Past emotional wounds can bleed into the present

Our emotional wounds can attach to physical injuries or even to diseases. This pattern is often buried deep within the psyche and hard to identify. People often miss the connection because of chronology. For instance, if a girl had an extreme degree of fear in childhood she would be unlikely to correlate that fear to the challenges healing from car accident injuries in her late teens. The two events seem unrelated.

The potential connection lies within that young woman’s capacity to heal. I have noticed that people who have intense emotional wounding don’t heal as well from injuries or illnesses. She may have been living largely unaware of the emotional burden she is carrying. After all, we adapt to the life we have.

Injuries, illnesses or major life stressors often create a breaking point that allows our suppressed emotional material to leak forward. The challenge is that the process isn’t so obvious or linear. Most often, it presents as pain that won’t heal, despite good physical therapies. This sequence is common in fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome but can also be found in skin disorders and many other ailments.

On a more subtle level, this pattern exists under many of the chronic symptoms people are trying to heal. The nature of attachment, connection and presence we received in our early forms forms a matrix through which all of life is filtered. You may recognize some of the patterns is people's personality traits. If you look deeper, you may see the connection between many current health struggles and your past emotional wounds.

Healing from anything chronic lies at the intersection of the mind and the body. It's quite difficult to try and heal when you focus exclusively on the body or your physical needs. We are complex beings.