How Do You Wear Your Scars?
Scars can be sources of pride or regret. What do you choose?
Everyone has scars.
It’s true that some people have no physical scars to show. But emotional, mental, and spiritual scars are just as impactful.
Visible or invisible, scars are a part of life for everyone. Some are very superficial while others run deep. Scars are like receipts – they’re proof of purchase for life.
What does that even mean? Nobody lives in a perfect bubble. Period. Everyone has interactions with other people throughout their lives. Even the most introverted and separated people you know either do or have had interactions with others.
Those interactions – whether physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual – will make impressions. Some are barely noteworthy, while others cut deep literally or figuratively. There are impressions made that fade outside of the immediate moment in which they happen – while there are impressions that sink so deeply into our psyches that they last a lifetime.
Once the impression is made, how it remains, however, is up to you and me. Pride or regret, positivity or negativity, good or bad – you and I choose.
How is this a choice?
When something happens – at the immediate moment of it’s happening – you will have a visceral, instantaneous, lizard-brain reaction. When good, it could feel like your heart is soaring and choirs of angels sing. If bad, it could feel like your stomach dropping out from under you and a sad trombone playing. Those immediate reactions simply ARE. And they will differ depending on the circumstances.
When I see an upward spike in views in my Medium.com stats, at that moment I feel elated. When the numbers are flat or stagnant, I feel annoyed or irked.
But once that immediate moment passes – what I continue to feel is on me. I could take a positive feeling and apply it to the rest of my day. Likewise, I can take the negative feeling and let that direct how my day goes.
Or – I can temper it. Pause, reflect, accept, and/or redirect.
How does that work?
Pause
Deep breath. This is a moment in time. I know my lizard brain has reacted to this situation in this way.
Reflect
Why am I reacting like this? Does this visceral, immediate reaction serve me or not? Should I allow this to dictate how the rest of my day goes?
Accept
This is how I reacted in the moment. If good – accept it and move on. If bad – then I need to accept it and move on. But that requires one more step.
Redirect
Whatever happened, happened, and the immediate reaction was. Now, I choose to allow it to impact the rest of my time – day, week, year, life, etc. – or not.
That is how this is a choice. The immediate reaction is not. But what follows is. We’re empowered to work with this – or not. We can make that choice – and take the control that is our due.
But what about scars?
Physical scars tend to happen instantly. Or rather, the inciting incident that leads to the scar is instantaneous.
When I was 6 years old or so, I received a gift that was sealed shut with plastic. To open said plastic, I used a pair of scissors. Badly. In doing so, I slid the blades into the top of my left hand. It wasn’t a bone-deep cut – but it ran deep. I put a couple of Bandaids on it to stop the bleeding.
But it left a mark. Decades later, I have this cool-looking triangular scar on the top of my left hand. It looks almost like the Star Trek Starfleet symbol.
I wear this scar with pride. And it’s the first of many, many scars on this body.
Each scar tells a story. The scar under my right eyebrow from when a neighbor kid threw a rock at me. A scar on my right bicep where my friend’s dog bit me. My very scarred right leg, where they did a skin graft over the wound on my shin and a bone graft in my calf, as well as the broad scar across my right shoulder where they implanted titanium plates to repair my shattered clavicle after I got hit by a car crossing a street.
Different scars, different times of my life, different stories. But I wear all of them with pride because they show how I have been resilient, survived, and frankly thrived.
Those are the scars you can see.
What about the invisible scars?
I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have invisible scars. These cut deep because they live in our conscious and subconscious minds. Our egos use them to hold us back and prop us up.
You can’t see the scars left behind by my parents’ divorce when I was 5. Nor the scars left by the rejection from the uber-select madrigal group in high school. The scars from all my failed attempts to get into professional radio after college don’t show. Nor any of the others from mental, emotional, and spiritual hurts.
But they are there. And how they have impacted me – or continue to – is on me. I can use the same tools to deal with them as with any other visceral reaction.
What caused the mental, emotional, or spiritual scar in the first place happens instantly. Just like physical scarring, the inciting incident tends to be instantaneous.
You get fired. A lover dumps you. Someone you thought was a friend betrays your trust. You realize you’ve made a mistake and all the work related to it becomes pointless. These all scar just as much – if not more – as physical injuries.
Yet even these scars can be sources of pride or regret. And to decide that, you have the power to choose just the same as any visceral, immediate, lizard-brain reaction.
How does that work?
Pause
Step out of the moment. Don’t dwell on it, stare at it, trace it out, or whatever. Yes, this is going to leave a scar – but after this moment, how deep it runs you get to choose.
Reflect
How has this scarred me? Why is this impacting me in this way? Do I allow this to dictate similar life experiences positively or negatively? What has this scarring experience taught me?
Accept
I cannot take back what has occurred. It hurt, it probably sucks, and my confidence and self-esteem are shaken. But I acknowledge that, see what happens, and choose to bear this scar with pride rather than regret. I accept that it is what it is – and I choose to move on from this point – or stay here.
Redirect
I paused, reflected on, and accepted this thing happen and has scarred me. Now, I choose to allow it to impact the rest of my time – day, week, year, life, etc. – or not.
It’s important to understand that it can take a lot of time to change a scar you bear with shame and regret to one you wear with pride. And being proud of a scar is not necessarily the scar itself – but how you came out on the other side of it.
One very important caveat here. When the suffering from a scar is self-inflicted, this is easier to work with. When the scar results from trauma – rape, assault, or anything someone did to you – those scars run deepest. They take time to clean and debride and require a lot of work.
That work is yours to choose. But know that you are not alone. Everyone has scars – physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. And we should talk about them more than pretend they don’t exist.
How do you wear your scars?
Choosing how we wear our scars isn’t hard
It begins with mindfulness of our thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions.
Knowing that everyone has scars both visible and invisible – we can be mindful and consciously aware of how they impact our lives after the initial inciting incident. When we see that we can choose to wear all scars – physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual – with pride or regret, we can decide to make a choice. And that ultimately empowers us.
When you are empowered, your mindfulness increases, you become more aware overall, and that gets reflected and spreads to other people. This creates a feedback loop of awareness and positivity – a feedback loop everyone can take part in.
Then, together, we build more positive feelings and discover further reasons to feel positivity and gratitude. That becomes the impetus to improve numerous aspects of our lives for the better, help overcome the overwhelming negativity of any current situation, and generate yet more positivity and gratitude.
An attitude of gratitude is an attitude of pure positivity. That positivity can generate even greater positive energies – and that is ultimately empowering for all.
Everyone is worthy and deserving of all the good we desire.
This is the three-hundred and ninety-eighth entry of my Positivity series. It is my hope these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, re-blog, and spread the positivity.
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