Addendum on "Packing a Wound"

I'll be honest--the last couple of blog posts have been two that felt very important to me.  Inevitably, with the sheer volume of content that I have created, some weeks are going to be stronger than others or resonate with me differently.  The last two have been that specific kind of writing flow, where the words pour out and I am only an empty at the end--content, but empty.  This is not to say that I don't go back and spot-check for grammar, typos, and borked analogies, but those are the ones that clearly need to be told, rather than forcing myself to meet a particular deadline this week because reasons.  There is an ebb and flow to this, where some weeks the words are here before I open the page and other times where each phrase is an agony to put together and sometimes still when I simply don't have the words to think through the urgency of what I want to say and end up with six disjointed bullet points and no sense to make of them.  There is a small graveyard of the latter, along with blog posts that I had started but missed their relevant time window or something in life resolved and they were no longer needed.

In other words, as they have meant so much to me and I'm waiting on words to refill those empty spaces.  I have six or seven ideas on my post-it list of what I could write about today, but none of the urgency I enjoyed in the last two.

In OTHER other words, I'm not going to force this one today.  AND I'm going to give myself the grace to do that.

I do have one thing to leave you with regarding the post from two weeks ago, hence the title of this post.

There was something significant that was left out in my wound packing/emotional-bottling analogy.  Did you catch it?

In order to pack a wound properly, yes, debridement, cleansing, and gentle care are all necessary, but packing seems like it should also be part of packing a wound.  If you simply close up the space, infection roars into place in no time, possibly worse than before.  Packing the space lowers the possibility and the physical space that opportunistic bacteria could take up residence in these vulnerable places.  

In the explanation of the medical components, I mentioned sterile gauze and/or gauze soaked in some kind of antimicrobial.  So when we take that to the emotional side, if theoretically you have cleaned out the abscess created by repeatedly swallowed needs and hurts, what are we packing the emotional wound with?

I don't have a panacea for this one.  In my case, self-compassion is part of that packing.  Asking for empathy is part of it, too, to help me fill those spaces when I'm feeling vulnerable and cannot fill the space on my own--I'm getting better at this one in pieces, trying to find the grace to allow myself to take up more space in certain areas and learn to not only identify this need but to express it directly.  Given that a lot of my grief and anger is anchored to negative feelings in my body, my therapist suggested that I take a moment to focus on what my body feels like in a positive situation, pack the space with the sensations or a particular memory.  This mimics some meditative techniques I've worked with before, such as imagining liquid sunlight being poured into your head and slowly filling your body from the toes up.  In both cases, rather than leaving only the purulent gauze in the wound, I'm giving some fresh, clean feelings into the open space.  This will get better with practice, but the visuals tend to help me.

Packing the wound well and with salubrious material reduces the severity of the cleaning out part of wound tending.  What works best for you to pack the wound may not be what works best for me, and it may take some trial and error to find what your needs are in that space, but some careful consideration and planning will help you heal better and thoroughly.  Chances are decent that there are people in your life that are willing to help--most likely they don't know how, without some kind of clear direction.  What I've learned in asking for empathy is that there will be people that will say no, but there will be people that also say yes.