'She explained that when we have a wound in our body, the nearby muscles cramp around it to protect it from any more violation and infection, and that I would need to use those muscles if I wanted them to relax again...
I think that something similar happens with our psychic muslces. They cramp around our wounds - the pain from our childhood, the losses and disappointmnets of adulthood, the humiliations suffered in both - to keep us from getting hurt in the same place again, to keep foreign substances out. So these wounds never have a chance to heal.'
Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird, p.29.
