Soul Injury: Helping People Heal The Relationship They Have With Themselves

Free Resource Link: courses.opuspeace.org,

https://opuspeace.org/product/new-release-soul-injury-healing-the-relationship-you-have-with-yourself/

In this episode, I introduce you to Deborah Grassman.

Deborah is the author of three books: Peace at Last, The Hero Within, and Soul Injury, a contributing author for four textbooks, and has 25 published articles. There are four documentary films and a TED talk that feature her work.

However, none of these achievements have taught her as much as the 10,000 dying veterans she took care of as a VA hospice Nurse Practitioner for 30 years: “If anyone wants to learn how to achieve inner peace, ask a veteran who has successfully struggled to find it for the rest of their lives after they returned from war.”

The lessons she learned culminated into a concept known as “Soul Injury,” a wound that separates a person from their own sense of self. Deborah now provides presentations and workshops that can help anyone recover their loss of self-worth by healing the relationship that they have with themselves.

Today she speaks about:

Healing soul injuries. (0:01)

Recognizing and healing inner wounds (soul injury) for personal peace and a hurting world. (4:58)

Soul injuries and their impact on mental health. (12:05)

Society's fear of emotional pain and how it affects individuals. (19:24)

Emotional pain, healing, and integrating feelings. (22:15)

Integrating marginalized populations' unconscious feelings for healing. (25:36)

Healing from soul injuries and accessing resources for self-awareness and growth. (29:48)

Join me for this episode of Mommy Heal Thyself to learn more about healing soul injuries.

Transcript
(Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)

Dr. Michelle Gamble / Sankofa Healing 0:50

Welcome once again to another episode of mommy heal thyself. Today, I introduce to you Deborah Grassman. Deborah is the author

Dr. Michelle Gamble / Sankofa Healing 1:19

and soul injury, a contributing author for tech, for four textbooks and has 25 published articles. There are four documentary films and a TED Talk that feature her work. However, none of these achievements has taught her as much as the 10,000 dying veterans she took care of as a VA hospice nurse practitioner for over 30 years. If anyone wants to learn how to achieve inner peace, ask a veteran who has successfully struggled to find it for the rest of their lives after they return from war, the lessons that she learned culminated into a concept known as soul injury, a wound that separates a person from their own sense of self. Deborah now provides presentations and workshops that recover his or her loss of self worth by healing the relationship they have they have had with themselves. So Deborah, thank you for joining us today.

Opus Peace 2:31

Well, thank you so much for wanting to hear about soul injury and about helping people, especially women, heal the relationship they have with themselves. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you for the work that you do

Dr. Michelle Gamble / Sankofa Healing 2:44

absolutely now, before we get down that particular rabbit hole, I would love to know more about how you came to be placed on this path. What was your journey?

Opus Peace 2:59

Well, it was really a very unexpected path. When I graduated from nursing school, I was about 31 years old, and I went to work for the VA to become a nurse, you know, very idealistic Florence Nightingale, going to save these veterans from the trauma that they've experienced those kinds of things, very arrogant. I knew everything. And so probably for the first 10 years of my VA career, I spent really unlearning what I thought I knew. And you know, I'm sort of embarrassed to tell you that for the first 10 years of my VA career, I actually harbored a prejudice against Vietnam vets. Yeah, my thinking sort of went like this, you know, the war was over a long time ago. They just need to get over it. They just need to put it behind them. And what's with all the long hair and tattoos, you know, blah, blah, blah. And then one day, our VA was doing a call for veterans artwork from throughout the whole state of Florida, and I'm going through this display of hundreds of veterans artwork on that day, and suddenly I was stopped in my tracks when I saw this one painting by clearly a Vietnam veteran, and it was a soldier's face, and reflecting in the pupil of the eye was this burning hut with people dying. And you know, sometimes your soul has to reach out and grab you, because when you're just not getting it, so to speak, and it just stopped me in my track. Suddenly, I saw what that soldier saw. But more important in the painting, he was crying, but he wasn't crying tears like regular they were tears of blood. You see the loss of vitality, and see that's when my eyes were opened. So, you know, we all have prejudices, right? If we think we don't have any, that's the real problem, because we have this human brain access a filter, and it's about bringing that filter out of the dark into the light so we can see how it is impacting our relationships. So when you say, how did I arrive at this point? I have to say, if that moment hadn't happened to wake me up to see the prejudices that I was holding, I would have continued to judge and keep my arrogance toward helping veterans, and I would not have unlearn all the things that were keeping me separated from them and so really, you know, when I talk about our ultimate goal is to help people heal the relationship they have with themselves and to make peace with all these different scattered pieces of self. You know, I learned that from veterans who were dying. You know, I was a hospice nurse practitioner. And the irony, the real irony, is that I learned about how to achieve personal peace from people who had gone to war. I mean, so that's the kind of their ultimate test, so to speak. So I've learned it from from the best teachers, and that is dying veterans. And you know, there was a veteran one time when we were helping him come to peace with all the turmoil that had been in his life, and he said, Why did I have to be dying in order to learn how to do this? And I was like, Wow. You know, because dying people are fertile ground for healing. You know, everything changes when you're given a terminal diagnosis. So I got to bear witness to these kinds of phenomena every day, every single day. And but anyway, I was that man. His name was Mr. Myers. It was that man who stunned me into realizing this, what I was learning from dying veterans was applicable to all of us, and it was a message about how to have inner peace. And so, you know, when I retired from the VA, in fact, we had several of us that retired at the same time to bring the message to people who were not dying and people who were not veterans. And so we spent 10 years researching all of the tools, the self help tools, and what have you to see if it was applicable to other the broader population. And absolutely we have. It has been confirmed and validated that it is.

Dr. Michelle Gamble / Sankofa Healing 7:50

You know, it's interesting that you bring up the importance of us recognizing our own biases. You know, because I remember when I was younger and I had a friend who was in the military at that time, and I said, You know what, I can't have anything to do with you because I just don't understand this whole thing of war and you're fighting for this corrupt US government. And you know, if worse came to worse, we were on opposite sides of the fence, I would just have to shoot you. I think about that now, and it's like God has designed my path to wake me up to the awareness of how limited that perspective was. And you know, we there's so many different types of discrimination that we still have to this day against our veterans who went into wars that are quote, unquote not popular. Let's put it that way, and we're taking that resentment out on the veterans who went into these situations out of a desire to protect, a desire to oppose justice and truth and everything right and Wow. It's amazing. Just amazing. Now, what happened

Opus Peace 9:21

times when I was witnessing their stories, their military stories, they often talked about soul injury. And, you know, at first I thought they were just basically talking about PTSD and the trauma and what have you. But you know, so many of them. You know, when you come to the end of your life and you're looking back over your life. You look all the way back in people's childhood stories. So the injury, the wound, was often very much there prior to going into the military and on their deathbed decades later, there it is still there. So when we talk about why did I have to be dying in order to learn how to do this, it becomes even more pressing for this message about soul injury, and it's just crazy that we don't have a term for becoming separated from your own sense of self, because it's it's everywhere. Almost everybody has had that type of experience where they've been where shame, or I always say, unmourned loss and hurt, unforgiving guilt and shame and fear of helplessness and loss of control, those are the things that separate us from our own sense of self. And that's I mean, we have a name for it now. It's called a soul injury. And, you know, it's not, we don't need to pathologize it. We don't need to diagnose it, but we do need, we can't do anything about it instead, until we have a name for it and an identify, a way to identify it and a way to respond to it. So that's really what Opus Peace, our nonprofit, is about. Is about, how do you identify soul injury? We have an inventory for that. How do you respond to it, and how do you help? How can this help heal a hurting world? We have a hurt all of us are in one way or the other, and for many people, that hurt, that wound, clouds our ability to see ourselves, to feel the self worth that we have. So that's really, you know, you mentioned the soul injury book that just came out. That's really what it's about. It's, it's, it's a map, really, for how to identify soul entry within ourself, to provide self help tools to, instead of trying to be more, be better, oh, you just need to be more resilient, right? That's what, that's the you just be your best self, be the best version of yourself. And I'm not saying that that's not true, but that's but. But what is real within you is also the worst version. You have a worst version also that's real to get to know your worst version, not only your best version, get to and everything in between the good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful, it's all there. Well, Meet Greet, welcome all those different pieces and re home them and re home them. And when we only focus on Oh, be the best version of yourself, then we're feeling guilty or ashamed of all these other versions that we stuff in our unconscious because we don't want to think that we could have that, you know, that's why, when you know, I started out talking about our own prejudices, if we want to pretend like we have, oh, I have no prejudices. Well, guess what? Guess where those prejudices are. They're stuck over here in the unconscious, and they will come out in other ways that you don't recognize because you're not being mindful about them.

Dr. Michelle Gamble / Sankofa Healing 13:09

So absolutely, you know, it's a process that I often refer to as the three A's, awareness, acceptance and appreciation. So I would love for you to tell us a little bit more about exactly what

Dr. Michelle Gamble / Sankofa Healing 13:31

identify soul injury in ourselves and in our loved ones?

Opus Peace 13:37

Well, I would say the first thing is, what you really said is identifying within ourselves, because how can you help others heal their lives if we are oblivious and really aware, accepting and appreciating those wounds that are inside ourself? So I mean, when I talk about when I was a nurse, a new nurse, at age 31 and I'm out to heal, fix the world. Yeah, you know. You know, how can you help others heal their you know, their anger, their fears, their shame, their helplessness, if we don't know how to do that within ourselves. So absolutely, it starts within so again, it we have an inventory. It's right on our website, Opus peace.org, Opus P, E, A, C, E, Opus Peace, and

Dr. Michelle Gamble / Sankofa Healing 14:25

we'll have that link in the show notes. So, yeah, worry it'll be in the show notes.

Opus Peace 14:30

Yeah. So, so again, if you think about your nature, is a great metaphor for us as human beings. And if you think about the sun and went on a cloudy day, the clouds obscure the sun, and trying to make that sun stronger, more resilient, more forceful, isn't going to do a thing for getting to you, right? So our tools focus on removing the what's clouding your own soul, the energy of your soul. And I love, if you look up the definition of soul in the dictionary, one of the definitions is it is your total self, not just your best self, not just your saintly part. It includes, you know, all of it your total self, good, bad, ugly, and everything in between. So any rate, what I was going to say is three

Opus Peace 15:35

barriers that separate people from themselves. Is the unmourned loss and hurts, not loss and hurt. It's unmourned loss and hurt. That's the culprit that we exile into unconsciousness. And then what do we do? Well, we don't want to feel that, so what do we do? We use numbing agents to not feel who we are, to not be real with ourselves. So in a lot of ways, it's all about becoming real with ourselves, knowing who we are, which is exactly what you said with your three A's, knowing who we are. So as we learn how to mourn, learn how then we don't have to numb out stuff. And numbing isn't just drugs and alcohol. You know you can numb with with workaholism, chasing perfectionism, you know, all these other things, and you end up with an imitation, with distractions, and you end up with patient life. You also self so any rate, and as I said, Unforgiven guilt and shame. Shame, there's nothing like shame to convince you that you shouldn't be who you are, that you have no self worth, right? That that you're not good enough. So shame, you know, the core of many soul injuries is this sense of, I'm not good enough, I'm not smart enough, I'm not pretty enough, I'm not, you know, just not enoughness, that type of thing. So it's uncovering that and bringing it out in the open. You know, so many times, there's so many schools of thoughts, philosophies, counseling. You know, even in my nursing education, you know, if someone brings up shame, what do we as counselors often say, Oh, you shouldn't. You shouldn't feel ashamed about that. Well, you know, shame is present in all of us. Isn't it better to bring it out in the light so we can let's talk about it. We all have it, you know, instead of stuffing it away and pretending like we don't. And then the third pause of soul injury is fear of helplessness and loss of control. And to me, this is one of the most ignored that. You know, children are helpless. Yeah, they are. They're at the mercy of their parents and a lot of wounding that happens in childhood, that residue remains with a person for their entire life if they don't bring consciousness to it. And what it really is is that when they're so helpless, and then they don't want, as they grow up, they don't want to feel that helplessness again. So so there's a lot of numbing agents used to avoid feeling helpless again. I'm going to control everything. And of course, that's a problem when you're trying to control something that's uncontrollable. And

Dr. Michelle Gamble / Sankofa Healing 18:25

so what have you found is the most common misperception or mistake that people make of how they approach what we are now referring to as soul injury.

Opus Peace 18:46

I'll give you a very practical example. I was in Walmart not too long ago, and there was a woman, she had a t shirt on, and this is what the t shirt said. I'm a bitch. If you don't like it, stay away. Good. I did. I had to, I mean, I had to giggle, and I give that woman credit. So, so here's what I think her t shirt should have said. She should have said, I'm a hurting woman who is angry and afraid of the world, see that would have been real. Yeah. So when you say what's the biggest mistake, I would say, we all, we all have facades, and we need facades in untrusted

Opus Peace 19:42

for the environment that comes back to, yeah, yeah. So yeah. But the the mistake when you say that is when you think that you are the facade, when you mistake your facade. Oh, you know this woman wearing this t shirt, basically, and I this is conjecture, obviously, on my part, she was like, This is who I am. If you know it's, that's what it said, This is who I am. If you don't like it, stay away. Yeah, that's not who you are. This is a facade that I need, because I'm a hurting and angry woman, and you know, so, so if you can, so it's not about removing facades. It's about bringing consciousness to the facade so that you Don't delude yourself, you don't have the illusion yourself that that's who you are, that's how you end up with a counterfeit life. Then

Dr. Michelle Gamble / Sankofa Healing 20:33

Exactly. So now, what is something that you have influenced you to help you to come more to an awareness, not only of soul injury, but how to help others and yourself to heal from a soul injury.

Opus Peace 20:56

Well, we live in a society that is blatantly afraid of emotional pain, blatantly,

Dr. Michelle Gamble / Sankofa Healing 21:06

and we're told we shouldn't have the pain. You know that there's something wrong with us and we have to take a drug to numb ourselves of it if we have that pain

Opus Peace 21:14

well, and we should be able to rise above it and put a happy smile on no matter what. You know, when, when you run into someone who's who's frowning or feeling down for really being real with whatever they're experiencing, and what do people say? You know? Well, Where's, where's that smile today, you know? And it's like, upside down, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, there's all these messages to were afraid of emotional pain, and of course, I was the same way. I grew up in this society. Well, I'll tell you my little Lassie story, my and you can appreciate I'm a little embarrassed to even say it, because it seems so trivial compared to what I've witnessed on veterans death beds. But when I was five years old. I was watching glassy on TV. I was sure she was going to die, and I'm crying, and my dad walks through the room and he sees my tears, and he starts laughing at me. I made a five year old decision that day to never never cry again. There must be something wrong. So what happened? So I want to tell you I did not cry a tear for 30 years. After that day, 30 years, I became ashamed of the Deborah that was hurting, the Deborah That was sad. I stuffed her, I exiled her. And it wasn't until 30 years later, where I was dealing with something painful and out of the blue, luckily, my soul, something within me, said, what if your fear of your pain, of your pain is worse than if you just felt it and I cried for the first time in 30 years. I still remember where I was standing that day, and that was when my unfreezing began. That's when I started becoming real, becoming real. So if you look at the heart of any wound, any wound, whether it's shame, hurt, helplessness, whatever, there is fear of emotional pain, that's at the heart. So when you say, what, what? What's at the core of our interventions and what, have you, it's helping people release their fear of emotional pain so they can get real with whatever they're feeling. And but if you're talking about wounds, whether you like it or not, there's, there's going to be some unborn hurt there. That's what kind of beats the definition of a wound. So you want to bring consciousness to it, and the way you bring consciousness to it, and, you know, the research is really clear. You know, I don't know if you're familiar with the book The Body Keeps the Score by vessel van der Kolk. He's one of the, yeah, leading researchers, but he is really clear in his book that it's not enough to talk about your feelings. You have to feel your feelings. It's not enough good to talk about and externalize, you know, the emotional pain and the wound. That's good. I'm not saying that's not helpful. It absolutely is. It makes it conscious, but you're not gonna You can't heal what you don't feel. It does that. You know, good, that it comes here, but you've got to move it down to here, and then you've got to integrate it, to bring it down to your gut, to where you

Dr. Michelle Gamble / Sankofa Healing 24:49

digest it.

Opus Peace 24:50

Digest it exactly. You have to eat your shadow, as Carl you would put it,

Dr. Michelle Gamble / Sankofa Healing 24:58

you know, it's, it's such a powerful message that, unfortunately in our culture, we're told that emotions are wrong, emotions are bad, as opposed to saying it's about being stuck and not digesting it. So it's like having constipation, emotional constipation, that's what's killing us, as opposed to digesting it, allowing it to work through the body, allowing it to work through our soul and and releasing what no longer serves us, and absorbing and integrating the lessons that can help us to move to the next part of our journey.

Opus Peace 25:36

Ah, the other thing, the other Yeah, the other thing, I would say, you know, in addition to feeling our feelings like Van der Kolk encourages, I would say we also kind of take it one step further, and that is, there is a part of self that is holding that feeling for you, waiting for you, to acknowledge it, to accept it, to acknowledge it, to appreciate it, so we don't it's not enough. I'm going to say it's not as Vander Kolk says, it's not enough to talk about feelings. We have to feel them. And I'm going to say it's great to feel your feelings and ventilate your feelings, but that's not enough either. You have to re own and re home the part of self that is holding those feelings for you. And that's, that's the model that we use is more the scattered pieces of self that we've disconnected from. And it's, it's be we have very simple, you know, straightforward tool self help, tools to help acknowledge the part of self that's holding the feeling. So yes, it's acknowledging feeling, it's feeling it, but then it's okay. What about this scattered piece of self that's sitting there holding this feeling for you in your unconscious now that you've made it conscious? Let's bring that part of self. And certainly, you know, women have been especially older women, I will say, you know, I was raised, you know, with the women's livers, so to speak, you know, but you know, we were not, you know, there was a lot of sense of women were not as valued, and, you know, our self worth, those types of things, you know, and kind of feeling helpless and powerless in some ways. So at any rate, being able to go back and acknowledge that ourselves that was raised in that kind of culture, whether it be women, minority, you know, whether it be you know, a lot in the book that I talk about is any marginalized population more than likely is going to have a soul injury Because of the messages that society sends to it, and some messages more deep than than others, but again, being able to bring consciousness to that part of self, holding it is also important, not just feeling it, not just, you know, acknowledging it. Those are important steps, don't get me wrong, but that final step is, what does the final integration? And we don't talk enough about that, that how to bring home that scattered piece of self that's holding the feeling. Because we need to talk about integration, not just rising above something, rising above something. Yeah. Sometimes it's a great way to say, suppress it,

Dr. Michelle Gamble / Sankofa Healing 28:41

yeah, and, and in reality, the only way to heal is to have that reintegration, you know. So anything less than that will, in a way of speaking, allow the wound to continue.

Opus Peace 28:55

Yeah, you know, you're so right. You are so right.

Dr. Michelle Gamble / Sankofa Healing 28:59

And I think it's the other part of your message that is so important to me is the fact that this is not relegated to any one group of people, any person that you can think of that is out there, you would be surprised as to the sole injuries that that person may have. You know, you may look at someone and say, Oh, he or she has it all together. They never had anything rough in their life, but you have no clue as to whether or not that person has had an experience that he or she has interpreted in a certain manner that has led to this soul injury, to separateness from yourself. Ah,

Opus Peace 29:47

well, I I remember a therapist saying to me one time, no one escapes this world unscathed. If you're in this world, you're going to be scathed in in some way. So we all have wounds, and it's about bringing consciousness to those wounds so that we can be healed. You know, I also remember there's someone that had said, it's it i It's an anonymous thing that I saw, but it just so resonated with me is it was this, I can't heal because I I couldn't heal because I kept pretending I didn't hurt. I think that's a beautiful quote. I couldn't heal because I kept pretending that I didn't hurt.

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