Many individuals often spend their entire lives hiding their deepest pains and wounds from everyone, especially themselves. It’s quite easy to do when our bodies have wonderful mechanisms that allow this to happen without much effort. Unfortunately, there is a major downside to this. Each of those pains and wounds that are buried somewhere within are only going to manifest in ugly ways somewhere else in life. Even worse, the negative energy from those past traumas will continue to fester and plague the health of these individuals who do this until they’re dealt with. Sadly, for those who don’t, it becomes quite common to seek out an addiction to something as a coping mechanism.
Being molested at the young age of 12 by an adult male in his mid 40’s left a tremendous amount of pains and wounds within me. My parents never wanted to talk about it after it happened, nor did they ever send me to any type of therapy to help me heal from it. Instead, it got locked away deep inside me. As I grew older, I found that I couldn’t handle any intimacy with anyone. I also saw how any type of aggressive behaviors being directed towards me would send me into a tailspin. But like a good wounded soldier might do, I trudged on and did my best to continue to battle life on life’s terms. What I did know was how I was slowly loosing that battle because of wounds like the molestation that were still living on within me. On some level, they were like a cancer that was slowly eating away at my mind, body, and soul. Anger and rage became common reactions to everything in my daily life because of it. I thought things were fine though because I was still able to go through life on somewhat of a functional level.
The funny thing was that I was actually more dysfunctional than functional. Every aspect of my life was off-kilter because of the pains and wounds that I kept suppressed from that molestation. And that wasn’t the only thing I was keeping buried either. There was the alcoholism in my family, all of my childhood drama, mental and emotional abuses, being bullied, and a lot more of all of that stuck inside me. So how did I deal with it all?
I coped in life by using addictions to get by and stay numb.
Alcohol and drugs were the first two addictions I succumbed to and sex and love were the last that kept me in spiritual prison. When I finally started realizing how much of my past pains and wounds were the driving force of all of the imbalances in life, I started intensely working on myself.
Through 12-Step recovery, therapy, various support groups, the Mankind Project, and of course, getting closer to God, I was able to bring up all that inner poison to the surface and release it once and for all. Thankfully, I no longer carry any of it and interestingly enough, I’m not plagued by active addictions anymore either.
I thank God that my past doesn’t haunt me anymore, either directly or indirectly, in any area of my life. I also thank God for helping me to bring all those pains and wounds to the surface to release me of the bondage from every one of them. It took a lot of faith and courage, but in the long run, it sure has been worth it.
So please understand that if you have been avoiding dealing with any past pains, wounds, or traumas in any area of your life, it’s only going to lead you down dark paths until you start dealing with them. It might not be easy to face them when you do, but through God, courage, and definitely faith, you can and will be free of all of them, once and for all. And just as important, you’ll soon be finding life becoming a whole lot brighter…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
