I have an analogy about emotional trauma and healing that I would like to share with you today. Now heat treating steel might seem a bit off topic but I promise if you read the end I will make the connection.
When we in the metal fabrication industry select materials
we have to make sure that the material is strong enough to do the job.
Sometimes we purchase a material and we heat treat it to make it stronger. Most
people have seen the blacksmith in a movie or on TV heat the material to a glow
and quench it in the water. This is part of the Tempering process. Tempered
steel is much stronger and therefore often required by code. The process is
actually two fold quenching and tempering. You heat the material to its upper transformation
temperature and cool it very quickly. This is quenching and the transformation
is a realignment of the internal grain. The material at this point is extremely
tough hard and even brittle, so brittle it cannot bend or flex and it’s no good
like this it’s too rigid. The next step is to put it back into the fire and
heat it to the lower transformation temperature and refine the grain structure
to make the material ductile (flexible) as
well as strong.
I find that healing from emotional abuse to be a multi-step
process much like tempering steel. Once we become aware of what has happened and
initiated no contact it’s like we have quenched the hellish fire we have been
enduring and now were all hard brittle, maybe even bitter. In order for me to
temper my rigid angry feelings I have to go back into the fire at a lower
controlled rate. I don’t mean get back with my abuser. The fire I am talking
about is facing the fact that I have not only been abused but I have been a
victim of my own habitual thinking and learned behaviors. I must face all the
feelings and do the work I need to do to recover and begin anew. If I choose to
live in denial and not face up to what ails me I will remain in that brittle fragile
state. If I go back into the fire and deal with this I will come out of this
process stronger than before.
When steel is heat treated it will never be the same again, it’s
physically changed by rearranging the grain structure of the material. I
believe that once I have survived trauma it is a mistake for me to think that
once I heal up I will get back to being the person I was before the abuse. I like
that piece of tempered steel, I will not be the same I will be stronger and
tougher and able to withstand the stresses that are placed on me.
Thanks for reading
Hank Tahelluride
