What Triggers Your Unhealed Emotional Wounds?

Most everyone wants approval from others. And it can be very emotionally painful for some of us if approval is withheld. I didn’t realize how a devastating feeling from the past can arise from needing approval in the present moment until just last week.

I was helping-out with a week-long retreat for Catholic nuns. The first of my two talks was one I call “Have I Loved Well.” In that talk I speak of the fact that when our day comes and we stand before God, He isn’t going to ask us how much money we made, or if we were good at bridge, or how well we ate. He’s only going to ask us one question “Did you love well?” As soon as I made that statement, one of the nun’s raised her hand and said “Oh, I don’t think you understand nuns. We don’t have bank accounts, and we don’t play bridge.”

It threw me initially because 1) I made no mention of bank accounts. Sure, nuns may not have individual bank accounts, but they still have to “make money” to support their communities;  and 2) I assumed that nuns probably play cards with each other, whether they play bridge isn’t the point. So I took a moment to explain myself, even though I believed she was fishing for trouble. Well, a few days later I received evaluations from the nuns, which were all good, except for one that criticized me still for not understanding nuns.

I obviously knew who it was from and that the criticism was really about her and some inner-problem she has and not about me. But the words cut through my feelings like a sword. Suddenly I felt devastated inside. But I also knew that this heavy, terrible feeling that had my soul doubled-over with pain was not about this particular nun. It was about me and something that had happened in the past that was being triggered by her criticism.

So I gave the whole ordeal to Higher Love and asked “What’s this about?” I realized that something devastating must have happened that made me feel annihilated by any criticism, no matter how unjustified it was. A few days later, the answer rolled across my thoughts: It was all about my father.

When I was a boy I was never able to win my father’s approval. Worse yet, if I was being called-on-the-carpet and criticized by my father for anything, I had no right to defend myself. If I attempted to defend myself, I was shouted-down and told that I was talking back and if I persisted I was slapped. All I could do was stand shame-faced and take it, no matter how unfair “it” was.

Then I realized that a criticism on a written evaluation had the same stinging effect. People fill out evaluations and then leave. So if they are critical you have no way of responding. You just have to take it and are unable to defend yourself. So the criticism on this particular evaluation triggered all of the old bad feelings I had about how my father decimated me emotionally as a child.

Once I realized this, the sting I was feeling from the evaluation started to leave me. Mentally, I had it all right from the start. But emotionally, I was in a very different space from what I knew in my head, and that meant I needed to find out what was going on inside of me—and I did.

We are often triggered by past-present connections. Someone says or does something today and we feel overwhelmed by emotions that suddenly and unexpectedly flood our hearts. Most of these emotions are coming from unhealed places and the hurts that were caused by other people years ago. These feelings are coming from very wounded areas of our hearts and souls, and they represent all of the past feelings that we never allowed ourselves to face. Sooner or later, we have to face them in order to release their poison and to receive inner-healing.

Next time someone says or does something that triggers devastating feelings, ask yourself “What are these feelings really about?” and ask Higher Love to guide you to a place where you can begin to understand and where you can begin the healing process.