Estimated Read Time: 4 Minutes
You Can’t Heal What You Can’t See
The Four Invisible Wounds Shaping Your Life From the Shadows
By Ryan Standifird
We had a CoachingCast last week that really hit home for me.
It was called From Heaviness to Hope: How to Heal the Four Wounds That Shape Our Lives. My role in these live events is to monitor the chat and answer questions while Marc and MaryEllen engage the community in a deep discussion.
But it only took a couple of minutes into the presentation before I stopped being a moderator and became a student.
Because as Marc began leading the audience through the dark caves that he calls the four core wounds — shame, fear, anger, and abandonment…
I started recognizing them.
Not in the chat.
In myself.
Four Wounds, One Life (Mine)
The shame? That one traces back to a DUI during my rebellious 20s. It's been many years... and I've built a very different life since then. But that old scar still guides many of the decisions I make today.
The fear? For me, it’s chronic and financial. A low hum in the background of my life. And lately, with rising gas prices, childcare, groceries, even changes to how my student loan payments get calculated… this fear has been getting louder and louder.
The anger? I'm a father of two young boys who are still learning where their boundaries are. Some days they test every single one. And some days I feel that heat rise faster than I'd like to admit.
And abandonment? An old broken heart from long ago left a scar I'd nearly forgotten... until it resurfaces during the inevitable argument with my wife. Suddenly a disagreement at the end of a long day feels like something much bigger. That's not the argument talking. That's the wound.
Here's the thing. I consider myself a happy guy. A little tired from juggling the kids, a career and all the responsibilities that come with it, sure. But I’m happy, hopeful and confident.
So if I can feel these four wounds this easily... what about the people who weren't as lucky as me? The ones carrying heavier versions of these same wounds, with fewer soft places to land?
That question stayed with me long after the call was over.
What a Wound Actually Is
Marc described an emotional wound as pain that never got fully processed. Instead of moving through us the way feelings are supposed to, it gets stuck — embedded in the nervous system, often below conscious awareness.
And the science backs this up.
In a famous study at UCLA, psychologist Naomi Eisenberger and her colleagues scanned people's brains while they played a simple ball-tossing video game. Partway through, the other "players" (secretly just a computer program) stopped passing them the ball.
They were being left out. Rejected.
The result? The anterior cingulate cortex, a brain region that registers physical pain, lit up. And the more rejected people felt, the more active it became.
In other words, emotional pain isn't "all in your head." It runs on some of the same brain circuitry as physical pain. A wound really is a wound.
But here's where the hope comes in.
In another UCLA study, psychologist Matthew Lieberman found that when people simply named the emotion in front of them — "angry," "afraid" — the amygdala, the brain's alarm center, calmed down... while the thoughtful prefrontal cortex switched on. Lieberman compared it to hitting the brakes on your emotional reactions.
Pretty impressive, right? Just putting a feeling into words begins to settle the brain.
Pulling Strings from the Shadows
That's what struck me most during the CoachingCast.
These wounds weren’t obvious until I really traced it all back. They work invisibly, from the background — pulling strings on our decisions, our relationships, our self-talk — while we stand there wondering why we keep reacting the way we do.
You can't heal what you aren’t aware of.
But the moment you become aware of a wound — the moment you can look at a reaction and say, "That's shame talking," or "There's that old fear again" — something shifts.
The string becomes visible.
And a visible string can be loosened.
That's why Bill Harris, Centerpointe’s late Founder, always stressed the importance of awareness. Here’s one of my favorite quotes from Bill:
“Awareness is the solution to everything that has a solution. It's also the solution to knowing what has a solution—and what doesn't.”
When it comes to the Four Wounds, naming the wound is the first act of healing it.
From Heaviness to Hope
Marc opened his presentation with the word "heavy," and he wasn't wrong. This stuff is heavy.
But he ended with hope. And after sitting with it all week, I understand why.
These four wounds are universal. Shame, fear, anger, abandonment — if you're human, you're carrying at least one. I'm carrying some version of all four... and I'd still call myself a happy man.
The heaviness isn't a life sentence. It's a signal. And awareness is what turns that signal from a puppeteer's string into a thread you can follow — all the way back to where the pain began.
That's where healing starts.
It’s not always easy. But it’s worth it.
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