- Hey, Psych2Goers, welcome back.
(sighs) Why did this happen?
Whether you saw it coming or not, the feeling is the same.
You're shattered.
You feel like your heart is broken into multiple pieces.
Life dishes out many unforeseen heartbreaks.
Though the experiences may be similar,
every hurt is personal.
Traumatic events from your past can leave you wounded.
Over time, they take shape of an emotional wound itself.
Like a physical wound, it's always in your awareness.
You're protective and sensitive
to anything that might re-injure it.
And the same sensitivity often makes you
even more vulnerable.
Here are seven signs of an emotional wound.
Let's all learn together, shall we?
(soft music)
Number one, you cry easily over small things.
Do you shed emotional tears
along with the fictional character you're reading?
Is there such thing as crying too often or too much?
Some people cry while reading a sad book
or watching videos of baby animals
while others cry only at funerals.
If you've ever had tears well up in a meeting
or wept out loud in a movie theater,
you may have wondered if it's normal.
It is found that women cry on average 5.3 times per month
and men cry an average of 1.3 times per month.
Tearfulness is commonly associated
with depression and anxiety,
This emotional state perpetuates
when you've been emotionally hurt in the past,
consciously or subconsciously.
As a result, even the mere hint of anything
that arouses emotions can cause tears to flow.
Number two, you lose interest
in the things you used to enjoy.
At some point in their life, most people would lose interest
in things that used to excite them.
Emotional hurt, however, takes this loss to its limits.
It becomes impossible to draw enjoyment
from things that once elicited excitement.
Your emotional hurt makes even pleasure seem like a task.
Your world is drenched in gray,
and you don't seem to have the strength it takes
to lift the paintbrush.
Number three, you get annoyed easily by people's behaviors.
Irritability is the carbon monoxide of emotional pollutants.
No one likes confrontation,
but you can run from it for only so long.
Anger has its own role.
Both direct and indirect anger, or passive,
is meant to communicate something important.
What you really want is to connect and be heard.
But when anger is involved,
the result is often just the opposite.
Aggression in any form is the biggest hindrance
to emotionally intelligent communication.
People often think passive-aggressive communication
is somehow better or nicer.
It's not. In fact, it may actually be worse.
If you're looking for a true and meaningful connection
and understanding with another person,
you need a better strategy.
Being compassionate with yourself
and figuring out the source can help bring yourself down
when you're feeling on edge.
Be compassionate with yourself.
Number four, you feel worthless and hopeless.
How can you increase your sense of worth?
Can you earn it through what you do?
Happiness is not obtained solely by your achievements.
Self-worth based on accomplishments is pseudo-esteem
and not the real thing.
Feeling worthless often involves a sense of hopelessness
and insignificance.
Such feelings often arise commonly due to abuse or trauma
or difficult situations
that pose a threat to a person's sense of oneself.
Pinpointing the cause behind these distorted thoughts
can help you to understand
and address factors that contribute to low self-esteem.
Number five, you keep replaying the bad memories
in your head.
Is your head filled with one single thought
or a string of thoughts that just keep repeating,
and repeating, and repeating themselves?
The process of continuously thinking about the same thought,
which tends to be sad or dark, is called rumination.
Your history of emotional or physical trauma
makes you believe that by ruminating,
you'll gain insight into your life
or a problem you're facing.
As when a ball is rolling downhill,
it's easier to stop the ruminating thoughts
when they first start rolling and have less speed
than when they've gathered speed over time.
It helps to identify your trigger
and find a distraction to break your thought cycle.
For example, calling a friend or a family member,
doing chores around the house,
reading a book, or walking around your neighborhood.
This helps to challenge the onslaught of thoughts.
Number six, you feel too much until you're numb.
Am emotional wound can also trigger what is called apathy.
Emotional hurt causes you an emotional overload
to the point that you become numb.
It's a form of self-defense against future hurt.
Apathy is a feeling, but it's also an attitude.
And sadly, the attitude is one of indifference,
unconcern, unresponsiveness, detachment, and dispassion.
Emotional hurt zaps you of so much energy
that you feel listless,
almost too paralyzed to act,
and certainly without the will to do so.
This is why apathetic individuals are easily identified
by their passivity.
Your interest in confronting life's challenges
is seriously compromised.
You just don't care anymore.
To defeat this stagnancy within,
you must be willing to commit
to giving this apathy the fight of its life,
even though doing so feels like it will take
a lot more energy and effort than you're capable of.
And number seven, you feel clueless and stuck.
Ever had times when you feel trapped or restless?
Where the life you're living doesn't seem anything
like the life you wanted,
as if on autopilot, going through the motions
but feeling unsatisfied?
Your instincts are to shake it up,
change your job, or go on that vacation.
But that provides only a temporary, not permanent, solution.
Instead, the solution lies within.
Topping up your ways of thinking about events
can actually help lead to new perspectives
and diminish distress and anxiety.
It's important to do away
with your negative perceptions about yourself
that interfere with problem-solving.
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