Warning....The author of this quote was a priest... This is a partial quote from Henri Nouwen..

"The great challenge is living your wounds through instead of thinking your wounds through...it is better to cry than to worry, better to feel your wounds deeply than to understand them, better to let them enter into your silence than to talk about them. The choice you face constantly is whether you are taking your wounds to your head or to your heart...in your head you can analyze them, find their cause and consequence and coin words to speak and write about them. But, no final healing is likely to come from that source. You need to let your wounds go down into your heart..."

Anyone know how you "take your wounds to your heart"? I've perfected the taking your wounds to your head.

What are your thoughts about this?

[ECHOES]

To me, it sounds like an encouragement to suffer in silence.
I don't think we have to choose between our head and our heart. I think to take them both places is the way to go.

thats interesting thought is that due to the line of "better to let them enter into your silence than to talk about them"?

I took it in total to mean that we should feel our pain and not just intellectualize it... but not sure what to think of the line about entering into your silence .

I'm looking forward to see what other people think it means when it says "living your wounds through" and "taking your wounds to your heart...

[healed84]

Is that from "The Wounded Healer"? I want to read it through a couple of times and think about it before I respond.

[rainbow8]

To me, it sounds like what my T is trying to do with the somatic experiencing. It fits her viewpoint almost totally. Talk therapy is usually "in your head", analyzing things, talking about them, worrying about them. Instead, it is better to feel them in your body, which means to cry, to identify where it hurts in our body, enabling us to feel the hurt instead of trying to understand it.

I agree with ECHOES though. We need to do BOTH; understand, analyze our wounds in our head, then feel them through our tears and let them get into our heart where the healing can talk place.

That was a partial quote I was given by someone... here is the whole thing

LIVING THROUGH YOUR WOUNDS

You have been wounded in many ways. The more you open yourself to being healed, the more you will discover how deep your wounds are. You will be tempted to become discouraged, because under every wound you uncover you will find others. Your search for true healing will be a suffering search. Many tears still need to be shed. But do not be afraid. The simple fact that you are more aware of your wounds shows that you have sufficient strength to face them. The great challenge is living your wounds through instead of thinking them through. It is better to cry than to worry, better to feel your wounds deeply than to understand them, better to let them enter into your silence than to talk about them. The choice you face constantly is whether you are taking your hurts to your head or to your heart. In your head you can analyze them, find their causes and consequences, and coin words to speak and write about them. But no final healing is likely to come from that source. You need to let your wounds go from that source. You need to let your wounds go down into your heart. Then you can live them through and discover that they will not destroy you. Your heart is greater than your wounds.
Understanding your wounds can only be healing when that understanding is put at the service of your heart. Going to your heart with your wounds is not easy; it demands letting go of many questions. You want to know "Why was I wounded?" "When?" "How?" "By whom?" You will believe that the answers to these questions will bring relief. But at best they only offer you a little distance from your pain. You have to let go of the need to stay in control of your pain and trust in the healing power of your heart. There your hurts can find a safe place to be received, and once they have been received, they lose their power to inflict damage and become fruitful soil for new life.
Think of each wound as you would of a child who has been hurt by a friend. As long as that child is ranting and raving, trying to get back at the friend, one wound leads to another. But when the child can experience the consoling embrace of a parent, she or he can live through the pain, return to the friend, forgive, and build up a new relationship. Be gentle with yourself, and let your heart be your loving parent as you live your wounds through.

Henri Nouwen
The Inner Voice of love -From Anguish through Freedom

[autotelica]

My thoughts?

Some of us are "feeling" creatures.

And some of us are "thinking" creatures.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with feeling or thinking, or feeling AND thinking.

I would never dare to tell a "feeling" person to stop feeling so much. That's rude, first of all, and secondly, how do you make yourself stop feeling?

Thinking is the same way. I can't make myself stop thinking any more than I can make myself stop breathing.

The thing to avoid is getting stuck. You can get mired in crying jags just as much as you can get stuck in mental loops. The key is doing something different when you find yourself not going anywhere. After all the tears have been shed, what's the plan, Stan? And after you spend hours ruminating and worrying about the worse, do you set aside some time to regroup? Feeling and thinking do not have to be diametrically opposed.

I don't put much stock in advice that makes a big to-do about turning to the "heart". It's alienating to me. There's a big whoosh noise whenever I read stuff like this. And honestly? The constant focus on emotions and feelings make me feel inadequate in my therapeutic journey.

I found that it took both head and heart to ultimately heal. Stuck in feeling, my thinking gets screwy; I need the head to sort through what I am feeling sometimes. Stuck in my head, I suppress deep feelings that I need to experience. I don't see them as really separable. For me, my thinking strongly influences the emotions/feelings I am experiencing, and if my thinking is screwed up, my feelings are reactions not based completely in the rational. I have found a kind a checks and balances between the two that has worked best for me.

I haven't really allowed myself to feel anything. I keep feelings totally under lock down. This line really struck me...

"You have to let go of the need to stay in control of your pain and trust in the healing power of your heart. There your hurts can find a safe place to be received, and once they have been received, they lose their power to inflict damage and become fruitful soil for new life."

[sconnie892]

Thanks for posting this readytostop. It was a helpful quote for me to read.

For me personally the quote made quite a bit of sense. The more I think about it, the more I tend to rationalize or normalize it in my head. But I tend to find that it is still there because it's stuck in my head. I haven't released it. But when I feel the pain (cry, get angry, or let it show in some other external manner) it tends to dissipate or lessen more quickly. It's out of my head and no longer concentrated in me. That said, I am horrible at actually doing this. I learned horrible coping skills for sadness and anger and tend to bottle them up.

[stopdog]

I simply don't agree with it.

[nicoleb2]

A lot of it seems like a keep it to yourself type thing.

The taking it to your heart to heal makes a lot of sense to me though.

Today is 4 years since my mom's untimely death (she wsa only 49). I'v taken it to my head (thought about it).

The hard part is accepting in my heart that she is gone, and many things have changed in negative ways when she died.

If I only accept it in my head "yep, she died" that does nothing to address the underlying feelings, and until I can deal with those feelings, I can never truly heal.

What I got from that is his someone is before they have done healing work. I use to tell people pity pot stories. But talking about my pain in therapy is healing. Just talking with no insight isn't healing. I could disagree with what is written because we need to understand also. But if its written by a priest a lot of religion is about denying painful feelings.

Originally Posted by autotelica

My thoughts?

Some of us are "feeling" creatures.

And some of us are "thinking" creatures.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with feeling or thinking, or feeling AND thinking.

I would never dare to tell a "feeling" person to stop feeling so much. That's rude, first of all, and secondly, how do you make yourself stop feeling?

Thinking is the same way. I can't make myself stop thinking any more than I can make myself stop breathing.

The thing to avoid is getting stuck. You can get mired in crying jags just as much as you can get stuck in mental loops. The key is doing something different when you find yourself not going anywhere. After all the tears have been shed, what's the plan, Stan? And after you spend hours ruminating and worrying about the worse, do you set aside some time to regroup? Feeling and thinking do not have to be diametrically opposed.

I don't put much stock in advice that makes a big to-do about turning to the "heart". It's alienating to me. There's a big whoosh noise whenever I read stuff like this. And honestly? The constant focus on emotions and feelings make me feel inadequate in my therapeutic journey.

Thanks, autotelica.

The text doesn't make much sense to the way I function, either. Besides, it contradicts itself - it seems to say, at the same time, "bottle it up by not talking about it" and "let it out by feeling it". As for "don't try to understand your feelings" - well, when I can start to understand why I feel whatever I may feel, that is when I can start to get over it. If I'm just flailing around trying to experience the emotions or whatever, I get lost and confused and feel a lot worse. And what's the deal with "don't talk about it"? For me, healing comes through words, and I don't need to be told that my ways of getting better are inferior.

To paraphrase the wise SD: I'm happy if this works for others, but I'm not going to agonise about the fact that it doesn't work for me.

[WikidPissah]

I love Nouwen, and I have read much of his works. I am not sure that this one paragraph can accurately depict this resource. He has an entire book devoted to the importance of mentors, psychologists and Spiritual directors. The book quoted is actually a primer on mindfulness. He speaks a lot about listening to your heart, accepting that you have been hurt and not judging yourself for it. He's big on being kind to yourself.

Nouwen was a Catholic priest, but he also promoted other peaceful religions. He was a big promoter of Thomas Merton. Most of his writings on a whole are like warm loving blankets. His writing is poetic and emotional, and really can't be intellectualized.

[sittingatwatersedge]

I'm reading this book now and thought I would bump this up again. thanks RTS for posting it.

[ LIVING THROUGH YOUR WOUNDS

You have been wounded in many ways. The more you open yourself to being healed, the more you will discover how deep your wounds are. You will be tempted to become discouraged, because under every wound you uncover you will find others. Your search for true healing will be a suffering search. Many tears still need to be shed. But do not be afraid. The simple fact that you are more aware of your wounds shows that you have sufficient strength to face them. The great challenge is living your wounds through instead of thinking them through. It is better to cry than to worry, better to feel your wounds deeply than to understand them, better to let them enter into your silence than to talk about them. The choice you face constantly is whether you are taking your hurts to your head or to your heart. In your head you can analyze them, find their causes and consequences, and coin words to speak and write about them. But no final healing is likely to come from that source. You need to let your wounds go from that source. You need to let your wounds go down into your heart. Then you can live them through and discover that they will not destroy you. Your heart is greater than your wounds.
Understanding your wounds can only be healing when that understanding is put at the service of your heart. Going to your heart with your wounds is not easy; it demands letting go of many questions. You want to know "Why was I wounded?" "When?" "How?" "By whom?" You will believe that the answers to these questions will bring relief. But at best they only offer you a little distance from your pain. You have to let go of the need to stay in control of your pain and trust in the healing power of your heart. There your hurts can find a safe place to be received, and once they have been received, they lose their power to inflict damage and become fruitful soil for new life.
Think of each wound as you would of a child who has been hurt by a friend. As long as that child is ranting and raving, trying to get back at the friend, one wound leads to another. But when the child can experience the consoling embrace of a parent, she or he can live through the pain, return to the friend, forgive, and build up a new relationship. Be gentle with yourself, and let your heart be your loving parent as you live your wounds through.

Henri Nouwen
The Inner Voice of love -From Anguish through Freedom[/quote]

[mixedup_emotions]

Wow, that is powerful. Thanks for posting!

[Miswimmy1]

i think its saying that you can think things over and analyze them, but until you really truly accept them as part of you and part of who you are, you won't fully be able to heal.