Quotes & Sayings About Emotional Wounds

Forgiveness does not mean that we will cease to hurt. The wounds are deep, and we may hurt for a very long time. Just because we continue to experience emotional pain does not mean that we failed to forgive. — Richard Foster

The wounding becomes sacred when we are willing to release our old stories and to become the vehicles through which the new story may emerge into time. — Jean Houston

Energetic cords are unconscious - often sentimental or compulsive - emotional ties to past and present relationships, pre-conditioned by our wounds. They are made of toxic emotions such fear, guilt, blame, hatred, obligation, grasping need or pain. — Avril Carruthers

Forgiveness offers the possibility of two types of peace: peace of mind - the potential healing of old emotional wounds, and peace with others - the possibility of new, more gratifying relationships in the future. — Kenneth Pargament

Parental Alienation is an emotional act of violence that is aimed at an adult, but critically wounds a child. — Steve Maraboli

Can the purpose of a relationship be to trigger our wounds? In a way, yes, because that is how healing happens; darkness must be exposed before it can be transformed. The purpose of an intimate relationship is not that it be a place where we can hide from our weaknesses, but rather where we can safely let them go. It takes strength of character to truly delve into the mystery of an intimate relationship, because it takes the strength to endure a kind of psychic surgery, an emotional and psychological and even spiritual initiation into the higher Self. Only then can we know an enchantment that lasts. — Marianne Williamson

Here's another thing: There are certain wounds that never heal, certain hurts that never leave you alone, like a broken bone that heals wrong and always twinges when it's about to rain. — Robert Goolrick

Everyone keeps telling me that time heals all wounds, but no one can tell me what I'm supposed to do right now. Right now I can't sleep. It's right now that I can't eat. Right now I still hear his voice and sense his presence even though I know he's not here. Right now all I seem to do is cry. I know all about time and wounds healing, but even if I had all the time in the world, I still don't know what to do with all this hurt right now. — Nina Guilbeau

Each human being deals with hurt or resentment in a unique way. When you feel insulted or bullied, you may reach for a chocolate bar. In the same circumstance, I might burst into tears. Another person may put his or her feelings quickly into words, confronting the mistreatment directly. Although our feelings can influence how we wish to act, our choices of how to behave are ultimately determined more by our attitudes and our habits. We respond to our emotional wounds based on what we believe about ourselves, how we think about the person who has hurt us, and how we perceive the world. Only in people who are severely traumatized or who have major mental illnesses is behavior governed by feelings. And only a tiny percentage of abusive men have these kinds of severe psychological problems. — Lundy Bancroft

Compassion is essential, but it's not a substitute for self-expression, or self-respect, or self-compassion. Emotional self-care is also essential, but gently soothing our wounds does not replace communicating about them. — Vironika Tugaleva

What is forgiving? Forgiving is giving up all claims on the one who has hurt you and letting go of the emotional consequences of the hurt. How can we do that? It's done at the price of beating back our pride. By nature we are selfish. Forgiving by definition is unselfish. Being hurt by another person wounds our pride. Pride stands in the way of forgiving. We cannot forgive without God's help. It might be possible for us to forgive something inconsequential without God's help; but in significant matters, we're unlikely to accomplish anything without God's involvement in the process. — Richard Walters

Come, come into this circle of grace and friendship.
Come bringing only your open heart.
You owe us nothing but truth, you need no heavy armor here.
Show us your beautiful scars, the evidence of adventures you've survived.
Tell your stories from the road.
This space is home.
You are safe to come as you are without fear. — Jacob Nordby

Your heart is the beacon, your heart is the storm. Dare to embrace it; you'll never be torn. — Vanna Bonta

I learned to make things not matter, to put a seal on my hopes and place them on a high shelf, out of reach. And by telling myself that there was nothing inside those hopes anyway, I avoided the wounds of deep disappointment. The pain was no worse than the quick sting of a booster shot. And yet thinking about this makes me ache again. How is it that as a child I knew I should have been loved more? Is everyone born with a bottomless emotional resevoir? — Amy Tan

Wounds heal. Scars fade. Awful memories can be overwritten with better ones if given the chance. The little imperfections of our psyches become overshadowed by the people whose love we cherish because they cherish us despite our faults; physical, emotional, spiritual, or otherwise. This thing we call the human condition with all its bittersweet blind corners and senseless humor evolves from within ourselves and not because of some pre-ordained reverie we desire to cast in the constellations.
All in all it is what makes life worth living. — August Clearwing

But pain's like water. It finds a way to push through any seal. There's no way to stop it. Sometimes you have to let yourself sink inside of it before you can learn how to swim to the surface. — Katie Kacvinsky

Just as physical wounds heal at different rates in different people, so do emotional wounds. Everyone has different needs and speeds. — Karen Salmansohn

Your instincts may tell you that you can't survive if you experience feelings. But they are leftover child instincts. They're the ones that first told you to freeze your feelings. They themselves are frozen and haven't grown with the rest of you. These instincts don't know that you're far more capable of learning to cope with overwhelming emotion now than when you were a [child]. — Maureen Brady

America has also forever lost the service of thousands of good soldiers who are now disabled as a result of battle wounds in Iraq. Many others will need mental and emotional rehabilitation before they can return to normal life. — John Olver

An accident you're in? It marks you on the outside, maybe. Scars your face or your skin-breaks bones,crushes skulls,leaves the body changed.
An accident witnessed? You're different on the inside. Maybe there's no cut someone else can see, bu there're always injuries on the inside.
Those take a long time to heal. — Carol Lynch Williams

But even more than I wanted to check out and give my emotional wounds time to scab over, I wanted to live. — Mike Mullin

Why do you suppose the poets talk about hearts?' he asked me suddenly. 'When they discuss emotional damage? The tissue of hearts is tough as a shoe. Did you ever sew up a heart?'
I shook my head. 'No, but I've watched. I know what you mean.' The walls of a heart are thick and strong, and the surgeons use heavy needles. It takes a good bit of strength, but it pulls together neatly. As much as anything it's like binding a book.
The seat of human emotion should be the liver,' Doc Homer said. 'That would be an appropriate metaphor: we don't hold love in our hearts, we hold it in our livers.'
I understood exactly. Once in ER I saw a woman who'd been stabbed everywhere, most severely in the liver. It's an organ with the consistency of layer upon layer of wet Kleenex. Every attempt at repair just opens new holes that tear and bleed. You try to close the wound with fresh wounds, and you try and you try and you don't give up until there's nothing left. — Barbara Kingsolver

When a person has adequate self-esteem little slights offer no threat at all - they are simply "passed over" and ignored. Even deeper emotional wounds are likely to heal faster and cleaner, with no festering sores to poison life and spoil happiness. — Maxwell Maltz

To experience emotional freedom, we must accept, surrender, and let go of our wounds. We must be willing to take responsibility for what we're holding on to, which is usually a hurt or pain from the past that leaves us feeling victimized. — Debbie Ford

From her dubious tone alone, I could see how Karin had no idea how terrifying words spoken quietly could be. How words chosen precisely to wreak maximum damage ticked like a bomb in your head, but exploded in your heart hours later, leaving you scarred and changed. — Justina Chen

Often men who have been emotionally neglected and abused as children by dominating mothers bond with assertive women, only to have their childhood feelings of being engulfed surface. While they could not 'smash their mommy' and still receive love, they find that they can engage in intimate violence with partners who respond to their acting out by trying harder to connect with them emotionally, hoping that the love offered in the present will heal the wounds of the past. If only one party in the relationship is working to create love, to create the space of emotional connection, the dominator model remains in place and the relationship just becomes a site for continuous power struggle. — Bell Hooks

Because I had a lot of emotional upheaval in my life, I'm attracted to stories about characters whose lives are full of wounds and secrets. I'm not interested in who's going to ask me to the prom. I never went to a prom. — Randa Haines

Although our feelings can influence how we wish to act, our choices of how to behave are ultimately determined more by our attitudes and our habits. We respond to our emotional wounds based on what we believe about ourselves, how we think about the person who has hurt us, and how we perceive the world. Only in people who are severely traumatized or who have major mental illnesses is behavior governed by feelings. And only a tiny percentage of abusive men have these kinds of severe psychological problems. There — Lundy Bancroft

I'd have much rather gotten dragged into someone else's fight than face what was waiting for me. Other people's emotional pain, no matter how painful, is so much less painful than your own. — Laurell K. Hamilton

The more two people open to each other, the more this wide-openness also brings to the surface all the obstacles to it: their deepest, darkest wounds, their desperation and mistrust, and their rawest emotional trigger points. Just as the sun's warmth causes clouds to arise by prompting the earth to release its moisture, so love's pure openness activates the thick clouds of our emotional wounding, the tight places where we are shut down, where we live in fear and resist love. — John Welwood

Perception is reality to the one in the experience. — Danielle Bernock

The painful after effects of emotional wounds permeate our souls, negatively impacting the choices we make and the way we live. The longer we push aside these wounds, the greater the chance they will become contaminated. Infected. These wounds then weep, leaking and spreading into other areas, requiring additional care and taking much longer to heal. Gone unchecked, these infections often become much worse than the original wound. — Jo Ann Fore

In order to protect our emotional wounds, and because of our fear of being hurt, humans create something very sophisticated in the mind: a big denial system. In that denial system we become the perfect liars. We lie so perfectly that we lie to ourselves and we even believe our own lies. We don't notice we are lying, and sometimes even when we know we are lying, we justify the lie and excuse the lie to protect ourselves from the pain of our wounds. The denial system is like a wall of fog in front of our eyes that blinds us from seeing the truth. We wear a social mask because it's too painful to see ourselves or to let others see us as we really are. And the denial system lets us pretend that everyone believes what we want them to believe about us. We put up these barriers for protection, to keep other people away, — Miguel Ruiz

The strongest drive inside of a submissive, underneath all their emotional wounds, is for the Master to push aside any curtains or walls they may have erected to separate them from their true self, the naked, vulnerable soul. Because that soul wants only one thing. Do you want to know what that is?"
< ... > "I don't want to know. That's not what the training's about."
"Wrong. That's what submissive training is all about. Getting past those shields so she feels truly bound to her Master, a part of him as he's a part of her. The ultimate connection, where thought isn't necessary. They're together in the most elemental and perfect way there is. She stared at him. "Let me go, Tyler. I can't do this." "You can. You will. — Joey W. Hill

Often, those who bruise easily spend too much time thinking about themselves. I'd go so far as to say that oversensitivity is a privilege of the underoccupied. The majority of people don't have the time to lavish care on emotional wounds - they're too busy getting on with living. — Mariella Frostrup

That goes for old wounds, too, you know. I really wish we'd had the chance to talk before this," he says, cracking the window so the smoke can escape. "There's a Longfellow quote I have stuck on my bulletin board at the church office- 'There is no grief like the grief that does not speak'- and it's true. I've found that keeping pain inside doesn't give it a chance to heal, but bringing it out into the light, holding it right there in your hands and trusting that you're strong enough to make it through, not hating the pain, not loving it, just seeing it for what it really is can change how you go on from there. Time alone doesn't heal emotional wounds, Sayre, and you don't want to live the rest of your life bottled up with anger and guilt and bitterness. That's how people self-destruct. — Laura Wiess

Emotional healing is almost always a process. It takes time. There is a very important reason for this. Our heavenly Father is not only wanting to free us from the pain of past wounds, he is also desirous of bringing us into maturity, both spiritually and emotionally. That takes time, because we need time to learn to make the right choices. He loves us enough to take the months and years necessary to not only heal our wounds, but also build our character. Without growth of character we will get wounded again. — Floyd McClung

The real challenge is to remember to see clearly when everything's flying around us and we're wrapped up in our [emotional] wounds and traumas. — Mark Nepo

Maybe forgiveness means you stop keeping tabs on those people. Wounds can't heal if you keep touching them. — Joyce Rachelle

The scars from mental cruelty can be as deep and long-lasting as wounds from punches or slaps but are often not as
obvious. In fact, even among women who have experienced violence from a partner, half or more report that the man's emotional abuse is what is causing them the greatest harm. — Lundy Bancroft

I CAN'T GO ON! I FEEL LIKE NONE OF MY EMOTIONAL WOUNDS CAN HEAL! AS SOON AS IT TRIES TO HEAL, IT SHATTERS AGAIN! I CAN'T HEAL! — Shine

What inflicts the mind, inflicts the body. What inflicts the soul inflicts the body. Physical wounds heal much quicker but spiritual, emotional and spiritual wounds takes much longer of healing. — Ann Marie Aguilar

Stop thirsting for things that are bitter,
Go crazy here, here in these arms that are still
Wrapped around the absent shape of you,
Go crazy with me, thrash about in our bed
And weep and wail and call me by her name,
At least have the courage to let our hearts break together. — Patricia Smith

I am not a mechanism, an assembly of various sections.
and it is not because the mechanism is working wrongly, that I am ill.
I am ill because of wounds to the soul, to the deep emotional self,
and the wounds to the soul take a long, long time, only time can help
and patience, and a certain difficult repentance
long difficult repentance, realization of life's mistake, and the freeing oneself
from the endless repetition of the mistake
which mankind at large has chosen to sanctify. — D.H. Lawrence

Sometimes, Chase ... it's the emotional wounds that hurt the most." I pushed back the anger and sighed. "I'd rather he beat me. Cuts heal, bruises fade - but broken hearts? They carry scars for a lifetime. — Rachel Van Dyken

Boundaries come after grace, because compassion minds the fragile places but boundaries keep them from compromising the rest. Brokenness may have legitimate origins, but left unchecked, a wound becomes infected and poisons the whole body (and subsequently, everyone around). Wounds must be attended to heal. With an unhealthy limb, the rest of the body overcompensates through manipulation, aggression, or blaming. Boundaries here are kind. Better to apply direct pressure to the wound than pretend it is well; this may get worse before better, but it is way of healing. — Jen Hatmaker

It is not the the bruises on the body that hurt. It is the wounds of the heart and the scars on the mind. — Aisha Mirza

All of us carry around countless bags of dusty old knickknacks dated from childhood: collected resentments, long list of wounds of greater or lesser significance, glorified memories, absolute certainties that later turn out to be wrong. Humans are emotional pack rats. These bags define us. — Marya Hornbacher

Had Martha Foley returned William [James Sidis]'s passion as Margaret [Engemann] did Norbert [Wiener]'s, perhaps the two prodigies would have had more in common in the long run. ... In the life of a prodigy, perhaps more than in the average life, a marriage or a requited love is the greatest single factor that can heal the old childhood wounds. William and Norbert's response to their childhood and teenage rejections and humiliations was to retreat into the painless world of ideas, where successes and satisfactions abounded. A successful love affair could be the key to reentry into the world of feeling, bridging the gap between the cerebral and the emotional lives. — Amy Wallace

When on an emotional roller-coaster, take the leap of faith ... — Stephen Richards

We've been through a lot, and though many of the wounds have healed, the scars they've left behind still throb every now and then. — Neha Yazmin

We cannot heal the throbbing heart till we discern the wounds within. — George Crabbe

Dear Lord, Please protect and guide Eve at her time of recovery. Life has given her a lot of emotional wounds, and now her physical body is mirroring this pain. Please take her hand and keep her safe. Let her live to lead a life that shows her the power of your love."
Together they added, "Amen."
Blake hated that it was all they could do right now. — Debra Anastasia

You really need stitches," she tells me."Or you're going to have a scar." I try not to laugh. Stitches aren't going to help. They fix skin, cuts, wounds, heal stuff on the outside. Everything broken with me is on the inside. "I can handle scars, especially one's on the outside. — Jessica Sorensen

The writing life is brutal on a wounded mind. It really is. So much time spent alone. So much time spent in self-reflection. Emotional wounds heal in other people's hearts but you have to reopen yours and examine them in order to re-create their painful feelings on the page. Ugly, twisted, vicious thoughts flitter through other people's minds, but you have to seize yours and hold them to the light in order to understand the soul's shadowy corners. You have to shred your comfortable pieties. You have to tear your illusions to feathers and rags. When you're working well, you become bad company, inward-turning, querulous, obsessed. — Andrew Klavan

If you suffer misfortune ... do you damnedest to ignore it. Wallowing in what-might-have-beens and what-could have-happeneds will only keep your emotional wounds festering. — Shelly Branch

Sometimes we must undergo hardships, breakups, and narcissistic wounds, which shatter the flattering image that we had of ourselves, in order to discover two truths: that we are not who we thought we were; and that the loss of a cherished pleasure is not necessarily the loss of true happiness and well-being. (109) — Jean-Yves Leloup

We could go back to the time when we first met: a man in emotional tatters over someone who had left him, and a woman madly in love with her neighbor. I could repeat what I said to you once: 'I'm going to fight to the bitter end.' Well, I fought and I lost, and now I'll just have to lick my wounds and leave. — Paulo Coelho

All the external adoration, respect and adulation in the word, can't drown out the internal voices that tell us, we are not good enough and unworthy of; happiness, love and an abundant life. When we need others to tell us were amazing, worthy and lovable, in order to feel good about ourselves, it is never enough. It goes into the bottomless pit where our inherent self-worth should be. It may feel like we are reaching out to receive love, but in actuality, we are seeking external noise to help drown out our negative core beliefs.
Love blossoms from the inside out. That is why it is so important to do the work necessary to heal our emotional wounds, to love ourselves and stand strong in who we are. Only then, are we truly free to give and receive love, unconditionally and in abundance. — Jaeda DeWalt

A man on the run finds compassion or loveor even pretended innocence his greatest source of danger. — Bryce Courtenay

I wish I could take my brain and put it inside your head," Winslow said. "Just for a moment. Then you'd know what all I can't find how to say. — Alan Heathcock

Over all this lay Hoppie's dictum: First with the head and then with the heart. Winning was something you worked at intellectually, emotion clouds the mind and is its natural enemy. This made for a loneliness which often let me aching to share an emotion but equally afraid that if I did so I would reveal a weakness which could later be used against me. — Bryce Courtenay

I smiled and looked at her- there she was with such a genuine grin and twinkle in her eyes. I kissed my mother on her forehead and took a long look in to her hazel eyes. I wondered when I would have the next chance to see her as I whispered, 'I love you." Mother didn't respond. She didn't look well- she had a tint of green and yellow to her skin and her thinning hair was a dull salt and pepper color, cut extra short and clinging to her scalp. She had no makeup on, which told me she just had no more energy.

I began to walk out of her room and turned to look at her. I wanted to run up to her, shake her, and beg her to tell me she loved me and was proud of me. But when I looked at her, she was already sleeping. — Jori Nunes

Wounds do eventually heal after a fashion, even emotional ones. What seems bad one day, is not quite as bad a year from now. — Cindy Vine

Some wounds never show, not even in the mirror, until we see them in the expressions on the faces of people we love. — Cameron Jace

Cutting pain was a different flavor of hurt. It made it easier not to think about having my body and my family and my life stolen, made it easier not to care ... -Wintergirls — Laurie Halse Anderson

You read all kinds of books and see all kinds of movies about the man who is obsessed and devoted, whose focus is a single solid beam, same as the lighthouse and that intense, too. It is Heathcliff with Catherine. It is a vampire with a passionate love stronger than death. We crave that kind of focus from someone else. We'd give anything to be that "loved." But that focus is not some soul-deep pinnacle of perfect devotion - it's only darkness and the tormented ghosts of darkness. It's strange, isn't it, to see a person's gaping emotional wounds, their gnawing needs, as our romance? We long for it, I don't know why, but when we have it, it is a knife at our throat on the banks of Greenlake. It is an unwanted power you'd do anything to be rid of. A power that becomes the ultimate powerlessness. — Deb Caletti

But then again, didn't all marriages carry thousands of hurts? Didn't husbands and wives injure each other all the time, leaving wounds both big and small, with snapped words or forgotten anniversaries or emotional buttons deliberately pushed? But thousands of kindnesses existed in marriages, too. The important thing was that the kindnesses triumphed over the hurts. — Sarah Pekkanen

Sometimes it was like Neil was from an alien planet, where people never asked for or shared anything emotional without deeply apologizing first. He assured me that he was simply British. And that we Americans, with all of our loud oversharing and need for random hugs and free admissions to people we've just met of deep, traumatic childhood wounds looks just as alien to them. — Amanda Palmer