Emotional First Aid

With recent events in the last couple of weeks locally and nationally, and even with what is happening on the world stage, it’s hard not to settle into the heaviness of grief and sadness. Whether our loss has been individual or collectively, the healing process is the same. Events happen that cause deep emotional cuts, bruises, broken hearts, gashes, road rashes, burns and trauma. Family situations, or broken systems in society can cause us to feel beat up and left on the side of the road. Often the emotional woundedness can’t be seen by those around us and they don’t know how much we are suffering. Even if time has gone by there can still be scars and deep woundedness from these experiences.

Often times if it’s a broken arm or if there is blood or the need for stitches these injuries are recognized as needing medical assistance. However, with emotional injuries we can’t always determine what help is needed and how to administer emotional first aid.

Here is an example of a young girl who went through a serious physical and emotional injury.

This young girl was the first born in her family, and when she was 2, her younger brother was born and joined this beautiful family. Her mom and dad used a wood burning stove to heat their house in the winter so their family could stay warm. Finances were difficult and they were doing their best to feed their children and keep them all safe and warm during the winter months.

One day the little girl, who was just a toddler, reached out and put her hands on the wood burning stove and got seriously burned. Her mother heard her screaming and grabbed the little girls burned hands and she was rushed to the hospital for medical care. The little girl had to stay in the hospital and have her hands treated with many different treatments in hopes that the skin on her fingers would grow back normally. Surgeries, bandages, creams and gauze were required so that the scar tissue would not bind her fingers together. 

There were weeks of recovery and the mom and the dad eventually had to learn how to change the dressings. They would have to scrape off the old skin with a rough brush so new skin would grow under the bright red, burned, damaged skin. They would have to hold the little girl down because of how painful it was and the little girl would scream and scream. And then the parents would wrap up her little hands with bandages and hold her close and whisper to her that they weren’t punishing her and that they loved her and that they were working with the burns so her fingers would get better and heal. As a 2-year-old the little girl did not understand why the parents were doing this and making her “Boo-Boo” hurt more?

Letting her stay in the woundedness and babying her would not have helped her and she would have had deformed fingers and hands for the rest of her life. The intense treatment had to match the intensity of the woundedness.

Because of the parent’s willingness to do the hard thing and treat their daughter’s hands by scraping off scar tissue, the little girl’s fingers were able to heal with 90 percent use of her fingers.

While the little girl was going through the pain of the treatments. the parents let the little girl be angry and mad and allowed her to get her anger out even if she was raging and throwing a tantrum. They loved the girl and would sometimes cry with her when they saw how much she was hurting.  Even though the little girl suffered a severe trauma both physically and emotionally, her hands and her heart were eventually able to heal. 

With assistance, even the deepest wounds can heal. The body is brilliant and capable. It is designed to heal itself. Bones can be knitted back together and cuts and abrasions can be stitched so that it comes together with very little scarring. Binding up the mind and the heart and reconnecting to the body by administering physical and emotional first aid can stop the pain and bring healing. Even if our personal trauma doesn’t match what this little girl went through, we are still capable of healing just like this little girl did. 

If you are suffering from present or past emotional woundedness, please reach out and find a heart doctor, just like the little girl did. Find someone who can administer emotional first aid. When the girl was older, she was able to receive emotional first aid, she was able to talk about the trauma and release it using IPT with a certified facilitator. Look for someone in traditional therapy or for an IPT facilitator and allow yourself to release and “let go” of what is no longer needed. There can be such joy and peace that can replace the wound. You deserve to be restored to wholeness. 

Loves,

Pam