All wounds need healing, whether they’re physical or emotional. Today, it’s all about the latter, and the best way to heal them is to transform them into something worth living with.
Sadly, we can’t always avoid what happens to us, who raises us, or what situations we end up witnessing or being a part of. As those wounds make themselves at home inside of us, we have to work to transform them.
I believe the strongest way to do that is by practicing these 9 habits. With regular time and energy given to them, your wounds don’t have to be the gaping soul holes you’ve come to know them as.
9 ways to transform your deepest wounds into wisdom:
1. Reframe “Why is this happening to me?” to “What is this moment trying to teach me?”
Now, to be clear, we’re not suggesting that “everything happens for a reason” or that you should “find the silver lining.” Sometimes terrible things happen, with no good reason and with no silver lining.
But sometimes, we can glean something of value from them, even if we’d still rather never have had the experience.
For example, I recently had a physical altercation with someone I’ve known all my life. Someone who has wounded me a lot. There was a door between us, and it was a case of me shutting it to keep my son safe.
It sounds awfully Hollywood, and it wasn’t a typical “my life” moment, but events unfolded that led to the need to protect, and so I did.
An hour after it happened, while the stress I felt was showing up as chest pains, I found myself holding my hand to it and asking aloud, “What is this moment trying to teach me?” rather than “Why me?”
At that point, I felt the product of my healing journey come to life.
You never really know how much you’re healing until you’re faced with an element of your past. Do you revert back to the person you were before, or do you react in a way that honors that healing?
I did the latter. I chose not to pity myself but to find a lesson.
Wounds can become wisdom with time, curiosity, self-compassion, and patience.
Believe me, you will be tested, but I’m living proof that regular practice can transform what was once a deep, searing pain into something more useful.
2. Approach old stories or memories from new angles.
Facts don’t change, but this isn’t what I mean here. It’s more about the stories we tell ourselves. Those stories often come from what people assume or expect of us.
As a young adult eager to find my way in the world, I was told by a significant figure that I was destined to float through life.
It’s become a core memory for me, and for many years, I leaned into that wound and found myself doing the very thing he had predicted. It was as if he was lining me up for my fate rather than encouraging or supporting me to find my path.
One day, I decided to look at it in a way I’d never before. I decided that what he was really saying was that I could turn my hand to anything, but, of course, since a compliment would’ve cracked his ego, he chose to be mean instead.
With that reframe, I decided to try all kinds of things to figure out what I wanted, and I finally landed on the one thing that always felt like home – writing.
I may have continued to float aimlessly and never found my way back to myself had I not chosen to look at his comment from another angle. I’m glad I did, and I practice that over and over wherever I can.
3. Make your old survival patterns everything you don’t do now.
I read something beautiful recently that described survival patterns as “those friends who were great in secondary school but maybe not so much now.”
At one point in our lives, certain habits helped past versions of ourselves, but I’ve got news for you: we grow!
We don’t need to hold onto all those habits anymore, yet we find ourselves clinging to some because they’ve become so familiar to us.
To know what you need to let go of, ask yourself this of your current habits:
Is it helping me now, or holding me back?
You’ll get your answer immediately if you’re honest with yourself, and that is where you will find your wisdom.
Of course, breaking those habits won’t be as simple as just identifying them, but the work always starts with honest self-awareness.
4. Stop waiting for apologies from people who will never give them.
Oh boy, it’s a hard boulder to jump over, but once you do, your path will be so much clearer.
We all have people in our lives who we’re waiting for to show up at our door with an apology.
You’ve likely been mistreated, hurt, to hell and back, while they are gliding on with their life with zero intention of giving you that apology.
Yet, we hold out for it. Why? It’s so painful to hold onto people who don’t care about making it right. You’re preventing yourself from moving forward, and that wound will remain.
You’re in control of that. But you’re not in control of them. You get to decide when to let go. Don’t give them your power for a second longer.
5. Learn how to tell the difference between a wound and a warning.
With a wound, the damage is already done. With a warning, you can step aside and allow it to pass by without causing you more harm.
In other words, your nervous system needs to learn to differentiate between the terrible things that have already happened to you and the warning signs that something is happening in the here and now.
But many of us confuse the two. We treat red flags as if they’re “just our trauma talking,” so we tolerate behavior we should walk away from. And we treat old wounds as if they’re still happening, so we react to safe people as though they’re threats.
Learning to tell the difference is how you stop repeating the same pain. Old wounds need gentleness, processing, and care. Warnings need boundaries, distance, and self‑protection.
It can take time, but one of the most powerful forms of wisdom is knowing when something is hurting you because it belongs to the past, and when something is hurting you because it’s happening right now.
6. Grieve the life you wished or expected to have.
Many people think that grief is reserved for the death of a person, but you can grieve any loss, including an unlived life. But this kind of grief is confusing because there are no funerals or ceremonies for it, and others might not understand.
When someone you love dies, you grieve, and other people send cards and well wishes. They even turn up at your door with pasta bakes. You can go to support groups and take time off work.
The grief is tangible because it belongs to a person who has passed. But what about the grief of an unlived life – the version of your future you thought you’d have? People can’t visibly see the thing you’ve lost because the grief comes from the idea in your mind that was never produced.
Yet you cannot heal the wound if you do not accept what you’ve lost. And you cannot accept what you’ve lost if you don’t grieve it.
Wisdom comes from realizing that you don’t need society’s rules in order to feel what you feel, and that grieving isn’t reserved for lost loved ones only.
7. Turn “never again” into “possibly.”
I love this one! It fits so many different life scenarios, from finding love again, to trying to set up a business from scratch after your last one didn’t work out, from losing a pet, to trusting a new friend.
“I am never going to put myself through this again!”
It’s easy to say when you’re hurting, deep in the wound, but what about later?
It’s ok to let curiosity in, and to wonder, “What if?” There’s nothing wrong with that; in fact, it’s what life is all about.
Yes, learning from the past and being aware of red flags is important, but no two people or experiences are going to be identical.
It is possible that the very thing you swore off is the one thing you’ll want again, and that’s ok.
Be a ‘possibly’ person.
8. Develop a selective nature that allows certain people in and keeps certain others out.
I make it my mission in life to avoid all narcissists. I can now spot them coming a mile off, and I shut my physical and emotional doors on them. They don’t like it, but I cannot afford to have these toxic people darken my life any more.
Thankfully, my wound from previous narcissistic abuse didn’t leave me leaning into the familiarity of abuse; it made me believe that there have to be good people in the world. People who are healthy, warm, and authentic. I just had to learn how to separate the wheat from the chaff.
I started to crave a more selective nature, and I fought hard for it.
It meant I had to heal the wound of always wanting to people-please, and my then-belief that love was transactional.
Letting people in without a motive or any drama attached felt eerily quiet for me; I kept waiting for the catch.
But in the end, there was none.
9. Make peace with the person you were before.
Emory Hall wrote a poem called “I Have Been a Thousand Different Women.” Of course, it works for men too, because we all grow and learn and become different versions of ourselves over our lifetimes.
The first line reads, “Make peace with all the women you once were.” The entire poem is about honoring the past and how you dealt or coped with what you experienced.
We do the best we can with the knowledge we have at the time. Once we know differently, we can do differently. But not before.
If you lived through trauma that left wounds, that trauma doesn’t have to define you for the rest of your time here.
Final thoughts…
We carry wounds with us both consciously and subconsciously, but it is how they show up for us that can be problematic.
The wise will see wounds as needing time, space, and the right ointment for healing. In this instance, the right ointment can be the habits you practice in order to transform your pain into perspective.
My feeling is that if you want change for the better, it is waiting for you.
