reopen old wounds

present singular third person reopens old wounds · participle present reopening old wounds · participle past reopened old wounds · past reopened old wounds

1. idiomaticTo cause the memory of past trauma to be recalled, resulting in renewed suffering.

   Please, believe me—the last thing I want to do is reopen old wounds needlessly, but . . . but if it would finally bring a resolution to the whole mystery—"

   2007, Vicki Lane, Old Wounds, page 93

   3 more examples

   When I had completed The Difficult Flowering of Surinam in 1976, Fred Ormskirk, the late NPS historian and radio commentator, suggested I delete a number of the more unpleasant stories in the book, claiming that it was better to let go of the past and not reopen old wounds.

   1994, Edward M. Dew, The trouble in Suriname, 1975-1993, page 202

   We return to the countries that had once hurt and destroyed us in many irreparable ways and from which we once ran for dear life, in order to get hurt again and have our old wounds reopened.

   2015, Domnica Radulescu, Theater of War and Exile, page 68

   Sometimes the treatments involved in healing the nation (such as appointing commissions of inquiry) reopen old wounds, therefore measures should be in place to cleanse those sores or stop them from festering.

   2023, Muxe Nkondo, Social Memory as a Force for Social and Economic Transformation

2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see reopen, old, wound.

   Old wounds and ulcers reopen and ulcerate.

   1998, Samuel Lilienthal, Homoeopathic Therapeutics, page 941