4 Categories of Root related to Inner Healing

Ken Fish, drawing on the work of David Seamands, identifies four main categories or “buckets” of roots that often require inner healing. These categories, all starting with the letter “H”, are: hurts, humiliations, horrors, and hates.

• Hurts: This category includes experiences of rejection and abandonment.
  • Rejection is an active and intentional act of pushing someone away, such as being excluded from a group or a family. For example, Ken Fish mentions a bullying situation at school where a child is actively rejected.
  • Abandonment, on the other hand, is more passive and involves neglect or being left behind. Ken Fish illustrates this with the story of a man whose parents drove off and left him at a rest stop, and they never came back for him. While it may be an oversight initially, when the parents do not return, it becomes more intentional and moves into rejection.
• Humiliations: This category encompasses feelings of embarrassment, shame, inferiority, and inadequacy. Examples of humiliations include feeling “not good enough” compared to siblings, or feeling inadequate in general. Ken Fish says that these types of feelings can be a focus of inner healing.
• Horrors: This category is characterized by fears, anxieties, and terrors, often rooted in early memories.
  • Ken Fish shares the story of a woman who was locked in a basement by her neighbors as a child, which led to her having fear of the dark, enclosed places, and unfamiliar people. This is an example of how traumatic experiences can lead to long-term anxieties and fears.
• Hates: This category includes feelings of resentment, bitterness, unforgiveness, anger, and rage towards other people, potentially even leading to a desire for revenge

These four categories – hurts, humiliations, horrors, and hates – are considered by Ken Fish to be the major drivers of the need for inner healing. While there could potentially be other categories, these four cover the majority of the issues that are dealt with.

• Title: Healing of Past Hurts
• Speaker: Ken Fish
• Start time: 30:21
• End time: 34:57

Orbis Ministries – Link to Ken Fish’s Ministry material.