neglect and disregard we have lived but were blind to see before.
Sandra there is a part of me that did not want to read what you have shared and indeed exposed because I am sitting here reading it and am aware that there is a feeling in my body that I want to get away from. I had toyed with the idea of doing some light weights to ‘make myself feel better’ but reading Anne’s beautiful words “When I make a choice to bury how I am truly feeling, I miss an opportunity to heal the hurts/wounds that are sitting in my body and that just does not make sense”, simply confirms what I know deep down and that is that my only choice is whether I choose to heal now or later, there really is no other choice.
I find this line very inspiring Sandra… “I am now realising that I can attend to them immediately, as I would a physical hurt.” In the end it is us we harm the most when we hold onto our hurts. How amazing to be shown from a young age that it is ok to express our hurts, both physical and emotional, and be supported to heal them at the time.
It is true that we seldom stop to consider what we bring with us in every moment when we carry the weight of undealt with hurt – this laces our every interaction and expression and is a filter that prevents us true sight and wisdom.
Thank you for your open honest sharing Sandra, and for expressing what is so needed in the world today… so much harm comes from buried, undealt with hurts.
When we compare the emotional hurts with physical hurts in the way you have it is so obvious that they need to be dealt with equally.
In fact, the emotional hurts we carry and the extent of how much they affect our well-being supersedes by far all our physical ones. If we and everyone else could see them just the way we can see the physical hurts we couldn´t hide them or from them. As long as we don´t see them we still can have the honesty to feel and acknowledge them, then everything can be healed.
Yes, even though we may not see emotional hurts as obviously as physical ones we do feel the energetic disharmony of them, they are never really hidden. I agree Alex, acknowledging the hurts is a step toward true healing.
Very true, Alex, knowing this for ourselves, the layers of buried hurts we carry around and how they affect us, it’s equally important to bring this understanding when meeting other people, they may also be just as ‘layered up, maybe even more so’, but maybe not with the same understanding that we now have, thanks to Universal Medicine.
Yes, for sure that is the way to be with ourselves and others – to develop true understanding and thus acceptance of one another. That is the recipe to not react and absorb but observe life.
Could it be that emotional hurts are easier to hide than the physical ones, which is why we perhaps do not attend to them as much? However, the emotional hurts are often what stay with us for a very long time unless we choose to deal with them. Thanks Sandra for bringing to the forefront the importance of healing our emotional hurts.
You make a great point Sandra – when something goes wrong or we make a not-so-smart decision, going into self loathing and criticising ourselves for it is like adding a bucket of fuel to the fire. A mistake is an opportunity to learn, but if we beat ourselves for it we cannot move on from it or see the lesson being offered to us, and as a result are much more likely to make that same mistake again in the future.
Yes, exactly. If we dwell on the negative we miss the opportunity to learn an important lesson, which will then of course have be repeated until we finally get it.
Spot on Susie – mistakes are an opportunity to learn and to grow and therefore to wise up.
To consider our hurts as real as a physical hurt is so helpful in dealing with them. That you explain this here Sandra and give ways to approach and heal the hurts is to offer healing to anyone who reads this.
We have become masters of ignorance when it comes to the things we don´t like to deal with. The example of emotional hurts being as real as physical ones and taking care of them just with the same care reveals their reality and opens up to a simplicity instead of hiding in complex emotional labyrinths.
This is indeed breaking through a real stuckness in society which identifies with pain and physical suffering and tending to what we can see before our eyes should we choose to act or see. It is important to understand the impact of emotional hurt and to clearly understand the energy at play – be that in a reaction and hurt or a physical ailment.
Truly Humanity has been robbed of the Truth of energy and Life for far too long and yet such wisdom will bring the much needed understanding Humanity calls for.
Without the truth of energy and therefore life we are left to pursue improvement and happiness but never can distinguish between who we truly are and what we identify with. To recognize emotions as something that not naturally belongs to our true making puts all we know about the human psyche and thus healing emotional hurts upside down.
so true Alex, by not dealing with it as they arise, they layer and layer and build a maze that wastes time energy and become a distraction to how life can be.
‘We have become masters of ignorance when it comes to the things we don´t like to deal with’ … I feel it’s even worse than ignorance, we have belittled our natural way to express our hurts, to openly talk about them. This practice of allowing ourselves to be so vulnerable and sharing how we have been made to feel has been condemned as being weak, too sensitive, not strong. In truth, it’s a wonderful strength to be able to do this, from the love that we all are, a gift for everyone concerned.
Agreed Rosanna, when we take the first step of simply acknowledging the hurt for what it is, we have in fact taken the first step way from dismissing it, the steps then to follow can be ones of healing for all.
Super important point you make, Giselle. I know for myself that I only can acknowledge what I truly feel, especially hurts, when I let go of an image of how I should or would like to be, otherwise it is this ideal that doesn´t allow me to see or admit what is truly going on.
The Universal Medicine healing modalities are my daily support in dealing with hurts. My partner and I both learned to practice these simple hands-on techniques and whenever we find ourselves not able to deal with a situation we tend to the massage table in our living room and treat each other. There is always more understanding for myself and for each other after such a little session. To have this as part of daily life is a gift from heaven. And it’s so simple.
I agree felixschumacher8 – the Universal Medicine healing treatments are indeed a gift from heaven. They offer a deeper understanding of the root cause of our hurts and our own situation and by that, an opportunity to let go of the hurts and truly heal.
Yes the Universal Medicine healing modalities are such a beautiful support – a real gift from heaven.
So beautiful Felix. Anything that can lovingly support us to surrender provides true healing.
And the simple choice to acknowledge the hurt or issue and then making another choice to apply a supportive tool to deal with it is already healing. Denial is the main impediment to healing.
This is inspirational Felix to support each other like this in a relationship!
How blessed we are to have heaven-sent very practical modalities available to all.
Universal Medicine has brought to Humanity more than we may ever care to realise and in time we will appreciate the unfathomable healing, support and reflection offered.
Burying feelings is such a well used pattern. It is our normal. The ground is imprinted with this thousands of times, the layers of contraction manyfold. When I take a different choice, when I choose to feel, the tension of aeons rises and what makes me strong to keep feeling are people like Serge Benhayon who have made this their normal.
Yes it is our normal Felix. There is a real strength in choosing to make a different choice to our familiar behaviours, to break the pattern with increasing consistency. Even if we slip up along the way we are still reimprinting past choices.
It is deeply freeing and healing to recognise our ill choices and their effect on us and to value ourselves so deeply that it is impossible to continue on such a path.
Agreed Felix. The way of their being is inspirational- and oh so normal.
Linking physical and emotional hurts is such a simple, yet stark reminder about how we judge being emotionally hurt as something that needs to be covered up… allowing a wound of this kind to fester rather than treat it simply and allow the natural healing to occur.
Joel this is so true – there is a lot of shame around emotional hurts, like it is just the ’weak ones’ who feel emotional hurts, hence we learn from very young age to put on a facade and to play this game. Hence the hurts get buried in the body and carried around, which is what eventually ends up like illness and disease.
It is strange that we have made sensitivity a weakness, when what it shows is what is really going for us.
Sensitivity is indeed one of our greatest strengths, every one of us is deeply sensitive.
Yes Eva and Joel. Many of our ideals and beliefs around men, around being strong or weak actually are the drive for this perception. But in truth the clearer we are from dealing with our hurts and the more we allow ourselves to feel, we are actually stronger.
I wonder if this belief that it’s shameful to be sensitive, to show our vulnerability, has come about as a result of a reaction from all the people who felt confronted by this expression of truth. Not wanting to feel the truth in what was being expressed, it was jeered at and shown to be ‘weak’, not a desirable trait. This seems to have been a common pattern for us as a way of dealing with things we do not, in truth, want to deal with.
Yes Joel, it is much better to tend to emotional hurts as soon as they come up. Hurts are much more difficult to treat when they are buried under layers of justification, blame, resentment, denial, and habitual avoidance. All these things make the hurt seem bigger than it actually is; our daily choices are about avoiding hurts and become our life.
I found the same Bernard, they kind of build layers on top of each other and then you find it hard to tell what started it all.
Great point Bernard, when we place layers on our hurts the true hurt becomes buried and it is harder for us to know who we are underneath that. It makes sense why so many then become identified by and through their hurts – they have lost sense of who they are in essence.
I like this analogy Joel, for undealt with emotional issues and hurts can fester and magnify and come out later in behaviours and ways we would never imagine.
Yes, it is a kind of layering effect, where the behaviour to respond to the original hurt is different to the behaviour required to cover up the hurt, which is different to the behaviour required to the hurt created by living life from the hurt that was covered up etc etc… the good news is that while we may not know the specific sequence of behaviours, at any point we can stop and begin to work back through the layers
This is spot on Joel, that is exactly what is happening and I get the vision that when we leave it to fester for too long we get ‘gang green’ and that is the reality of what we have created. It goes to that extreme that body just can’t handle it any longer and rejects such deep buried emotions.
I guess the difficulty is that it can take years and year, even lifetimes, for the gangrene to set in, so we walk around thinking that a certain level of anxiousness, frustration, anger is normal – rather than a sign that there is a wound that needs healing
I agree, Joel, we protect ourselves from being vulnerable, by hiding our emotional hurts, not realising that allowing our vulnerability is actually a great strength, particularly when we’re expressing our truth.
Sandra this is a great blog. “I am now realising that I can attend to them immediately, as I would a physical hurt. The treatment I’ve discovered is to lovingly support myself, very gently, and stay with what I am feeling.” These are very wise words. It makes me wonder why I never saw the simplicity of life in this way before…it only makes but common sense.
Staying with what you feel, means we have to be authentic, vulnerable and fragile, perhaps in situations where we like to appear to have it all together. This is what I am finding I need to consciously practice and let myself feel is normal, even if its not the norm in society right now.
You make a very simple and practical suggestion – that in the same way we care for our physical hurts we should equally care of our emotional hurts or feelings – it sounds so obvious and yet how often does the way we feel get pushed down and ignored, in a way we would never ignore a cut or broken bone.
So true to me Rebecca that I tend to ignore my emotional hurts. I have never been taught to look after my emotional hurts other than that they will be healed by time, that time is healing all our wounds. But what I now know is that in fact these hurts are not healed at all over time but instead buried in my body to surface in a later stage as a ailment or disease.
This is true Nico. We have not learnt to deal with our emotional hurts but instead bury them pretending with the burying they go away but instead we put other hurts on top of them and think then they are gone because we don’t feel the original hurt anymore. Really just adding more hurts on a pile of hurts…
Hmm, yes mostly that is the advice given for emotional hurts- that they were healed over time. It’s seems as though many have lost the touch in how to handle emotional hurts. Being with them and accepting them is a great place to start.
So well exposed – time heals all wounds – and yet, when reincarnation is considered, nothing is ever healed unless it is brought out in the open and looked at, and so although that issue may lie buried in this life, it will resurface in another.
As you say Janina, this becomes hurt upon hurt, layer upon layer and before we know it we have lost all trace of where this started at its root.
So that is what we do as the intelligence we say we are, that time will heal all our wounds but with that we do ignore that we are living in a world where everything is energy and with that, that we are energy too, so that all that we feel, think or otherwise express in our bodies is energy. We can either connect to an energy that belongs to our being and will nurture us, but we also can connect to an energy that will abuse us and will cause illness and disease because our bodies have to find ways of discarding these. So burying our hurt, which are the cause of letting the abusive energy in, is not that a wise thing to do. A true intelligent person would take the responsibility for choosing to connect to the nurturing energy instead that will assist in healing all our wounds because of our own choice.
Well said Nico. If this was the case in hospital and a wound was not healing, then everything possible would be done to support the healing process.
Pushing down and ignoring our hurts seems to be a common way of (not) dealing with them. This has made me to ponder why this is. On a physical, particle level, hurts do not feel good, as they are counter to the spaciousness and oneness we naturally are. This may be one reason why we bury them and pile food, distractions, more emotions etc on them so we can’t feel them. There is also a sense of social shame, that we are not supposed to get hurt or let others see we are hurt. I know as a kid I was taught to put on a brave face and mask what I am feeling. This seems to be a consciousness that affects us all, and is part of the game to keep us small and stuck in our hurts, instead of knowing the stupendousness of who we are.
What you describe here Fiona, feels like a consciousness of ignorance to the fact that we live in a world where everything is energy. With this consciousness we are commonly fooling ourselves in pretending that those emotional hurts do not exist.
I loved what you have shared Janina as I am realising as I read this blog that we have layers of hurts. The original, deepest hurt is the one we don’t want to go near. It feels too big, too painful (and without that hurt our spirit will lose its grip on controlling us). So we create layers of decoy hurts, which we are more willing to look at but keeps us going round in circles, never getting to the bottom of the original hurt that affects every way we are in life.
I agree Rebecca, and I have found often the emotional hurts are the hardest to deal with, at least the physical ones are obvious for all to see and deal with.
We can carry and hide emotional hurts around for our whole life. We can also defend and protect them yet we would never deny healing a physical ailment. We would ensure we do everything possible to address it.
It is interesting Annie how you said we would never deny healing a physical ailment as I know many people, myself included who have forged ahead when the body is physically hurt. The motto ‘no pain no gain’ comes to mind. I feel that it is surprisingly common especially for men to power on when their body is hurt or injured rather than to stop and address it until their body literally makes them. For many now this is changing but it still, in many cases, takes a lot to get a man to go and see a doctor.
and perhaps thats the point James, that because our hurts don’t have a physical appearance to them necessarily they are easier to overlook or brush aside, as they are often less ‘in your face’ so to speak. I agree, that even so, our hurts do not heal of their on accord ‘with time’ when they are not attended to with care just as we would a physical cut or bruising.
True James. People often comment on the physical ones. The emotional ones however, people try to skip over in fear of having to recognise and deal with their own.
It is like if we cannot see it somehow we can ignore it mentally in our mind, well mine anyway, has liked to adopt. After all if I can’t see the effects directly how can it be bad? Yet if everything is energy, which we know it is then everything we do or think has an effect not only on ourselves but also on everybody else.
Well said James – sometimes it is easy to believe there is nothing there, as there are no visible bruises or cuts – and yet the hurts we feel are very much real, and need a different tool kit to plasters and painkillers. What Universal Medicine has given me is a fool proof took kit to begin to connect back to me, and in the process, deal with all the hurts that are not me.
I fully agree Rebecca and have found the same. Universal Medicine has gifted me with the tools to overcome and deal with quite literally anything and everything the world has thrown at me. I now have no excuse not to be the exquisite deeply loving and tender man that I naturally am.
So agree James, as the emotional hurts are less evident to others and we often feel that we are the only ones to feel them, yet all hurts are felt, we can just choose to bury them under a facade that everyone can see through. What Sandra shares shows us quite practically how we can begin to allow ourselves the opportunity to heal these hurts, it just begins with allowing yourself to honour what you feel.
I agree Jade, ‘it just begins with allowing yourself to honour what you feel’. Whist it may seem daunting at first it is well worth it. We just have to remember we are all love 1st and foremost.
Indeed the symptoms are more obvious in physical hurts and we seek relief. However we don’t always look at what emotional issues might have contributed to our physical hurts and bury our emotional hurts in the same way.
As a humanity so preoccupied with what our senses can prove and verify through what we experience with them, perhaps it is not so surprising that we do not pay as much attention to the wounds we cannot see. But the truth is that we are discovering that not only do those invisible wounds hurt us in ways that we act out on for the rest of our days, but that they actually end up causing physical problems when they are left unattended.
They sure can Naren. So often a ‘minor’ emotional scare 10-15years down the line can end up in a serious illness if left undealt with. I have personally found that a simple comment can alter the way I move, act, speak and see myself.
Indeed, James. The undealt with abuse can have more impact upon our life than the abuse itself.
It sure can Naren – it can affect people for their entire lives and can morph them into a completely different person. It is a bit scary at 1st when you look back and see how subtle comments or gestures towards you have changed the way you view life and have then moulded your life to be afterwards. I know there have been many instances I have traced back to where I changed my expression to fit in with others.
Same here, James. We can be masters at fitting in, looking for verbal and non-verbal clues from others to make sure that we are meeting others’ expectations, and avoiding the dreaded rejection.
I know I became a master at fitting in and playing the game to show everyone that I was doing well. Yet the reality is, before I met Serge Benhayon and became a student of Universal Medicine, of The Way of the Livingness, I was lost and was only putting on a ‘brave’ face. I was unhappy and discontent but was doing my best to get through life rather than actually enjoy life.
I find it amazing the level of delusion that so many of us live with, all the while convincing ourselves that this is ok and perfectly normal. Strip it all away and what is revealed is just how huge we actually are, and how much joy there actually is to be lived.
It sure is crazy and such a warped way to live, yet as you say so many of us live this way. The more we start to say, hang on a second this is not who we truly are, then the more other people will also come to the same realisations that we have. What we ‘think’ is a normal way of living is far from it.
The only reason the insanity is allowed to continue is because we are finding comfort in numbers. Stopping and having the realisation that this is not who we truly are means that we have to step away momentarily while we actually feel where we are at in ourselves. Slowly then we begin to see how connected we are to everyone, and them to us, and always have been.
It is in these moments of stopping that we can create the space to fully see what is actually going on. Otherwise it is all too easy to continue on with blinkers thinking everything is ok.
‘We can carry and hide emotional hurts around for our whole life. We can also defend and protect them’ …. this struck a chord with me, Annie. I can remember feeling very hurt and holding onto that hurt by choosing to play the victim. It seems so ridiculous now, as not only was I accepting, on some level, what the other person had done to me, I was hoping that by ‘being the victim’ it would shame them into apologising, which, of course rarely happened as the other person had moved on and as they weren’t psychic, they had no idea about my expectation on them to ‘react’ in a certain way …. hence, my hurt just got a whole lot worse and I’m now just as responsible as the other person. The games we play!
I know what you mean Alison the games we play with others and with ourselves are crazy and only serve to further separate us.
James, its much easier to speak of a physical ache, pain or illness, we rarely vocalise our hurts, not even to ourselves. I also observe that people find it easier to relate to physical illness than those of the mind or emotions.
I agree as well Kehinde, physical things our eyes can see but somehow we have to prove an emotional illness which makes it even worse and further compounds the emotions. It is almost like we have to prove we are not making it up.
Yes James, I have found this too, and it is interesting to reflect on why we hold onto the emotional ‘hurts’ so stubbornly. I am beginning to see for me, it is because there is a level of responsibility that I have not been willing to go to and a level of love that I have been holding back from, because to take the next step means I would have to also relinquish the self and its identitfication with the hurts I have created..
It is a big one Annie letting go of the self and the seemingly self identification with everything we do. The more I see life and expression as energy the more detached I am with other people – ie. I do not take things as personally as know it is not them saying it rather an energy coming through them. As soon as I think it is them saying it I am completely gone in reaction and hurt.
I agree James. We are so good at burying and pretending our emotional hurts don’t exist that we may not be able to initially pinpoint exactly what our hurt is. As Sandra has shared we need to be very gentle with ourselves in the process and observe what is going on to gradually uncover the hurt. Going into self-bashing or blame only kneads us further away.
It is fascinating Fiona as self-bashing and blame are almost instant reactions. Yet as you say they take us further away. The more we see everything as energy and an outplay of energy the less pressure we will put on ourselves to be perfect.
That is so true Rebecca we have layers upon layers of hurts we have accumulated that we do not address and yet the care and attention we deal with physical pain is completely different.
And we do have an understanding that there is this pain – we have counselling and psychology and psychiatry – we achknowlage mental health issues, and yet we only look at them from the point of view of healing the physical – anti depressants for example, which are needed, but don’t make up the whole picture. If the pain or issue is not literally physical then another method is needed – one that deals with healing the hurt
Agreed Rebecca. Physical hurts are often very obvious and also visible to another, but the truth is, even though we don’t see our hurts like we would see say a bleeding wound, broken bone etc., we can still feel them – in ourselves and in another. Do we then add to this complication by denying or avoiding the fact that we ‘do’ feel these things, and if so, it also opens the question… “Why?”…
I agree – and I think many people turn to drugs and alcohol and self harm to attempt to deal with the way they are feeling, to release the tension and build up of things things they can’t see but can definitely feel. Making the pain physical is easier to deal with because while we pretend that pain and those feeling that are not physical don’t occur, we don’t have a tool kit of how to healthily deal with them.
Well said, Angela …. given our ability to read energy, we can clearly feel when someone is saying something from a place of hurt and we equally know this for ourselves too, if we are honest. It feels like all the protection we’ve been walking around in has deterred us from being open and honest with each other. The more real we are in our day to day lives with ourselves and others, the more we can support each other to address our hurts.
A very true point. What I have discovered since I have been dealing with my hurts as they come along ( as best as I can at the time) is that often there are many layers to them. Now I allow myself to feel situations as fully as I can at the time, nominate what I have registered and read and then reflect on it or share it a little later when a moment presents to unpack it as best I can.
Well said – there can be so much to learn when we stop and look at whats going on and why we feel this way – just this morning I had a lesson to learn about anxiety and its effect on me – how through worrying about forgetting to do something I am far more likely to forget to do it – and this in turn leads me back to responsibility. Looking at this helps me to deal with the anxiety, rather than just leaving it and getting on with it.
I agree, Johanna, there is layer upon layer, upon layer …. maybe one reason we are so reluctant to deal with our hurts is that to do so, we must take responsibility that we have brought this on ourselves. It isn’t something someone else has ‘done’ to us, we are equally responsible, maybe even fully responsible, that hurts!
This feels really healing to do in gentle steps. To allow ourselves the time and breathing space is crucial, just like we do for an actual physical wound once we have attended to and dressed it.
So true Rebecca we have been taught to tough it out emotionally and not show that we are hurt by another’s words or actions. We have also learnt to protect ourselves by not showing our hurts however this means that we suppress our feelings but they do not go away.
I agree – while we all walk around protecting and waiting for someone else to let their guard down first, we will be forever in protection, and what we feel will not be acknowledged to be dealt with
It is a great point you make, Sandra, just because we can’t see the hurt with our eyes, doesn’t mean it’s any less impact-full on our bodies, in fact, maybe we are exacerbating the hurt further by not addressing it at the moment we feel it. Allowing it to fester is possibly increasing the ‘pain’ to our bodies which will continue to grow like a sore, until it’s addressed. This sore may not show on the outside of our bodies, but it will show itself eventually, in some way that causes us to stop and feel the consequence of that choice to do nothing all those years ago.
It is great to be able to express how we feel and that can create immense changes in our lives. Old, deeply buried hurts are harder to recognise but they can taint all our relationships and it’s good to let them go too.
With all the mental health issues in society today you would think one of our main focus’s would be on this topic, making it as open and honest as possible and the emphasis being for us all to be able to express openly so things don’t get bottled up. We all are starting to realise that most ailments or illnesses have a root cause in not addressing our hurts and issues.
Sandra your brilliant sharing really inspired me to feel much deeper into the truth of how I can instantly respond to an outside hurt/wound In seeking medical support/attention this comes about quite naturally but, when feeling emotionally hurt or go into reaction I do not always apply instantly that same love and tender care to those deep inner feelings of which no band aid can heal. Yes we truly deserve the utmost love and attention at every moment, in whatever way is needed.
This blog’s a beauty! That old trick of seeing before feeling allows us the choice to not heal hurts that really actually do leave us with huge scars. Every hurt that we feel, whether seen or unseen in the physical deserves our utmost love and care because every inch of us is love.
Wow Sandra this is a beautiful reflection and sharing about healing our hurts and the importance of this living this would change the world with how we are with each other and the knowing that “We are precious beings that deserve the utmost love and attention at every moment, in whatever way is needed.” is simply divine as we are too.
Every time an emotional hurt gets healed, a step closer to loving responsibility is made.
‘So, why wouldn’t I ‘treat’ myself in the same way with my emotional hurts and reactions?’ Great question Sandra and I feel there could be many reasons for this but right at the bottom I can feel that when I choose to not treat myself in the same way, I am choosing irresponsibility.
‘The main point is that I don’t turn it on myself and continue to compound the hurt by adding the fuel of uncertainty, self-doubt, self-criticism, resentment and anger toward myself or the other person.’ Thank you Sandra for asking the question about why we avoid dealing with emotional hurts and for exposing the harm this creates for us and others. Being willing to just sit and feel or share with someone else what is going on is so powerful if we are open to allowing the healing. In the past I have chosen to nurse my hurts with self-pity thus allowing them to get bigger and colour my whole life which increased the protected way I approached other people, especially anyone who I perceived to have hurt me in the past. The impact of dealing with stuff as it arises and being willing to look at past hurts is so healing for everyone.
I also have so many times put my tail between my legs and tried to hide from or ignore my hurts. I can feel in my effort to avoid those hurts I make myself small, rather than staying connected to my grandness and then attending to them with love and deep care.
‘the main point is that i do not turn on myself’ – or others I would add. This is very true as by doing so we are indulging in something that is not true. The simplicity of simply feeling, nominating and letting go is a challenge to the part of us that wants to identify with the hurt and the struggle.
Thank you Sandra for this blog, an emotional and/or energetic wound is still a wound and deserves to be addressed. The world may not see these as wounds (yet) but that doesn’t mean that we are not being harmed. Pretending it’s not there and carrying on as normal simply doesn’t work and if the wound is on or in our body then we can support it to heal. This highlights how we can be our own practitioners by being with our bodies.
That is so simple Sandra, thank you. To bring equal awareness to our physical hurts and emotional hurts makes so much sense and you are correct, we think nothing of ensuring we address a physical injury, but so often bury and ignore our emotional pain. How healing it is to bring equal importance to both and empower us to tend to and nurture our emotional hurts in the same way. It certainly does stop them from festering and cuts the usual bitterness and resentment that subsequently arises and brings a refreshing honesty back into our lives.
This has been a big change for me also, I do not ‘fuel’ the hurt they way I once did….”The main point is that I don’t turn it on myself and continue to compound the hurt by adding the fuel of uncertainty, self-doubt, self-criticism, resentment and anger toward myself or the other person.” My whole life was directed by my reactions of being hurt, they still come and I still sometimes react but it is less and so I do not self-bash myself , it was a habit of mine to feel hurt and then berate myself for feeling this way. The cycle is being broken because I am loving in my everyday presence.
Thank you Sandra. The simplicity of your blog is profound. ‘We are precious beings that deserve the utmost love and attention at every moment, in whatever way is needed.’ Gorgeous to read this sentence which applies to us all.
So true, why do we attend to a cut with care and efficiency and yet let our emotional hurts linger and fester. I’ve done that and I am learning to look at them and heal them, so they don’t stay buried. When something comes up in my body I am more present and more open to looking at it and why it maybe there, because when I have, it has been let go of and I have healed. We fear looking at our hurts, we tell ourselves they are too big, in fact they are minuscule in the scale of our beauty, love and light.
Beautifully said Samantha – ‘We fear looking at our hurts, we tell ourselves they are too big, in fact they are minuscule in the scale of our beauty, love and light.’ There is no-thing greater than the Love we are and it is through our connection to our Love that we have the confidence to address and heal our hurts and let go of all that which is not of Love.
To treat our emotional hurts with the same respect and regard as our physical one seems so obvious when put in the way you have, Sandra, and such wise advice.
This is a completely acceptable approach to how life can be lived. Appreciating the ability to heal our emotional hurts comes from being prepared to let go all our ideals and beliefs so we can return to being the Sons of God! A very power-full blog Sandra.
To not ignore or deny what we feel is key to go on and grow.
Absolutely Sandra, you say so much in so few words.
This is a powerful question, Sandra, of why we don’t look after our emotional hurts as much as the physical. If we dealt with them at the time and gave ourselves a bit of space to do so, our emotional reactions would not get buried, fester or blow up out of proportion.
In the past, how many people have had a hurt arise from someone or thing in your day? If not resolved you have a lousy fitful nights sleep and wake up with a busy mind. As you have said Sandra the longer you leave it, it will continue to feaster under the surface leaving only three options; leave it and let it eat you up, reach a tipping point and explode or bring it up deal with it and just goes away. Or, nip it in the bud and don’t leave it un-dealt with before you go to sleep!
Great blog Sandra, if we do not attend to our hurts, they take over and start to run our lives.
Its an arresting image – if we could see the emotional hurts that we are all carrying I suspect the world would look much like the set of a particularly horrific zombie movie!
Or we’d have a long line of suitcases and old bags dragging along with us.
What is interesting is I’ve taken the abuse a step further, and there are plenty of times when there has been a physical hurt which I’ve ignored or not taken to the Doctor. Too busy, too numb, too protected to want to look at even that simple a situation, its been a long road to giving myself the time and space to realise how sensitive I am, and how caring about how I feel is as equally important to caring for myself physically.
When we bury a hurt it is still there carried in our body until we stop, feel the hurt and understand the cause of the unease and deal with the issue either by talking about it with someone or realising that we have created an imaginary hurt and let it go. When we let go of a buried reaction or hurt it is like stepping out into the sunshine with a lightness in our step.
Sandra, your sharing has supported me in understanding the hurt I have allowed to come up lately and I could see that the hurt occured because I have invested in something and as such I was not detached but there was self in it. My feeling is hurt can only occur when there is self in it, when we doubt, are insecure etc. already in the first place and look for recognition because of this. As such, for me, it is a great reminder to see where I am still thinking I’m not appreciative of myself.
We are precious beings and we are so much more than our hurts, and I know for myself the human part of me likes to indulge…. but the more I allow myself to walk with the grace I am, this no longer can hold.
Beautiful point jacqmcfadden04, we are indeed so much more than our hurts, in fact we are not our hurts at all. You are spot on that we tend to indulge in what we perceive as our hurts, choosing not to deal with them… it is a good ruse for not being all of who we actually are, if we are honest enough.
And it is this festering of un-dealt with hurts and physical ailments that our society is now reflecting as a common and very untrue way of being with ourselves.
We certainly wouldn’t leave a festering wound untended to become gangrenous and yet we are in effect allowing the equivalent with our emotional hurts.
A fabulous sharing Sandra and I can so relate to all you share. It took me many years to understand what healing my hurts actually meant and then probably another couple of years to understand the how. But as you say it is very simply allowing ourselves to feel and be honest with all that is going on for us, giving ourselves space to ponder and sharing with another if that is supportive. This very topic has been part of our discussion in our home this week and beautifully we have been working at supporting each other in this and holding the love we have be the foundation. I love this sentence and the truth it carries . . .
‘We are so worth caring for, healing all our hurts, emotional or physical.’
“We are precious beings that deserve the utmost love and attention at every moment, in whatever way is needed.”- so true and when we carry this out our own connection deepens in love and we can then bring this to others. Simple beauty-full.
I love how simply you have put this, Sandra – whether it is physical or emotional hurts, we are worth caring for. I can feel how so quickly hardening sets in for me not to feel the hurts, not wanting to believe that I am hurt – and this goes to emotional as well as some less pronounced physical pains. I like how you have said “don’t turn it on myself and continue to compound the hurt by adding the fuel of uncertainty, self-doubt, self-criticism, resentment and anger toward myself or the other person” – this explains so well how some of my hurts became harder and more complex to deal with.
The expansion that is shared when we honour how we are feeling and not bury it deeper, not only offers support for our healing, but also allows others the opportunity to feel held in that honesty and express too. Thank you Sandra for sharing your gorgeous blog.
Beautiful Kelly, that expansion comes from the power of honouring what we are feeling and who we truly are which offers others a reflection that they can also choose.
Absolutely Jacqueline. What we offer for all from sharing from our honesty in what we have experienced in life holds much clarity and power. We are all mirrors of life’s reflections and in that we hold a responsibility to share from our livingness. There is so much to appreciate in that too.
When we trust how we are feeling, we prove to ourselves (and others) that the love we have inside is bigger than any problem.
Hi Simon, yes and that is such a beautiful point for us all to remember. Our love is grand and we are not our hurts. It is only when we identify with our hurts as being apart of who we are that we hold ourselves as less.
Absolutely simon, when we choose to be the love we are, there are no problems, only the space to move forward with that love.
So true Kelly. When we heal our hurts we allow more of our true loving selves to be expressed in the world. Our reflection of the Love we are then becomes a blessing and an inspiration to others to also choose to address that which holds them back from being the Love we all are.
The main point is that I don’t turn it on myself and continue to compound the hurt by adding the fuel of uncertainty, self-doubt, self-criticism, resentment and anger toward myself. I am learning to not give myself a double whammy in this way and take responsibility by stopping myself and feel how I am moving and what I am taking with me when I move now. I love what you share in your blog Sandra, simple and very beautiful.
“to feel how I am moving and what I am taking with me” These steps are so key Julie, thoughts magnified by movement.
These steps are key lucindag, to moving in quality and with the love that you are, or not. One nourishes you and the other drains you.
There is just one life, as life is not meant to be reduced to compartments. Everything matters and everything affects everything else. When we have joy in one area in life and not all areas, do we cap ourselves of our deep joy? This goes the same with appreciation, honesty, truthfulness, acceptance, harmony, love…life is deeply inspiring that as a human being we are expressing back to the majesty that we are.
If we were taught the importance of this at school and the effect it has not only on ourselves but on all we meet, society may not look like it does today where people appear to have a myriad of coping skills trying to keep a lid on everything they have not dealt with.
Yes, when you look at it today, most if not everyone is living and reacting from their hurts because they have not dealt with them, so everything is done with a level of fear and caution in case they get hurt again.
I loved this Sandra for it has a simple yet profound message – that no matter the ailment, physical or otherwise, we should commit to healing it because we are worth looking after.
Sandra, what a great way to show it, we treat our physical hurts, without fail and do what’s needed to address them and yet we ignore and nurse our emotional hurts keeping them going rather than doing what we can to address the hurt so that it heals. It’s like we don’t let them heal, the image I have is of picking a scabbed wound so it bleeds anew rather than applying healing ointment to allow it to recover. You’ve just shown me clearly that any hurts I have I’m actively not healing them, I’m not addressing them and I’m choosing to keep them, and my body is an amazing instrument which heals – so the question then becomes how am I getting in the way of my own healing? And why would I actively choose to keep a hurt going?
What a great analogy Sandra, one that I’m sure so many can attest to. This keeps it very simple, the same as attending to an injury or cut, we can ask ourselves ‘What support do I need now?’ or ‘What is my next step with this?’.
Very true Sandra, seeing an emotional hurt the same way as a physical one, and treating them both accordingly and equally is really important as you share. It really is the visibility factor isn’t it, i.e. not seeing the wound of an emotion …. just because you don’t see it, doesn’t mean you can’t feel it in the body, and therefore it doesn’t either exist or hurt. I find the more open i am just to the awareness of, ‘to feel more’, hurts that come up register far more quicker or more distinctly offering the chance to heal quicker too.
Yes agreed Zofia, the more open we are, meaning the more open our bodies are… without hardness or protection, the easier it is to feel when we have been hurt.
I often find it bemusing that we do not as a society regard emotional hurts in the same light as we do physical ailments. This is despite the fact that for the most part, the repurcussions of a physical wound are short term, and easily traced. The ramifications of undealth with emotional hurts can lead to a lifetime of pain, as well as ramifications that included chronic depression, and in extreme circumstances – suicide. Now that may seem like an extreme thing to suggest, that emotional hurts are actually more a burden on society than physical ailments. However, not when you consider that suicide is the greatest cause of death in young and middle aged men – who interestingly enough are probably the part of society who are least willing to acknowledge what hurts them.
Adam, your comment has brought home the extent to which our emotional hurts can damage us, and how physical hurts pale in comparison when we look at how long we can suffer with these unseen and unacknowledged wounds. We definitely need to talk more openly about what hurts us.
This brought tears to my eyes this morning – “We are precious beings that deserve the utmost love and attention at every moment, in whatever way is needed”. Thank you.
I absolutely agree – we are indeed heavenly and precious beyond words.
If we were to truly consider how many of us are literally walking wounded with hurts upon hurts cemented in our bodies, because we have not chosen to address them, we’d be flabbergasted. We’ve literally numbed ourselves to dismiss this actual fact. At the same time, it is crazy and very sad that this is how we as a human race choose to live, with our hurts in our back pocket and deep within our bodies preventing us from opening up and letting in the enormous warm love we all innately are.
Giving ourselves that deserved “utmost love and attention” in every moment means that a hurt is something we may see, feel, observe, but not something that enters us. Well before it can take us into any reaction it can bring a deeper sense of understanding of the choices we all make and those that are available to us.
Yes a good point Simon, the more loving we have been with ourselves and others, the less likely we are to react to something that occurs. This is because in choosing to be loving, we create a little more space between us and what goes on around us. This gives a moment to see clearly, and hence to understand… which means we are far less likely to react.
Thank you, Sandra. I agree it is imperative that we treat our emotional and psychological hurts with the same care and attention that we treat our physical hurts. If we break our arm, for example, we would not hesitate to go and get it treated. Why do we find it so hard to go and see someone about our internal pain? If we do not deal with our hurts they dominate our lives and affect every relationship that we have. They literally sabotage us and prevent us from living a life of joy that is naturally our birthright.
Yes great point Elizabeth… if we gave our hurts half the care and attention we give our physical ailments, we would be a lot better off. I have always found that dealing with hurts is never as bad as we think it’s going to be… and the pay-off has an enormous, ongoing, ripple effect.
You are right … we are so worth caring for. I love what you have shared here ‘We are precious beings that deserve the utmost love and attention at every moment, in whatever way is needed.’ I have felt this for me in the last few days, in that I have not loved or do not cherish and look after my body as much as it would like to be cared and loved. Work in progress 💕
How simple is that Sandra – just attend to the hurts we feel at the time they are happening. To take a stop moment, express how we feel to ourselves and to others if appropriate. The validation of what we feel is one of the most powerful attributes we can foster in our lives and also reflect to others. This is bringing issues ‘out of the cave’ into the light of understanding and resolution.
Love the comparison you make here Sandra of a physical wound and an emotional hurt. Indeed if we don’t wisely attend to a physical condition it can fester and get worse and similarly with an emotional issue! It doesn’t mean we have to indulge in the issue or hold onto it but be willing to look at what’s there and allow ourselves to heal it.
That is a great understanding, it’s true Sandra, we know that we’d heal and tend a physical wound immediately, and not let it get worse or fester, so it makes perfect sense to do the same with an emotional wound too. You are spot on, we are so precious, we are very worth caring for.
I agree Gillrandall, we are precious, and very worth caring for, in fact it is a true responsibility to do so. Therefore it does make perfect sense to attend to an emotional wound and give it as much attention as necessary as we do to our physical hurts. Indeed the emotional hurts if not attended to may end up effecting our physical health as well anyway.
I just love this, it came today at a time when I was feeling a little bewildered by some things that were going on in my body as a result of a pathway of thinking that I rarely allow to enter now. Stopping and connecting to my body and allowing myself to feel the unpleasant feeling and recognising how I had gotten to that without judging myself for it made all the difference, it began to release and I came to a new and valuable understanding. Your first sentence below is the first understanding I came to as in the past I did not do this and your second confirmed my choice to do the same, and supported a loving understanding towards myself.
“I am now realising that I can attend to them immediately, as I would a physical hurt. The treatment I’ve discovered is to lovingly support myself, very gently, and stay with what I am feeling.”
“We are so worth caring for, healing all our hurts, emotional or physical.” I so agree Sandra, opening up to our hurts and not burying them or letting them fester has been a huge learning. I had never really realised how many hurts I carried until I gave them space and allowed them to unfold and re-surface without the usual reaction. This has given the opportunity for some amazing changes in my life, which like you I have a forever deepening appreciation of Serge Benhayon and all that he has shared and presented.
I agree Sandra we can certainly attend to our emotional hurt in equal tenderness, care and gentleness as our physical hurts. This is a great reminder that the same quality of care also needs to be applied to our emotional hurts, attending to them immediately as we would with our physical hurts. I realise I haven’t been treating them with the same attentiveness and quality, so awesome to be aware of this.
An important read this morning as I had hurts come up and there is the tendency to self bash and condemn myself. I like the part you shared that you wouldn’t let physical wounds go unhealed and its the same with emotional hurts.
Awesome blog Sandra. I love what you’ve highlighted, it is so true that most of us treat our emotional hurts very different to how we’d treat a physical hurts. Just because we cannot physically see our hurts doesn’t mean they are not there. They are certainly easier to cover up, or choose to forget about them because we and other people cannot physically see them, and therefore it’s easier to pretend they are not there. They do not heal until we choose to heal them. Unlike a physical hurt our body does its natural healing, whereas with our emotional hurts they require us to take responsibility for the healing process, otherwise it sits in our body and fester. This is why denying and burying our emotional hurts are so harmful, to ourselves and to others. By choosing to hold onto our emotional hurts it is extremely harmful to our body and not only that our choice to not heal can also lead to transferring or dumping our hurts onto others, this is how abuse is perpetuated. By not taking responsibility to heal our hurts.
Thank you Sandra, what you say is true, it does not seem to make sense that we get hurt and then we choose to bury those hurts, rather than deal with them at the time. Serge Benhayon was the first to make sense of this for me, to explain and offer a deeper understanding of what underpins our psychology and make-up. The choice is still mine whether I choose to go there or not, but at least it is then from a clear choice, rather than thinking I am ‘victim’ to what has happened and that I can’t deal with it in some way.
True and choosing to remain a victim of life and circumstance heals nothing and only adds to the ill that we carry.
Yes, and keeps us trapped in the same cycle we find ourselves in, repeating over and over the same scenarios, feelings, reactions etc. Healing is profound and an out-and-out game-changer. If this hasn’t happened, then l’d hazard a guess and say that true healing hasn’t occurred, and hurts are still being held onto.
Absolutely True and wise words. Back to the drawing board…and hence the beginning from where it all stemmed is a needed start. How many of us carry hurts from young for the duration of our lives?…and yet we can rewind further and discover that such patterns we have carried for lives prior. How freeing to truly heal and discard our hurts once and for all lives.
Yes a great point Deborah, I remember the first time I realised that I was responsible for being hurt, and that it wasn’t what my parents ‘did’ that caused it. I felt liberated, and no doubt they did too. My relationships with them flourished from that point too because I could love them fully, without holding anything against them for the perceived hurts I thought they’d been responsible for.
It becomes quite a blend of hurt upon hurt and before long we cannot discern who’s hurt it is. What you present here is indeed wise – to own our part of the exchange – to take responsibility for what we have added, for our reactions and misperceptions and the lack of understanding that we had at the time for ourselves and the other.
Yes and frees up the other party to then also deal with their own part because they no longer feel they are being blamed. The domino effect is quite remarkable in my experience.
Yes true, it all gets very reactive and explosive when we play the blame game and neither of us grows or heals with such dynamics.
Absolutely Deborah, regardless of how long a discussion goes, if it contains blame, from either party, then it has ultimately not resolved anything. Without 100% responsibility for what has hurt us, and why we have reacted, there is no true healing and no true forward movement.
Very clearly expressed Jenny -Without 100% responsibility for what has hurt us, and why we have reacted, there is no true healing and no true forward movement.
Yes, and it’s amazing how effectively we can think we’re ‘managing’ life too, but not going anywhere in terms of evolving from our patterns and behaviours.
A great point Sandra about the way we deal with physical ailments versus emotional hurts. Burying an emotional hurt is like pretending we haven’t cut ourselves when we can see we have.
Thank you Sandra for a simply lovely sharing, I too would pay attention to the outer hurts but when it came to the emotional hurts I would just want to bury them, because at the time they did not fit in to the picture I had for myself the so call “good” . These days I am becoming much more honest and most times able to express what I am feeling, this is so freeing, to be able to express without blame and guilt being in the mix.
‘I am now realising that I can attend to them immediately, as I would a physical hurt.’ – The simplicity in the analogy of the Physical hurt and an emotional hurt brings the understanding of how simple the choice can be and how honouring it is. What is it about this that it requires a conscious choice to ‘surrender’ and allow? I am aware that there is great power in the body and in the ‘physicality’ of the body because when see a physical wound we are accepting and loving of others and ourselves because it is physically evident. When the hurt is felt energetically, it cannot be seen but is deeply felt but we choose to allow ‘a thought process’ to come in to negate the truth of what has been felt. The power is with the body. We can choose to bring treatment via the body through our movements for the other hurts felt energetically. Thank you Sandra for bringing more understanding of how we allow anything felt energetically to be interfered with, negated, overlooked or buried by the thoughts we allow in our head – truly awesome.
Such simple but such profound advice about how to begin to heal our hurts: “attend to them immediately, as I would a physical hurt”, but how many of us actually do that? Instead we go into the reaction and if this reaction is allowed to go unchecked the emotions continue to grow and fester in the body eventually bursting out, often in the most inappropriate way. Unhealed hurts hold us back from living the fullness of our lives and instant attention is the most loving prescription for healing them.
Sandra this is a great analogy ! “There is no way I would just let the hurt go uncared for, as I know this would leave the ailment to fester and make me feel very unwell. So, why wouldn’t I ‘treat’ myself in the same way with my emotional hurts and reactions?” this is so true, I love it when someone presents something in a way you can’t deny the simplicity of life.
I just had an experience as you describe one where I would have in the past gone into terrible shame but rather I faced it, got the support needed to see where I was blind and bought understanding to myself and the source of my reaction it has been very exposing but also deeply healing.
This is good medicine! The ultimate blend of modern medicine and looking after the inner workings of feelings which are all intertwined so one impacts the other!
Well said Vanessa, this is the responsible rebalance that medicine today is calling for.
Having just come out of a workshop titled “Life is Medicine” with Serge Benhayon, I can only say dealing with our hurts is very good medicine.
Usually, we don’t break an arm, or cut our leg then carry on going faster with blood everywhere. Most of us would not get out a stick and hit ourselves for having this hurt. Yet this is often the reality of our way with emotional injuries as you beautifully show Sandra.
I am also touched by the title of what you have written, that in a way healing does hurt. Because we have to feel the pain we carry, even if it is not truly real, to stop and heal the origin of how this hurt ever came in.
I like what you say here Joseph. Healing hurts… being responsible and being completely honest, there is no avoiding the unavoidable.
I use to have a big bat that I used on myself (literally speaking), now it is tiny and often not there and it feels much less traumatic.
Thank you Sandra. This is such a great question to ask ourselves – Why do we attend to our physical hurts but not our emotional ones? If we didn’t attend to a fractured bone then it would no doubt get a lot worse, and everything else in our body would be knocked out of place too to accomodate the injury. It would affect all parts of our life- our thoughts, how we moved, interacted with our friends and family, how we slept etc. Is this not exactly what happens when we don’t tend to and heal our emotional hurts?
Such a beautiful appreciation of your worth Sandra and the simple parallel between our physical hurts and our emotional ones is inspiring and revealing! Thank you.
Sandra, this is so lovely to read, ‘The treatment I’ve discovered is to lovingly support myself, very gently, and stay with what I am feeling.’ I love the practicality and simplicity with which you have written here.
I love how simply you’re sharing with us how we differentiate life into 2 different kind of hurts. One we’re dealing with – the physical ones (also for many of us, only when we don’t function anymore) and the emotional ones. The way you’re describing the simplicity of dealing with emotional hurts is worth exploring and I would say educate and inspire the world with. Simple, yet deeply profound.
“The main point is that I don’t turn it on myself and continue to compound the hurt by adding the fuel of uncertainty, self-doubt, self-criticism, resentment and anger toward myself or the other person”. A big element of healing our hurts is not about the other person, but how we treat ourselves in the process. Love and understanding is the key ingredient for ourselves and for the other.
Agreed Donna, the word compound really jumps out at me – for in allowing the hurt to be part of us, we open the door to self-doubt, self criticism etc; bound by a self created emotional soup!
I love your analogy Sandra of tending to our emotional hurts with the same tenderness and care that we would a physical injury, afterall they are both aspects of the same being.
Hurt can take us over if we let it. It is so easy to go into the pain and misery and emotion of what the hurt brings, but it is far stronger, more loving, far more responsible and extremely holding to come back to love, commit to that and see beyond the illusionary hooks the hurt gives us to fall into.
Thank you Sandra for this very tender blog and your wisdom. This is something I feel to ponder on.
This is beautiful thank you and I agree that what we choose to ensure we a dealing with our hurts “may be as simple as giving myself a little space to ponder and be with me”. This feels like what is needed most, the time to actually sit down and feel what we are feeling. We have created a society that is constantly on the move with very little space what so ever to stop and actually feel what we are feeling. Even when asked by another “how are you feeling?” it’s often an automated response of “fine, great, good, ok or even not well”, but with no deep connection and expression of the details of what we are actually feeling. Because this auto pilot of responses has been going on for so long it can can take a bit of patience and surrender to actually get to what we are feeling and understand how to express it. An exercise well worth developing to open ourselves up to ourself and to everyone.
This is so true Danielle, ‘Even when asked by another “how are you feeling?” it’s often an automated response of “fine, great, good, ok or even not well”, but with no deep connection and expression of the details of what we are actually feeling. I have been aware lately that for years my automatic response to how i was feeling was ‘fine’ this was whether I was feeling sad, great, depressed, whatever was going on I did not want to share it and did not want to be honest about what was really going on and so ‘fine’ was for me not letting people in, it is only recently that I have started to be more honest and open up more about how i am truly feeling and it feels great to be honest and connect with people in this way.
The auto response is the perfect way to remain irresponsible and be numb to the communication of our body – it’s a perfect action to fight and resist evolution.
Could this auto pilot response be a reaction to the age old belief that it is selfish to deeply love, nurture and care for ourselves, I know i have often felt judged when choosing to be honest about how i really am. I remember going to dinner at a friends house, when I was asked by one of the guests how i was, I very honestly told them that i had been feeling depressed and low, the room went very quiet and most people looked very uncomfortable and ignored my comment completely apart from one woman who came up to me and thanked me for being so honest as she had felt similarly low yet unable to be up front about it.
The response and actions of society are asking us to not express how we feel, so it’s not only not encouraged, but it is fought and rejected when we do. No wonder we grow up disconnected to our feelings and in the illusion of everything ‘good’ or ‘better’.
Yes…and doesn’t this reflect our disconnection to our bodies and being that most are operating with on a daily basis.
Our head can say we are well and great and ok as quickly as the question is asked and a response required of us, yet how many of us go to the body, feel where we are at and connect to the Truth we all know?
Living in an automatic response from our heads instead of feeling our body show’s where we are aligned to. Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine are inspiring a way of living that is connected with our inner-most essence and in-turn our body. When we live from here there is no automatic response to override the body. When we catch ourselves living from our head we need to be truthful that we haven’t been connected to our essence and instead have been living stimulated from the outer world for the betterment of self.
‘We are so worth caring for, healing all our hurts, emotional or physical. There is no separateness to how we truly benefit from treating ourselves and each other when it comes to caring for our wellbeing.’ – This is very true Sandra, to truly care for ourselves on every level is the best life insurance we can ever give ourselves.
Thank you for sharing, Sandra. I can feel another level of self love in what you have presented. Accepting ourselves in our vulnerabilities allows us to go deeper.
So true Anne… being vulnerable is a strength, not a weakness as we are often led to believe, and certainly allows us to go deeper in our relationships with ourselves and with others.
In the past when I would be emotionally hurt, I did not say a word anymore. It was a form of blaming the other for what was happening and I indulged in sadness or resentment. In a way I locked myself up and how longer I stayed in this the harder it was to come out and communicate and feel what was truly going on in my body.
I can so relate to this Annelies, exactly what I did as well – we lock ourselves up in a self-built prison, righteously and proudly holding on to something that does not and has never served us in any way.
My hurts are often written all over my face, whether that be as sadness, or as hardness. What a blessing it is to be as honest as I can with my hurts, and then they can be addressed.
This is so true Annelies, the longer we hold onto our hurts the harder it is to say what we reacted to in the first place.
Yes Judith and Julie and it is stubbornly holding on to something and not taking any responsibility for the hurt in the first place but also making it worse for everyone by imposing on others this victim mentality.
Sadness and resentment have tended to linger in my body as they are so easy to justify and often bring up sympathy in others. Realising how I have kept myself from living in full and, in truth, brought others down because of these emotions is not easy to accept but it is true. It also explains why I can react to resentment and sadness in others. Through the work with Universal Medicine I am becoming more and more aware and allowing these emotions to be released. Choosing to observe and not absorb allows me to be clear of these reactions.
And it makes us so much more vulnerable plus we are able to feel what is truly happening instead of reacting in an ‘old’ way.
We make life very complicated when we bury or stay with our hurts. What you’ve described here Sandra “I am now realising that I can attend to them immediately, as I would a physical hurt. The treatment I’ve discovered is to lovingly support myself, very gently, and stay with what I am feeling. When we truly feel we are worth supporting ourselves with love and feel what is presented to us, life becomes so much more simple.
This blog raises such a great point. If we pay dedicated attention and care for physical hurts and issues, why do we ignore the non-physical tell-tale signs that something is not alright? It appears that society has not caught up to the fact that anything not loving and not harmonious feels deeply abusive on all levels for every single person whatever they may pretend. We are all incredibly sensitive and feel everything acutely. It is time to change the ideals of society so that it is okay for everyone to tell the truth.
Agreed a great example to ponder, concerning how quick we are to deal with a cut or graze and yet we attempt to ignore the emotional hurts and pain. Something powerful to consider, we have perhaps told ourselves that they are different, but pain is pain and a hurt is a hurt, how we heal our emotional issues matters.
This blog makes me appreciate just how special Self-Care truly is and how delicate we all are. A very lovely blog Sandra.
This is lovely Matthew, I felt a lot of appreciation when I read this blog, it is clear and lived example of how being tender with ourselves, reconnects us with our divinity and supports us to heal.
Absolutely Matthew… we truly are delicate precious beings – every one of us, equally so.
I feel this way also. How deeply we must tend to our being and care for ourselves in every moment.
Self-care is the way of future health, both physical and emotional, of that there is no doubt.
You make a great point – we easily and naturally tend to our physical injuries but just as easily ignore our emotional wounds, our hurts, disappointments and defeats. But ignoring them does not mean that they go away, they sit in our body and fester, inform our every action and colour our every word. They change the way we speak and the way we walk and yet, we find it seemingly easier to push them down and keep them locked away. And it does not make sense, even if we are all doing it – there is no strength in numbers here, just a huge weakness and reluctance to heal our hurts.
Thank you Sandra for drawing a connection between physical hurts and emotional hurts. We find it easier to attend to physical hurts as they are very tangible but I agree our emotional hurts need the same and careful tending too to not let them grow into bigger issues, dis-ease and illness.
Dealing with hurts or reactions in the moment gives such simplicity to life. Then we can experience that it only needs a short moment and that we can move on with our day. A hurt or reaction lasts as long as we allow it to last.
Thank you for this reminder Mariette, a few years ago the thought came to me saying ‘You have to feel it to heal it’ – since then this has been tried and tested again and again, it works. However the next step is that we have to choose to feel and that is the key to healing. Our choices either heal or harm, but how much are we willing to feel the extent to which life is so ‘black and white’ so to speak?
Beautiful what you share here. I always say: there are two flavors, chocolate and vanilla, what do you choose? Life is no ice cream shop with 35 different flavours. Like you say, every choice is either harming or healing.
Yay to simplicity and not allowing hurts and reactions to introduce complication.
A reaction is something we have a choice about, but it is something I know I have often played victim too “A hurt or reaction lasts as long as we allow it to last.” Being more able to observe my hurts, through becoming connected with the love I naturally am has allowed me know that I am not my hurts.
Me too, I have played the victim role many times and for a very long time. Looking back at that now, it just shows how we chose to hang on to hurts and how we get identified with our hurts. It gives us recognition and attention from outside but why do we need that? Great question to ask ourselves.
Yes so true hurts can be dealt with in short moments and healed or they can drag on for days, it’s a choice we have to make.
And it feels amazing to face our hurts, learn from them and let them go – they only drag us down when we lug them around with us unhealed and interfere with our relationships and perceptions.
It sounds almost too simple to be true, but it is simple to deal with our hurts, it can however not feel easy if we are very used to them being a part of our everyday lives.
Great what you share here Heather, we are so used to living with hurts and we get so identified with them, that we cannot hardly imagine that it is possible to have a day without any hurts…because then what? Could it be that we use our hurts as an excuse to not live in full, connect with others and commit to life in full?
I agree Mariette, in being present and connected to my body I am learning to keep things vey simple and just feel what has been triggered. Without making it personal and by simply observing we can move out of it really quickly.
“There is no separateness to how we truly benefit from treating ourselves and each other when it comes to caring for our wellbeing.” I love this line, absolute truth. Generations have grown up with the belief that it is selfish to deeply love, nurture and care for ourselves, when in fact the truth is the exact opposite. It’s a responsibility, to take care of ourselves so we then reflect and live that quality with everyone else, rather than the current global trend of exhaustion, burn out and overwhelm.
Absolutely Gyl…we all have a responsibility to nurture and deeply care for ourselves – no-one else will ever love us the way we love ourselves and it is irresponsible to think otherwise.
Yes Gyl it is us being responsible that will see the turn around to the worlds normal of abuse and disregard. I simply love that the medicine is to love ourselves more! How cool is that.
We can only benefit and heal when we allow ourselves to bring love and understanding to those areas where love and acceptance is missing. This then reveals us that we can heal our hurts only when we truly see our choice for what it was (that made us feel hurt) and accept and understand that this was not love, and so we can make a new choice and heal it!
Great point Danna…we need to see our hurt first, feel and recognise this for what it is. We tend to give priority to what is before our eyes rather than what is arising within us and can be felt.
I am finding ‘space’ is the answer to everything.
love it!
Space is another word for God. I can’t wait for Serge Benhayon’s book Time Space and all of us, Book 2, Space – which will be out soon. It is going to absolutely revolutionise the world and be the hugest gift ever. Already my life changed when I read book 1, Time. My whole body is calling for a deeper experience and understanding of space. Just the fact that the book has already been written (it is currently being edited) makes it energetically available to us and it is calling me…. I can feel my arms tingling as I write this 🙂
“So, why wouldn’t I ‘treat’ myself in the same way/” this is a great question to ask, just not of a physical ailment, but many of us would often go out of our way to help another yet not do the same for ourselves, why is this? Could it be a lack of self worth?
We are certainly quick to apply the bandaid in most instance and to get on with it, life and moving away from the source of the pain as quickly as possible. We seldom stop and connect to why we are injured and our learning in this let alone consider allowing ourselves space to feel our hurts and equally reflect on this and the great learning that is being presented.
” try to ignore it by hiding from the source of the pain.” I often do this too – probably because I don’t want to admit it’s because of the choices I have made.
I can relate to this – yet trying to hide from the source of the pain is a truly unsuccessful strategy as ultimately we are the main source. Its our investments, our expectations, our irresponsibility that leads us to get hurt. If we were willing to turn to face it all, we would realise that yes there are some painful moments but they do not touch the love we have inside, and are there as lessons to highlight parts of our life where we can be more of ourselves.
This is so true Simon and that makes staying with our hurts all the simpler and easier to heal because “they do not touch the love we have inside”. We are this love, it is constantly there with us and for us. It’s when we try and stuff the hurts into us that our love gets pushed down even further and we can loose our connection a little or lot.
Great questions you are asking Gyl. I have been learning that discipline is about giving ourselves the time to deeply feel and that commitment is to honour those feelings. It has given me a whole new take on what these words mean, thanks to Serge Benhayon for sharing the true meaning of these words.
In the end I usually realize that I have created it in the first place even when I was absolutely convinced being the victim of a situation or a person´s behaviour – so as you say the choices I have made.
There is a great freedom in being aware that these things are as a result of our choices because that means we also have the freedom to make a different choice and experience different outcomes.
It is a very revealing moment when we realize that true freedom and power go hand in hand with responsibility. How often do we seek freedom by escaping from responsibility only to find ourselves disempowered? Definitely the quality of our choices defines the quality of our life.
great comments Alex and Nicola, it takes courage to admit that we are never a victim and to look at our own part in what has been created, in fact it takes great love to admit that every single thing we encounter in our lives has been created either by us directly or collectively. But at the same time it shows us the power we have that we can then put to changing the quality of our choices and thus our lives. It is this realisation , of the power we have, that is calling for the great responsibility, for what will we put our power towards? More of the same, or a life of love and harmony?
I love this opening line” “When I make a choice to bury how I am truly feeling,” it just made me realise this is exactly what I’ve been doing today. I have a tendency to go into my head to try and work things out, which is exactly the same – avoiding feeling – it makes it so much more simple, easy and truthful and far less exhausting when we do this rather than creating a life or body we want to escape.
Gyl despite knowing that what we bury has to one day be dug out its incredible how the default pattern kicks back in. Living without burying sounds like a far simpler way, but very far from the reality of the world.
Even when I deal with things or think I am dealing with them, I often later become aware that I was only scraping the surface and there is a deeper layer to look at that brings greater understanding and releases the pattern.
We tend to our physical ailments and hurts because at some point they will stop us from functioning or bring us pain we cannot avoid, with our emotional hurts we live in the illusion that if we bury them deep enough to not feel them and think them to be of the past they will no longer influence us. This is a wrong assumption as even though we may not be ware of them anymore they influence our every single choice in every single day.
Well said Carolien. Our physical hurts stop us from functioning and our emotional hurts stop us from truly expressing our love and letting others in. And when we consider that we are all feeling this all of the time, it is one big open wound that we can be walking around with.
absolutely Vicky, our emotional hurts stops us for expressing our love and letting people in. Our accumulation of hurts and grievances have built a wall that not only keeps others out but keeps the expression of who we truly are in. I do feel the latter hurts much more then any old hurt we carry.
Very true Vicky, our emotional hurts are like “big open wounds that stop us from truly expressing our love and letting others in”. When not dealt with they also magnify, impose on others, affect our bodies and manifest as physical hurts.
Indeed Carolien and by nature of being buried deeper and left to magnify within the body they then have the potential to develop into illness and disease later on in life.
Absolutely Lucinda, and this is a very important point as we need to start realising that our illness and disease comes from the way we are in life and what we hold in our body. Anything that is less than love will cause a disharmony that in time will become a disease.
So true Carolien there is no escaping the hurts but because we can’t see them with our eyes – though you can if you are honest as the way people are with thier hurts is etched in thier face, ( we as adults lose the luminosity a child’s face holds) so we can see it, we have just given up and accepted a lesser version of how we can be in the way we feel and live in the world.
I love the point you make Vanessa, as we always see and we cannot not feel where another is at so we are willingly chasing to be ‘blind’ to it. Even if we are not yet tuned into energy as much, a face, a posture, the flush of the skin, the way people walk, the look in their eyes. It is all there.
Yes Carolien, the cleverness of our human spirit, to sneakly manipulate us by thinking life is grand when tucked away are our hurts. Even worse is to arrogantly claim we happy and not hurt.
Your comment reminds me of a survey I saw about the happiness of Dutch children that said they are the happiest in the world. We can tap ourselves on the shoulder for that or we can see that what we perceive as happiness is far from joy and wellbeing when we look at the stats that tells u how many children are on medication, how many are receiving psychological support or treatment, how many are suffering bullying and cyber abuse, sexism, peer pressure and the number of suicides at an increasingly young age….
This is such a simple and great analogy, compare the physical hurts and emotional hurts. it still blows me away and how early we learn to bury our feelings and important it is to NOT do that.
Great comment Nicole – ‘how early we learn it”. Are we learning by example from everyone around us who have also ‘learnt or been taught’ without contemplation that this is how it is done? Reminds me of the initial thinking that the world was flat. Time to update our thinking mind to the wisdom and healing in our hearts.
True Sandra, time to plug in to the correct source, responsibility, and open up to understanding we are all hurt. Instead of being in reaction we can respond to what it is in us that literally keeps you from feeling great. We have lost the known fact we are so awesome every single one of us, and feeling amazing is who we are. You might not feel it and think there is no way out but trust me, trust God, trust you are a son of God equal in magnificence and feel it with every small step you make towards home. We are here to return home. Focusing on your hurts or issues, or being arrogant to them by numbing them into your created existence is the wrong path. Surrendering to what is there you will discover it is the path back to your amazingness and God.
I remember being told to put on a brave face and therefore would bury my hurts in order to go out into the world. As a sensitive child, it certainly did not work but left a lot of unravelling to do when I became an adult.
Oh yes Lorraine put on brave face that is a very commonly used phrase. A brave face is often very obvious in other subtle ways and can result in some very complex behaviour like bullying.
Yes, it is a great analogy and very apt to Human Life.
It is time we reached for our self-love first aid kit.
Beautiful observation Sandra, and super supportive – thank you for sharing!
This is certainly food for thought why wouldn’t we treat emotional hurts like physical ones and deal with them straight away? Burying them will only cause more pain down the line.
Absolutely, burying may provide the illusion of relief but it is only a delay… for whatever it is still festers under the surface…. and it is only a matter of time before it pops it head up to be lovingly addressed.
This is a great point Kevin, and I think the main difference between the physical and the emotional. The physical is plain to see, often I might have someone else suggesting ‘that needs to be looked at’, and straightforward to treat (band aid, bandage etc). The emotional is more subtle, hidden… it hits a sensitive spot that for me I have made a point of keeping hidden anyway in an effort to protect it from harm. Not a strategy that works, and then causes the hurts to be hidden away too.
Interesting as I read your comment Simon, I notice how it is okay to have a physical hurt, it is accepted yet on some level we hide our emotional ones as if they are not okay.
Great point Kevin, why don’t we treat emotional hurts like physical hurts. With physical hurts we deal with them straight away we do not bury them and let them build up.
Absolutely kevmchardy, it is also amazing how many people cannot make this connection of the ill effects of burying hurts in their bodies! and how by taking responsibility when stuff comes up we can heal old wounds and enjoy the benefits of that in our bodies.
Superb straight up blog Sandra, we are all precious and certainly deserve love and attention and being open with everyone is a great place to start from.
I agree. It’s so great that many people now see and understand this, that blogs are being written and people are commenting and the children of this who are understanding the importance of this will be brought up in a truer way.
What an important way to look at non physical hurt. I must admit I would not treat my emotional hurt with the same care as a physical trauma, yet its effect I would accept is as great if not greater and deserving of my full care and attention.
If our emotional hurts were physically seen on our bodies, we may look horrendous with open wounds and sores weeping all over the place. This is why we can believe it is so easy to push them down and pretend they are not there because they can’t be seen. But they can definitely be felt like walls pushing people out or closing down. What a beautiful loving way Sandra has turned this around and is now taking the care and responsibility to heal them.
Great point Aimee if we had a visual reference of our emotional hurts we would be sure to stand up and take responsibility.
I was smiling at your comment Aimee and imagining what it would look like and how grotesque it would be if we all walked around with our emotional hurts being visible on our faces and physical bodies and then I thought but we do. We do actually see each other that way and pretend we don’t. In fact yesterday I heard an audio very worth listening to that exposes just this and how we all know it. The free audio can be heard here: http://www.unimedliving.com/voice/audio-of-the-month/the-truth-about-our-reality.html
Yes Nicole there is no hiding anything, we can put on a facade but our eyes, skin, walk, voice and body show the real story. Wow spot on with the audio Nicola, we are always feeling everything and its time to share and express that.
This analogy makes so much sense and highlights the carelessness in brushing aside or not dealing with emotional upheaval.
I know that hurts don’t really go away until they are felt and dealt with. It is much trickier dealing with old hurts than fresh ones as they feel more familiar.
Thats a good point Abby, the fresh hurts are right there with you but the old ones can be tainted by life and by the stories that we have made up about them, and can at times seem a lot more complicated than what they actually are so we avoid them at all costs, while in the mean time, they are slowly destroying us.
They can feel so familiar, they aren’t even see as hurts, and might even be thought of as who we are.
I agree Abby, it is just irresponsible to think we can get away with not addressing something that is there to be healed… for it laces everything we do as it waits for us to heal it.
It is really irresponsible that we play this game with our selves. As until it’s healed it will impact everything else.
Good point Samantha – we may like to think that we can hold onto a hurt and keep it boxed and contained but in truth it affects everything we do as you say, until such time as we are willing to heal it.
A reckless and irresponsible way to live life that in effect is brushing aside our knowing that everything we do not deal with is with us in every moment and laces all that we do and therefore every interaction and expression with all others.
Great question Sandra Williamson – ” why wouldn’t I ‘treat’ myself in the same way with my emotional hurts and reactions?”
Yes, we attend to physical hurts immediately and yet treat the emotional stuff so differently – well buried and festering away for years! This does so much harm in our physical bodies, being the pre-cursor to illness and disease later. The way we interact with others is also tainted by this ill-choice of ‘squirrelling away’ of emotions and reactions.
Love that…we do ‘squirrell away’ our issues for a later date, but as you said our interactions are then tainted by our irresponsibility.
An irresponsibility that constantly distracts us from feeling the emotional pain that perpetuates when we avoid dealing with our issues.
Yes Samantha, squirrelled away our issues are far from gone, for they are then magnified through our every movement.
Great point Samantha it is irresponsible not to deal with our hurts for they then taint (and hurt) everything!
When we don’t attend to our hurts they certainly do taint everything as we are no longer just in the flow of being us, – we have become less full as a part of us is denser so we are less loving even if it’s not noticeable to the eyes it is there and affects everything.
There were a lot of squirrels running around in my body! Slowly the new way of dealing with hurts begins to emerge, and a freshness to life is apparent.
Well said Samantha, irresponsibility keeps us away from knowing how powerful we are and being in our essence not to mention the effects it has on our bodies from not honouring the tenderness and delicateness within.
True Samantha, the more responsible you become the more you do not feel tainted by all the interactions you have.
Absolutely Samantha – everything thereafter is impacted by what we are holding onto in our body.
I agree this is a fabulous question. And I actually feel that dealing with this is more important than the physical simply because all that is not dealt with and held in the body as a poison makes us physically ill. What I do feel that many struggle with is the not wanting to slow down. Not wanting to ponder, not wanting to give space to feel what is happening. Our world is falsely geared towards keeping us on the go at the expense of our bodies which is the one thing that holds the truth to all we feel. Perhaps it is all a set up to not feel.
Another great point Johanna, in that our emotional hurts actually manifest physically when not dealt with.
True Johanna, I know those days too where I have pondered and slowed down, because you have made that choice to slow down and feel what is going on, and you do not feel so productive, but you do get through. I have been doing this for ten years and I honestly can say there has not been one day where my body was not in some pain, while at the same time that feeling of amazingness just keeps on expanding, and, your productivity improves like no other has achieved before.
Stephanie, I too loved Sandra’s comparison between how we respond to our emotional pain as opposed to our physical pain. With our emotional pain we tend to have a knee jerk reaction of fleeing from it, what strife would we be in if we had the same reaction to physical ailments! We would be staggering around with gaping wounds, writhing around in agony clutching painful body parts, in short we would be in serious trouble, but the ramifications of not attending to our emotional traumas are just as devastating but just not as obvious.
…‘squirrelling away’ is a great term for trying to deal with hurts and reactions by ruminating the emotional mush without actually accepting and digesting it for what it is truly all about involving a letting go in the end.
How true this is that we are immediately responsive to our physical wounds and seek needed support yet, we are remiss when it come to our emotional wounds and perhaps somewhat dogged in avoiding them, pushing them to the side or piling whatever we can on top of them to lesson the sting and distract us….the wound remains, unhealed with this latter way. It certainly is much simpler and a whole lot less painful to feel what is arising and to seek support when it is first needed.
A great reminder Sandra of how truly precious we all are.