Emotion: Hurt

Meaning: 1) We feel we lost something we had and wanted or needed.
2) We feel we missed out on something we feel we should have had.

Physical Hurt and Emotional Hurt

When we feel physical pain, it means that our physical body may be approaching or exceeding the tolerances of its present design. This may occur because something has happened to it by complete accident, or negligence, or even intent. It may be that our body is not hurt at all, but experiencing the kind of extreme discomfort that makes it stronger, such as weight lifting or short, intense bursts of speed. We know that if we avoid all potential discomfort and pain that we will experience a safe, but boring life, and achieve virtually nothing. A life worth living involves some measure of risk, physically or emotionally.

Emotional Hurt is much like physical Hurt. It means that we’ve experienced something that is exceeding our current design tolerances of our Soul. It means that we’re experiencing loss, either something we had or wanted or needed has been taken from us, or we missed out on something we feel we should have had in the past. It doesn’t mean that someone is necessarily at fault. It could have been a complete accident. It might have been by inadvertence or negligence. It is possible, however, that it was intentional.

What, Specifically, Caused the Hurt?

When we experience Hurt, the first thing we need to do is take a look at what caused the Hurt. What is the actual loss? The loss needs to be specifically defined. It is not enough to simply acknowledge your feelings and expect that it will be better. You can’t walk into a doctor and say “I hurt somewhere in my body, fix it” without more. All he could do was treat the pain with a generic painkiller, but the problem would remain.

If we lost something we had that we wanted, like trust in a friend, what caused it? Did our friend lie to us? Did she flirt with a husband? Did he take a job we wanted? Did our friend steal something? Did he lie to us? Did she fail to tell us something we thought we should know? Whatever it is, we need to define it specifically.

If we lost respect or love from friends or family, why? Did we not show up for something important to them? Did we take the other side in a dispute? Did we voice an opinion contrary to the opinion of the group? Did we break some group rule? If so, what rule?

When we begin the exploration of our pain, we need to pay attention to how we understand the situation and define things. As we cover how to explore this in greater detail, we see how much of Hurt takes place entirely within us.

Hurt Can Help Us

Just as with physical pain, Hurt is there as a guide for us. It tells us what to avoid. It gives us an awareness of how others can be hurt by similar conduct of our own. If we feel Hurt by a biting, critical, mean comment someone else makes about us, or even Hurt by a rumor revealed to us by a friend, we know not to do that to Others. It’s what helps us learn things we should not do to others. Even when Hurt is necessary, such as revealing a difficult but necessary truth to a loved one, we know to do so as gently as possible so we cause as little Hurt as possible.

The Power of Forgiveness

When we feel Hurt, the single most powerful thing we can do is forgive. Forgive the person who inflicted pain, and forgive yourself if you did it to yourself. Forgive from the heart, and the pain will often go away. This is a powerful but sometimes complex process that is much more thoroughly explored in the chapter on Forgiveness.

There is a very serious danger here that cannot be overstated. Often, with forgiveness done right, we move past Hurt and leave the pain behind. However, if we stop the process there, we leave ourselves vulnerable. We need to understand forgiveness, what it is and what it is not, and we need to understand that while forgiveness is powerfully therapeutic and a necessary component of dealing with pain, it is the beginning, not the end of the exploration.

Think of forgiveness as a powerful pain killer and surgical technique. It can stop the Hurt, and it can remove the barb that is sustaining the pain. However, whatever was done to us, whatever we did in response, our expectations and particular sesitivities are still tied up in that accident. When we are physically hurt, we know that we must learn something. If we got hooked by a fishing hook, we learn to be more careful when fishing. If we damaged our knee in a sport, we know to be more careful in our movement.

Recovery is only part of the process. Someone who gets injured and physically recovers, and then goes back to the exact same activities with the same people doing the same things, the same injury is going to happen again. If we believe that the people were the problem and simply avoid them, but we do the same thing with other people who behave similarly, we will get hurt again. As with physical pain, emotional Hurt requires more than just the step that relieves suffering and heals the wound.

Hurt Reveals Our Expectations

Hurt, like Anger, tells you something about yourself. It reveals expectations and interpretations and definitions you hold. It tells you about the assumptions you make about how things ought to be and it tells you the meaning you ascribe to not getting it. So, just as you forgive with Anger and then look deeper into it, you forgive with Hurt and look beneath the pain to see what you can find.

Start With the Facts

First, you should look for the actual Hurt, the thing that caused the actual pain. What exactly was it? What was the objective event. In this part of the analysis we ignore all interpretaton and try to narrow down the actual facts.

For instance, earlier we used an example of losing trust in a friend. Let’s assume that it had to do with a girlfriend who flirted with a husband. “Flirted” is an interpretation of facts, not a fact in itself. Was the problem eye contact? Was it apparent body language? Was it words used? Was it an extended touch? Narrowing down the facts helps uncover the situation.

Let’s assume, in this case, that she locked eyes with the husband, and her eyes glided up and down his body, she smiled, and made a pretty direct comment on how “delicious” the husband looked. That narrows down actual facts without interpreting them.

What Do the Facts Mean?

Second, what does that event mean to you? As you look at it, you must consider the possibility that you had not suffered a loss at all. The event might not mean what you think it means.

If we’re Hurt, the facts in our example might mean “she’s flirting with my husband.” By extension, we might interpret it as “she’s picking up on my husband” and the emotional chain might lead to “she’s trying to seduce my husband into an affair,” or “she’s trying to seduce my husband into leaving me.”

Are There Alternative Meanings?

Given the actual facts, what other interpretations might there be? Might she simply be taking notice and trying to help him feel more masculine? Has he been working out and she wants him to know that others are noticing? Is she a woman who relates to most men this way and thus this conduct is normal for her? Is the husband being singled out, or does she do this with everyone? Certainly some personality types are far more prone to expressions like this, while others are more reserved.

If the facts ultimately reveal that an alternative meaning is more likely, such as this particular woman is a very expressive, sensual woman who is happily married and would never dream of cheating. However, she does pay flirtatious attention to her male friends but has never been known to let anything go beyond flirtatious comments, and always with the spouse around to limit possible misunderstandings. If this conduct is normal, or if no opportunity ever could present itself, then the seduction fears might objectively be found to be groundless.

Are There Collateral Issues?

Maybe the woman’s behavior by itself isn’t the problem. Maybe there are additional issues, such as the wife hasn’t kept herself in very good shape, but this friend is a beauty. Maybe the wife is afraid that the husband already finds this woman more attractive and comments like that will make him think even more highly of her. Maybe she knows she’s too critical of her husband, or at least more so than this woman, and he likes getting the compliments that the wife doesn’t freely give.

Maybe there are issues that are entirely internal. Maybe the wife’s father left the wife’s mother, or maybe there’s been too many references from soap operas, romance novels, and movies and the wife subconsciously assumes that her husband will leave. Maybe there are issues with standards of behavior, that a spouse is never suppose to notice or be noticed by anyone - ever. Maybe the husband has made comments about this woman’s attractiveness with the wife compared unfavorably. When there is pain from actions that cannot be clearly objectionable on the facts alone, there are often collateral issues - often special sensitivities - and rather than go after the apparent source of the hurt, some internal work might in order.

In an actual event, a man commented on what a stunning beauty a particular woman was, and her husband got in the man’s face and shouted at him about how the woman was married and he shouldn’t be looking at a married woman. There were no sexual overtones, no attempt to pick up on her, just a comment on how attractive and classy she looked. The husband in this case had let his body go and was growing increasingly insecure about the beauty of his wife. Rather than use it as inspiration to be a better husband and try to get back in shape, he slipped more inside himself, got more lazy and selfish, and started to “defend his territory.” It should have been a concern to him that when he questioned her about whether she would ever leave him or cheat on him, her answers only had to do with her character (“I’m a Christian woman who keeps her vows”), never his quality as a husband.

Was It Intentional? Our Control.

Did someone betrayed a confidence? Did they know that what you told them was a secret? Why did you expect they would not tell anyone else? If it was someone else’s secret you were sharing, even if you swore them to secrecy, were you setting a precedent? Was the secret you shared, even if they knew it was a secret, something that was too much for them to bear? Do they have a habit of doing this - in which case you should have expected it?

There are many ways in which, upon reflection, you might discover that what happened was really in your power to control. If you forgot to tell someone what you wanted, you should not be surprised that they didn’t know. The old, stereotypical female comment “If you loved me, you’d know why I’m upset” is a guaranteed formula for Hurt. If people don’t know what you want, their success or failure will be hit and miss. The more you assume someone should know something because “it’s obvious,” or “it’s common sense,” or “friends don’t do that to friends” the more likely you are to experience Hurt, and it isn’t the other person’s fault.

Unknown Rules Get Broken Because of Other’s Rules

For instance, a couple was just a few months away from getting married. Many people had some concerns about this couple, but the couple was going to get married no matter what anyone thought. The husband-to-be lost his job several months before the wedding, which was not unusual or unexpected since he was not known to hold jobs very long. He claimed to “be looking,” but that entailed putting in an application or two a week at places he wanted to work, and spending the rest of his time hanging out with friends while his wife-to-be worked full time. After months of this, a friend told him that if he didn’t either find work or start looking full time, he would tell the pastor the truth of their situation so the pastor could decide if he was still going to perform the ceremony. Less than a month later, the man had a full time job.

The couple was deeply Hurt. They had a belief that friends should always support any decision friends made. They had decided to get married, and they had decided together that his lack of employment wasn’t going to be an issue between them, so they saw no reason to tell the pastor. They believed that their friend should stay out of it and let them get married without interfering. It didn’t matter that the pastor was also a personal friend of their friend, they thought that doing anything that might jeopardize the wedding wasn’t an act any friend should do.

It took them a year to say so. When they finally talked to the man, they learned that he did it BECAUSE he was their friend. He said that someone had to do something, and while it shouldn’t have been him, that the people who should have done it weren’t saying anything. He explained that he cared more about their future than how they felt about him, which, to him, meant real friendship and genuine love. The couple understood, but they were still hurt because they still had their belief.

If You Have a Loss

If you’ve determined that you really did suffer a loss, then you move to the next step. You may have lost some respect or love or affection or trust. You may have missed out on having a father or a mother or a stable home. You may have missed out on Disneyland, or affection, or hugs, or religious truth, or good role models. You may have been Hurt by being put down or pushed too hard in destructive directions. You may have lost your innocence or been physically or emotionally abused. Something all of us must remember is that Hurt is not objective - it's subjective. We feel Hurt based upon our sensitivities. What hardly bothers one person might be devastating to another.

If you’ve forgiven, you can move beyond those things. If you have not, taking the next step will probably be difficult. Forgiveness is the key to moving forward. Otherwise, by holding on to it, you give it power to hold you. You’ve attached yourself to it, perhaps even made it part of your identity, and it might be your prison. If it is, you have the key. You can leave anytime you really decide to leave. You have to reach down to the pain, even if it’s old, pray it through if you are a person of faith, and consciously, intentionally forgive. This is not just making excuses for the person or lip service. It has to be going back to the pain, to when it was inflicted, and deciding to let it go.

If you’ve forgiven, genuinely forgiven - especially hard with old pain inflicted by otherwise loving or well-intentioned parents - you can move forward with dealing with the issues involved. Lack of forgiveness when you’ve genuinely been Hurt by bad conduct, or the lack of proper conduct by people who had responsibility for you, will stop the next step from having a meaningful effect.

If the person who triggered the Hurt is still around and in a position to cause it again, then after you’ve sought out and understood what happened, you can communicate to them in a way that may help resolve the issue. You should take responsibility for the Hurt, since it was your expectation and your loss that causes the pain, not necessarily their action. Don’t say “You hurt me!” but “When you did such and such, I felt a twinge of pain because I felt you meant...” During the brief talk you can politely ask if they could help you understand what they meant, and if they admit that they were insensitive or mean, forgive them in person. Ask them to forgive you for thinking ill of them. More on this for more serious cases in a moment.Serious painful consequences might have

When They Blame You

Sometimes, however, people don’t want to admit they caused Hurt, or they want to blame you for not being tough enough. Consider whether this might be true before you do anything else. Are you too sensitive? Are you expecting the world to change for your own sensibilities? If so, the problem may lie in you, not them. Even if they are insensitive, if they are the sort and level of insensitive that is normal in the world, you might have to learn to toughen up. There will always be racists, sexists, and people who will be critical or judgmental on a wide number of issues. Since they will always exist, we must learn to accept that and know that they are revealing more about themselves by their Hurt than they are revealing about us.

Hurt from Serious Evil

Sometimes Hurt comes from serious evil, such as sexual or physical abuse of children, and if that person is still around, they still need to be forgiven. Remember, forgiveness isn't saying that what they did wasn't wrong - it's actually just the opposite. Forgiveness is saying that what someone did was wrong, but you're going to let the action go. You're letting go of the event and moving forward with what you've learned. It does not mean that you forgive and forget - that's often foolish. You forgive, but you remember the factual lesson learned.

For instance, a young man was sexually molested by a relative, and he chose to forgive that relative. The events became a mere fact in his personal history, but he no longer carried the emotional baggage from those events. Later in life, the man became a father, and the relative wanted to babysit the child. The father said "no." The uncle tried to make the argument "I thought you had forgiven me. I guess you're not as Christian as you say." The father told his relative "I did forgive you, but I also know that you're the kind of person that could do a thing like that, and I will not put my child at risk."

Forgiveness means that you still understand who you're dealing with, but suppose that same father was not the one molested? What if the relative had molested someone else, would there by anything for that father to forgive? Not if the molested person had no connection to him. What if there had never been a molestation of any child, but the relative simply admitted to having intense sexual feelings for children? Nothing happened to anyone for anyone to forgive, but a father would still know that the relative was a risk. "Forgive and forget" applies to God, since He does not need to know anything we ever did to know exactly who we are. On the human level, though, we let things go, but we also have to remember who we're dealing with. If the event taught us something, we need to remember the lesson even though we forgive and emotionally set down the event and our hurt from it.

Note that forgiving someone does not even require any kind of confrontation. Depending upon the personalities involved, that can lead to a dangerous situation. Forgivenss is letting something go. That means that it takes place inside me. If we have the sort of relationship with the person who wronged us that might allow for a safe communication, we can communicate that forgiveness to them so they can know that they have been forgiven, but the actual forgiveness takes place inside us. We can put down an event or series of events from our past all by ourselves and walk away.

Self Examination

This brings us to last stage of dealing with Hurt. If someone caused Hurt, and we have forgiven them in our heart, but it is an old wound that’s too late to fix, or the person is unwilling to change, then we have to try to understand why they would do such a thing. This is not in the place of forgiveness, but a follow up to it. We cannot fail to forgive and successfully do this step because the Hurt will still be there even though we’ve fixed many of the other issues. It’s like working to fix a nail on which we snagged ourselves without doing anything about our bleeding. It might solve the long term problem, but meanwhile we’ve still got an injury.

People who hurt others are often hurting themselves. The saying “misery loves company” stems largely from the fact the people in deep pain often inflict pain on others. If the pain was caused by parents who were abusive, what might have lead them to being so abusive? If neglectful, then what may have happened in their lives to make them so neglectful? Why would they have learned these behaviors, and why would they live them?

This exploration is NOT to make excuses for the behavior, but to understand it. Evil is still evil, and hurtful conduct is still hurtful. If a criminal came up to us and explained "I was abused and beaten as a child, so that makes it okay for me to beat and rape you and take all your money" not one of us would agree. We do not say "Okay - well since someone hurt you, go right ahead and hurt me."

The reason we need to understand it is because we might be part of that cycle. If we find ourselves living through that same cycle, following similar patterns because of how we were Hurt, this is our opportunity to break free. If we have forgiven and let go, we don’t have to carry the pain and we can move past it. If we don’t understand whether or not we are following the pattern of those that Hurt us, we won’t know how well we’re doing.

For instance, a mother was selfish and immature. She had given birth when she was young and always blamed her children for all the wonderful things she was sure her life would have been without them. She neglected her children often, and when she didn’t neglect them, she only approached them on her own terms for her own benefit. She provided less than no moral guidance, even facilitating the worst of decisions. This was a consistent behavior pattern even after her children were adults.

The daughter had forgiven her mother, but there were issues the daughter had to consider. When she thought about how her mother had a lot of issues, she realized that she had a lot of issues herself. While she thought of herself as a good mother to her own children, she also realized that her own emotions often kept her from doing more than a survival minimum for her children. She spoke of how she loved her children, but the evidence was lacking. In some ways, she saw, her past was leading her down a slightly different path than her mother, but one with a similar effect. Because she understood what had made her mother into the selfish, insecure woman she had become, she saw that many of the same types of influences were at work in her own life. Recognizing that, she broke free from those behavior patterns so she would not pass down issues another generation.

That's one of the key things we learn from being Hurt. Understanding Hurt, what causes people to be hurtful and being hurt by them gives us a chance to stand in the gap and declare "No more! This Hurt does NOT go past me! No matter how many generations this Hurt has been passed down, IT ENDS HERE!"

A parent can parent with intent rather than allow himself or herself to be driven by the past and present circumstances - but most of us never get past those because we're largely unaware that we have a choice. Parents who are divorced can forgive one another and decade each on his or her own or together as parents that they will work together as a team when it comes to their child. Anyone can decide that they will learn from the Hurt, truly forgive from the Heart, understand their role and choices and how they can either pass the Hurt to others or heal it and stop the cycle.

Being the Master

Mastering Hurt means we have to recognize the underlying rules, responses, expectations and behaviors that lead to people hurting other people. We have to look for those in ourselves so we don’t cause loss to our children, our families, our friends and others with whom we interact. We cannot simply dwell in our pain.

For children, most parents of biters will tell you that the fastest way to cure a child from biting is to bite them back. As soon as a child realizes that it really does hurt to be bitten, and that being bitten is a fair response to biting, the child stops. Most very small children learn through pain that they don’t want to make anyone else feel that way. As we get older, though, and we receive pain first, we feel justified in passing it on. We should try to be more like the toddler who learns “ouch!” means I don’t want to do it to others.

If we know what the Hurt feels like, we know we don’t want to pass it on. We don’t want to Hurt others. We don’t want to act on our own pain by passing it on. We want to be the link where the chain is broken. The Hurt stops with us. No excuses. We can do that and the world will be a little better for it.

As parents, we can declare that whatever pain we might have from what our own parents did or did not do, that the cycle of Hurt ends with us. As spouses, we can declare that whatever issue we might bring from our family of origin, from previous relationships, or baggage from anything that we did or happened to us, that we will not dump that pain and insecurity on our spouse. The pain ends with us.

As friends, as coworkers, as mature, responsible adults in any position, we can decide that it is with us that things change. We break the chain. The cycle ends here. No matter what comes to me, I will not pass on the pain. I choose, instead, to make the world a better place from my being here. I choose to be a shock absorber for others, blocking damaging pain. If it will not help make others better and stronger, I will not pass it on.

Hurt, more than anything, can drive people to destructive, escapist behaviors. Forgiveness and thoughtful consideration are the keys to breaking the power of Hurt in our lives. We do not simply ignore it, but, rather, use it to learn how to live our own lives, what to expect from others and what we will demand from ourselves as people who have the power to Hurt or help heal.