PART ONE

IDENTIFYING WITH THE EMOTIONAL WOUND

The Wound as a Portal

I don’t remember the day I stopped enjoying ruminating about the suffering from my past. My emotional wound had become my best friend, my confidant, from an early age. I had gotten used to the idea that the discomfort I lived with inside my home was a kind of destiny, perhaps because I could never escape it, so I just had to put on a brave face about it.

Cooking over Low Heat

The wound is a dish cooked over low heat. In my case, I couldn’t say exactly when it started, and I don’t even remember my childhood well enough to draw any conclusions, but a few images and fragments occasionally visit my consciousness.

Some turn out to be others’ stories filling gaps in my memories. This leads me to think that something unspeakable is blocking my memories of the past. I must confess that rather than feeling envious, I feel curiosity, admiration, and astonishment when it comes to those who remember their childhood in detail.

I could say that my wound began at birth with my mother’s postpartum depression. It lasted my first year and a half of life, and she couldn’t even hold me in her arms. I know this because it’s what my father tells me, and because I see myself in a photograph where I am in front of my birthday cake with a number 2 candle, next to my grandmother and him.

Or perhaps it was the day when my mother helped a blind man cross the street and let go of my arm—or held it with greater force, I don’t remember well—but what I do remember is that at that moment I felt immense anger, because it seemed to me that the man was more important to her than I was.

Or perhaps it was the day my father shouted at my mother in a restaurant and then we left alone and walked endless blocks home.

I also think that maybe it was when I was 15 and heard my father talking on the phone with his lover.

Or maybe it was three years later, when I heard my mother tell him that a “steady lover” no longer seemed right for her.

Or when my father cursed me in front of my mother’s coffin.

Stop Blaming the Past

I want to go back to the miracle of no longer enjoying blaming the past and identifying with my wound. Perhaps the exhaustion of being a victim for so many years left me immune, although saying this is unfair: I have worked throughout my life to stop being “my wound.” Perhaps it was the acceptance that there are events that have no solution and what remains is to look for an opportunity to live a worthy and meaningful existence.

As I said at the beginning, I don’t remember how it happened, but I know two things for sure: After a long process of introspection and therapeutic support, one day I stopped being afraid and the pain turned into my strength. I say this with all the honesty I can muster.

A phrase from Bert Hellinger, creator of Family Constellations, comes to mind: “The wound, too, is part of life, and also the scar that indicates that the wound is healed, although the place remains vulnerable and warns us to proceed with care and caution.” But why do we identify with the emotional wound? Why does our identity cling to it?

Well, from my perspective, what we know most about ourselves is what hurts us— the ways we haven’t been seen or the injuries we’ve received from those we love. When we connect with the pain, we learn what matters to us, what our values system is, and who we are in this world, especially when we are children.

The pain-wound that appears from who knows where—because I can almost guarantee that it always takes us by surprise—suddenly places us in a vulnerable place and we start to dwell there; some of us with insecurity, others with fear, anger, or desolation, and still others with self-doubt.

The wound is the opposite of love. You hurt me because you don’t love me is the first thing a child thinks, or worse yet, perhaps the feeling of being unloved impregnates their skin making them believe that they “are that.” Identification is one of the earliest processes of development, as we internalize everything we see on the outside as children, and that’s how our personality is built.

Surprisingly, we hold onto our wound to find meaning in our story. One of the most significant themes I work on with couples in my private practice is validation of the inflicted wound; everything else flows, surfaces, and resolves if they can recognize the pain they have caused each other. It is a powerful formula that I invariably resort to and has yielded results for many years in my professional work.

Signs

Imagine the wound as a portal that takes you to other dimensions, ranging from darkness to light. Visualize a subtle golden thread that connects those who have inflicted hurt with those who have been hurt. In that encounter, when there is an act of humility and then an honest attempt to repair the offense, the wound turns into love.

We don’t let it go, because it gives us the opportunity to reclaim our individuality and to finally be seen. We don’t let it go, because the ties that bind us to it can disappear, nor do we let it go as a matter of honor. However, when we regain what we have lost—whether someone has helped us repair it or we have repaired it ourselves—it is time to explore new horizons.

The wound is a solitary experience, a universe different from others, with its own language. There are various investigations and theories on this subject that explain the meaning, triggers, and different manifestations of an emotional wound. However, it has not yet been discovered how the brain chooses which experience will become traumatic and the meaning it carries.

Just as there are people who recognize the origin of their wound, there are others who deny it and bury it in forgetfulness in an attempt to have an apparently balanced life, thinking that the pain is already in the past, so it is better not to open the door for fear that the heartwrenching childhood experience will drown them.

Despite the effort to keep the wound in exile, triggers will appear at a moment we least expect, connecting us with unresolved suffering. These triggers can be as subtle or trivial as, for instance, seeing a scene in a movie that suddenly provokes uncontrollable tears; hearing a piece of music that brings back memories we had forgotten or blocked; a word or phrase written on a billboard confronting us; or more complex, noticeable, or transcendent triggers, such as the death of a family member, the birth of a child, a divorce, a job change, a move, an inheritance or financial loss, to mention a few.

Any of these events marks a life change, putting us to the test and connecting us with what we fear, what has hurt us, or what we have forgotten in order to survive. Then, the wound emerges as a call or reminder of what has not yet been resolved or alerts us to protect ourselves from situations that resemble that old injury.

Just yesterday, I was watching the animated movie Coco with my children, and the plot emotionally overwhelmed me: A 12-year-old boy is transported to the world of the dead, where he reconnects with his great-grandfather and the legacy of his music. The dead inhabit their own world but disintegrate and disappear forever when they cease to exist in the memory of the living. The message revolves around what “definitive death” represents, referring to the fact that the forgetfulness of the living toward the dead is, in reality, the last death of a human being.

“Why are you crying?” my son asked.

I couldn’t explain that accumulated and unresolved grief had collapsed in my throat; that the tears flowing from my eyes embodied years of silence and impossibility surrounding the death of my parents. The theme of the movie had made me think of my mother, and how little I remember her since she passed away, and my father, whom I have also forgotten, in order to survive our painful story.

The repair occurs when we validate such experiences, recognize the impact they have had on our lives, are able to release them, and change their place in our world.