Each one of us has been emotionally wounded at some point in our lives.
Unfortunately, for some of us, the ones with highly sensitive souls, those moments can be extremely painful and damaging.
What could be even more devastating is that other people could never understand we’re feeling so lost and broken. That’s why, no matter how hard it may seem, we have to learn how to express our emotions and share our feelings, at least with the people that are really close to us.
Here are 10 signs you’re experiencing deep emotional pain no one around you notices.
1. Overthinking every little thing
There has not been a thought in your mind that you haven’t overthought hundreds of times. Once your emotions were so badly hurt, you started questioning everything. This made you insecure about your own life. Sometimes even a simple choice like “What to wear today?” can be extremely overwhelming for you. That’s because you overthink everything, and simple choices become difficult obstacles for your wounded mind.
2. Getting emotional over basically everything
When your emotional wounds are still open, you feel the pain at its worst. Not only your own pain but also the struggles of others. Whenever you see something that touches your heart, you just break down. After you’ve been emotionally damaged, it feels almost impossible to hold your tears back. Whether it’s a sad movie, a heartbreaking book, or a touching moment you witness, you just can’t stop yourself from crying because of all of the pain you’re hiding inside of you.
3. Feeling like you’re never enough
The minute after realizing you’ve been emotionally wounded, you started blaming and doubting yourself. You feel like you were never worthy of love and recognition. Instead of aiming towards fixing yourself, you feel helpless and desperate. This wouldn’t help you heal your bleeding soul. The best thing you can do in those moments of hopelessness is to reach out to the people who really love and care about you.
4. Losing interest in things you once loved
A part of questioning yourself after an emotional breakdown is doubting everything you once enjoyed. This leads you to becoming numb to a lot of things that made you smile before. At such times the negative thoughts overpower the rest. That’s why you feel so demotivated, and you lose interest in almost everything you do so easily.
5. Constantly reliving the past
Along with overthinking comes the constant replaying of your past mistakes. When you’ve been deeply wounded, you can’t stop searching for the reason why all of this happened to you. That’s why you repeatedly relive all of the bad memories searching for the answer. But the truth is, there is no one right answer to your questions. Besides, you don’t have to find all the answers. There are things in life that we simply cannot control. What we can control is our reaction to them.
6. Getting easily annoyed by people
Being emotionally hurt also makes you highly sensitive and easily triggered by people’s behaviors around you. Their questions, words, way of laughing, even their breathing will annoy you within seconds. The pain you’ve experienced, and the wounds after it will make you build walls higher than the highest skyscraper around you. Not only you don’t let people close to your heart, but you don’t let them near you physically too. Have in mind that this may lead to social withdrawal and deepen your wounds once you have no one to talk to about them.
7. Feeling lost
When you’ve been hurt right in the feelings, you question everything you see and feel. This makes you so confused and lost that you don’t know what to feel anymore. Your mind becomes so tangled that you don’t know where to begin. Nothing makes sense anymore, and this drives you insane. You come to a point where you become emotionally exhausted.
8. Becoming numb
Your feelings have started to look like an emotional rollercoaster. At the end of it, after you’ve felt so painfully wounded, and your emotions have turned into a giant mess, you can feel nothing but numbness. You now go through days without feeling anything, neither happiness nor sadness. You just want the day to be over. This numbness of yours is, in fact, a coping mechanism you use to survive possible further wounds. Surely, it’s easier to just turn your heart off and stop feeling anything, but facing your feelings is what will help you heal from this emotional trauma.
9. Ruining your sleeping schedule
All this overthinking and constantly changing feelings have made your sleeping schedule chaotic and unhealthy. You can’t even remember when was the last time you fell asleep at a reasonable time. Nighttime is when you are all by yourself with your thoughts. While your emotional wounds are still open, being alone with your thoughts can be extremely overwhelming. Feelings like loneliness, depression, and desperation take over your mind. Sleeping while experiencing such emotional chaos is just not in the picture.
10. Realizing you need help
Realizing you need to be healed is one of the most mature things a wounded person can do. That’s the time when you feel there’s something broken inside of you, and you cannot fix it by yourself. But still, it seems too hard to share what you’re really feeling with someone else. However, this may be the only way you’ll be able to overcome this chaotic mess in your mind.
