50 Types of Friend Wounds That Jesus Wants to Heal

In this series, we’re talking about how healing from “friend wounds” is essential in order to draw truly close to Jesus. In Part 1, we learned what “friend wounds” are, and why they tend to keep Jesus at bay in your life until these wounds are truly healed.

Today, in Part 2 of this series, we will discuss some examples of potential friend wounds that you will want to cast at Jesus’ feet, so you can receive healing from all of them.

Why is it important to identify types of friend wounds?

It’s important to identify various types of potential friend wounds because people too often tend to gloss over their pain. They will often say things like this:

• “I got over it.”
• “They didn’t mean to.”
• “Yeah, it hurt, but it was no big deal.”

… and on and on.

However, the problem is that all types of hurts and wounds are a big deal to your spirit.

Each one “teaches you,” by negative life experience, what friendship is like—and how friendship feels. And when the friendship you experience is actually not real, godly, Biblical, loyal, faithful, loving friendship at all, then people tend to become jaded or even a bit cynical.

When friends, siblings, or peers hurt us, we even tend to lose our sense of basic trust that friendship is a safe and beautiful thing, preferring instead to stick with ourselves because sinning people have hurt us. And yes, this even includes those Christian friends who have hurt you. Not even Christians are immune to sin, unfortunately—and so this means we do sometimes hurt one another, even when we don’t mean to.

With no further ado, let’s examine a few types of friend wounds: things that a friend, sibling, or other peer might have done to you, and which will need to be cast at the feet of Jesus so that He can sustain you and heal your heart.

This is not an all-encompassing list, but here are 50 different types of friend wounds that you may have experienced, even without noticing:

1. Abandonment
2. Rejection
3. Stabbing you in the back
4. Sinning against you and then walking away from your friendship, instead of truly repenting and making things right with you for what they did
5. Betraying your trust
6. Calling you names
7. Talking badly about you behind your back
8. Demonstrations of anger against you
9. Not being kind
10. Feeling that they can be upset with you whenever they like, but you are not allowed to defend yourself
11. Ghosting you / ending the friendship without telling you why, and without giving you a chance to work through it with them
12. Getting offended at you for calling them out on their sin or bad behavior
13. Telling your secrets to others
14. Using you financially for their own ends
15. Being stingy with you, even though you were generous with them
16. Not encouraging you to soar
17. Criticizing you without knowing or finding out what your heart on the matter is
18. Misconstruing your motivations and actions, and not even asking you about it
19. Not seeing the good in you
20. Refusing to believe in your godly dreams, just because those dreams are out of their experience level or faith level
21. Lying about you
22. Lying to you
23. Not being honest and open with you
24. Hiding things
25. Not returning your love
26. Not cherishing and protecting the Christlike love you demonstrate toward them
27. Believing lies that other people tell about you
28. Jealousy against you
29. Turning on you in rage / venting their rage at you
30. Accusing you of doing things you didn’t do or thinking thoughts you didn’t think (gaslighting)
31. Manipulating you
32. Seeing you through their lens of their own problems, instead of seeing you and the fruit you bear as you truly are
33. Not valuing you
34. Not esteeming you highly
35. Not honoring the gifts and call God has placed in you
36. Not celebrating your accomplishments
37. Trying to keep you down where they are, when you are motivated or standing in faith—but they are not
38. Not honoring your gifts, simply because your gifts are different than the friend’s own gifts (and the friend thinks their own gifts are more important)
39. Not being there for you when you needed them
40. Making you do all the work in contacting them, keeping up, setting up lunch/dinner/coffee dates, et cetera
41. One-sided friendship in all its forms
42. Trying to compete with you or one-up you
43. Feeling inferior to you and showing it
44. Backbiting
45. Inconsistent moods, vented at you
46. Lashing out at you in any form
47. Comparing you to others
48. Making fun of you
49. Insisting that you be like them (dress like them, talk like them, et cetera) in order to spend time with them
50. Getting you started on bad decisions or habits (drugs, alcohol, smoking, lying, promiscuity, other addictions)

Beloved, all of these types of friend wounds can be devastating. But, Jesus wants to heal you of them all–and He will!

We’re almost ready to pray through the prayer of healing from friend wounds. But, before we do, I have a homework assignment for you:

• Make a list of all the friends, siblings, or peers (by name) who have hurt you.
• On a separate page, make a list of what those various friends did. This second list doesn’t have to be broken down by which person did what thing. It can just be a list of the different wounds you have experienced, like I wrote above.
• Keep that list ready for when we pray through the prayers of healing and deliverance, soon!

In the meantime, did this list of types of friend wounds resonate with you? Have these things happened to you? And if so, how did they impact your life? Are you ready to heal? Leave a comment below!