But examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good; 1 Thessalonians 5:21

Cleaning out emotional wounds is a mentally messy process, but it is vital to the recovery and healthy survival of the abused individual. I was no different. I read many books on the topic, I wrote in a journal, I saw a psychologist, I talked about it, and I cried. I cried a lot!

Since I am a nurse by training, I frequently compare emotional wounds to physical ones. For example, what if you sustain a puncture wound to your thigh and decide it will be okay and heal just fine without medical attention? It could heal on its own, but it is also possible that it could become infected. Even if the outer layers of your skin close over and appear like the wound is healing, an infected wound will become red, warm and painful and possibly create an abscess. An abscess cannot be treated with antibiotics alone; it must be opened and cleaned out.

It is the same with emotional wounds. They must be opened up and cleaned out. Most victims only want to forget the horrors of what the perpetrator did to them, believing that with time, the wounds will heal. Unfortunately, that is not the case because we humans are unable to genuinely forget. Just as the infected physical wound will not heal without debridement, neither will the emotional wound. Pain and anguish from the events simmer and fester just under the surface, and similar to a simmering tea kettle, the steam has to escape somehow. I discovered that the unwanted symptoms I had were my subconscious way of “letting off steam.” I had to clean out my emotional wounds to rid myself of the simmering tea kettle controlling my behavior. I honestly didn’t expect it to be so difficult, though. I began to think a physical wound would have healed more quickly.

Part of the emotional debridement process is recounting the abusive incidents, which includes experiencing the feelings. Whether I was recounting them with my therapist, husband, or in my journal, the emotional pain was intense. In many ways, I felt like I was reliving the incidents; only this time, I spoke about how they made me feel. I got in touch with my emotions and expressed how defiled I felt — something I had never allowed myself to do before that time. Expressing my anger with my father, and my hurt at my mother’s part in the abuse was crucial to my recovery. I can’t even say how long I cried because I didn’t keep track. So many painful things happened to me in my childhood. As soon as I would reconcile one pain, and my tears would dry up, recounting the next pain would begin, and my tears would flow once more. I felt the tears would never stop. My sweet three-year-old one day pleaded with me, “Mommy, are you ever going to stop crying?”

Raising our sweet little girl made me acknowledge the childhood I never had. Mourning the loss of my childhood was also crucial to my recovery. Through the years of raising our four beautiful children, it has been vital to me that they have healthy childhoods. I didn’t always know how to make that happen, and I haven’t always made the right decisions concerning them. Unfortunately, when those wrong decisions occurred, I imploded on myself. I was not allowed to make mistakes in my formative years, so when I made mistakes in my adult years, I saw myself as a total failure. Children need to learn that mistakes are part of life and that we learn our most valuable lessons from our mistakes. I now understand that and make it my goal to learn from my mistakes and not repeat them.

I began this journey of reconciling my past in 1992. At that time, I debrided all of the abusive events that were evident. Unfortunately, there were so many elements of abuse committed against me that, through the years, I have discovered more I needed to work through. These discoveries have often come as a result of mistakes I’ve made with my children. While I read parenting books, attended parenting seminars, and tried to establish mentor relationships, I still did things and said things I regretted. I was hard on myself when I would lose my temper at my children or husband. I didn’t want to behave that way. So I would heap condemnation upon myself. I learned that I did this because of the perfectionistic mindset instilled in me as a child. As a result, I found myself, once again tracing my behavior back to my childhood and emotionally debriding again. 

Many of my unfavorable behaviors could be traced back to childhood experiences. It has been these experiences during the last twenty-eight years that has made me realize healing from my abusive past is a journey. Fewer circumstances arise now that send me down the path of tracing and debriding. While I am more emotionally stable now than ever before, I still find myself evaluating my thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. That seems to be part of my character. Once my eyes are open to the emotional damage done to me in my formative years, I seek healing. So while I chose to forgive my parents when I was twelve years old, I am confident that forgiveness is only one step in the healing process.