Wounds are the stigmata that leave scars in our hearts and bodies that mark our entire life here on earth.

These wounds are noticed in our behaviours, our judgements but especially in our customs and habits to follow up on the lesson they have given once they have been touched!

“Know thyself “ said Platon, at the beginning, it is a very old maxim of ancient Greek wisdom inscribed at the entrance of a temple. It meant: Know that you are mortal, not divine. But Socrates gave a completely different meaning to this precept: “Know that there is in you a principle of excellence that must guide your actions: reason”.

On this basis, we can go inside ourselves, not only to examine our subconscious, but to look for what can unbalance our way of life and make irrational acts as consequences of our wounds.

The heart, as opposed to reason, is an intuition or a feeling which alone, without demonstration, allows us to believe in the truth of certain things! This makes Blaise Pascal say that the heart has its reasons that reason ignores!

The existence of a wound in us is not a mathematical demonstration, but rather a reasoning about our state of mind.

These wounds sometimes happen to us in life in the form of unforgettable events such as illness, war, divorce, failure, loss of a parent, conversion to a state of life (defrocked vocation)!

The Gospel of Christ gives words to appease a troubled soul, but these words are not a magic wand to succeed in life, if you do not believe in them you will return to the wise man who can analyze your psyche.

“Which one of you, by his worries, can add a cubit to the length of his life? If you can’t do even the smallest thing, why worry about the rest?

Consider how the lilies grow: they neither work nor spin; yet I tell you that even Solomon, in all his glory, was not clothed as one of them. Luke 12:25-27.

Lack of self-confidence, fear of failure or even demotivation are all psychological obstacles that hinder our progress or even our reasoning!

The painful experiences that develop throughout our lives shape our emotional wounds. These wounds can be multiple and can be called in different ways: betrayal, humiliation, mistrust, abandonment, injustice …

However, we must be aware of these wounds and avoid disguising them, because the longer we wait to heal them, the worse they will get.

Moreover, when we are injured, we constantly experience situations that touch our pain and so we put on different masks for fear of rekindling our pain, not to say that we are not sick!

How can we overcome our emotional wounds?

Here are some suggested steps to overcome our emotional wounds

1) Accept a wound as a part of yourself :

According to Lise Bourbeau, accepting a wound means looking at it, observing it carefully and knowing that having to resolve situations is part of the human experience.

2) Accept it means that what you fear or what you reproach, you do to yourself and to others:

The willingness and decision to overcome our wounds is the first step towards patience, compassion and understanding of ourselves. These qualities that you will develop for yourself, you will develop for others, which will fuel your well-being.

3) Allow yourself to be angry at those people who have fueled your injury:

Feeling guilty makes forgiveness difficult, but freeing ourselves from guilt and resentment is the only way to heal our wounds.

It is also necessary to forgive, because we have to accept that people who hurt are likely to carry a deep pain inside themselves. We ourselves hurt others when we wear masks to protect our wounds.

4) No transformation is possible if the wound has not been accepted so far:

We try to hide the wound that hurts us the most because we are afraid to face our wound and relive it.

5) Give yourself time to observe how you have attached yourself to your injury over the years: It is possible to change masks in the same day or to wear the same mask for months or days. Ideally, you should be able to understand why you put on the mask.

Blessed are you if you know the mask that breaks your heart, visible or invisible, a reality is certain that you have your own destiny in your hands! The destiny that engages our responsibility for our reactions and the situations in which we make our own way.

Awareness of one’s responsibilities by a man who is becoming an adult or by a humanity that is developing its culture, is a major human problem, which is far from being foreign to the situation we have sharpened. Either a wounded person or a wounded civilization according to the trends and symptoms that we can observe, experience and draw conclusions from them.

Can we then speak of a wounded man without mentioning the wounded culture that raised him, the generation that saw him grow up?

We find that the wounded man can also pass on the mask to his neighbour, a bad word, a mental imbalance, a threat and other signs that betray our agreements.

We need to know that we are hurt by such and such a situation to explain the events. Sometimes failure is not the fruit of chance, but rather the result of what we have lived through! Thanks to your reason, know who you were born to make the best of your life!

Written by Father Didier Niwenshuti.