Healing the Soul Wound

In his book The Power of Kindness, Piero Ferrucci speaks of “the soul wound.” Coined by Thomas Yeomans, the soul wound is “what we feel when as children we are not seen for who we are—a soul full of marvelous potential for love, intelligence and creativity—but instead perceived as a difficult, headstrong child, or a lovely showpiece, or as a great nuisance—or not seen at all.”

Those of us who grew-up in addictive households known the pain of the soul wound and it is something that we have carried with us into adulthood and into the rooms of recovery. This is the primary wound that our inner-critics zero in on. It’s the wound that bleeds with the belief that we are a nuisance, or worthlessly stupid, or hopelessly unlovable. And it fuels the merciless voices of our inner-critics.

I’m often amazed at how active my inner-critic is every day. When it isn’t hammering me, it is hammering someone else in the same manner in which it hammers me—shamelessly. More and more I am aware of this very ugly voice in my head and I realize that it does feed on my soul wound. It rips me apart over every perceived flaw that I have. But I am also using awareness to silence the inner-critic.

Now when that old motor-mouth starts tearing into me, or into someone else, I tell it to leave the room. In other words, to get out of my head-space. When it doesn’t want to leave, I envision myself stuffing a sock in its mouth.

I don’t want my inner-critic feeding off of my soul wound any longer. I want the wound to heal. And the only way it can heal is to 1) turn off the negativity; 2) and to start treating myself with proper respect. When our parents didn’t see us for who we really are—love, intelligence and creativity—they chose not to treat us with proper respect. So we developed a wound. If we want to heal that wound, we will need to daily practice being kind to ourselves in addition to seeing ourselves as we truly are—love, intelligence and creativity—and treating ourselves with proper respect.

We are created in the image and likeness of Love (of God, of our Higher Power), and that very fact demands that we be treated with proper human respect and dignity.