Our initial reaction to pain, not physical, but emotional or mental is to coil from it. Retract into ourselves. Someone says something painful or does something that hurts. Someone makes fun of you. A boyfriend forgets an important date. A girlfriend tells you you’re lazy. A stranger cuts you off and you feel invisible. The person you thought you were supposed to be with forever, walks away. Devastation, heart break, self-doubt. You retreat inside yourself, mentally licking your wounds, wondering why you aren’t good enough and you begin the spiral of analyzing your entire way of thought. Why can some people so easily hurt you and cut so deeply, sometimes in ways you can’t ever imagine yourself hurting anyone else the same way.
Know that they were hurt the same way by someone they cared about at some point in their lives. They probably shut themselves off to future hurt and by doing so shut off the compassion they were able to feel for other people. I’m not making excuses for them, and we all heard it growing up from someone the firs time someone at school made fun of you and you told your parental figure. The response is similar to “they just don’t feel good about themselves so they are making fun of someone else”. Whole that may be true, it doesn’t make the pain any less. The damage has been done. Someone you cared about, or cared what they thought of you did or said something that made you doubt who you are. Some take weeks or years to recover from. But about a year ago, I was letting myself get hurt over and over by someone I cared very much about, but it was clear they didn’t care the same for me. I didn’t care and I stuck myself in front of their train of nastiness, abuse and heartbreak, over and over. It hurt worse, every time. Until finally they were removed from my life. The pain of the removal stung, more than anything I’d ever felt before. And I wallowed in it, for weeks. Until I woke up one day and had had enough. I realized my love for this person would never go away, but for myself I needed to change something. So I decided to feel the pain. To stop shutting it off and trying to distract with other things. I embraced it. Pulled it close until I couldn’t breathe. And amazingly, something shifted almost immediately. I began to not only forgive, but release as well. Instead of a constant, wound licking pain that seemed never ending, in a matter of days, it went from sharp , knock you on the floor, take your breath away pain, to dull, quickly fading into nothingness pain. I forgave them, I moved on, I was able to put it in the past. So now, anytime anything hurts, I remind myself if I can’t feel the pain, it won’t ever get better and I grab it hard. I let it completely consume me, remind myself that I my worth and abilities are only limited by what I determine they are. It doesn’t mean I don’t get hurt. It means I’m not shutting down, I’m not dulling my feelings, I’m not shutting my compassion for others off. I am learning to remove negativity and hurtful people from my life. I am forgiving, and with that comes forgetting. I am more sensitive to the words that come out of my mouth and the promises I back up with actions.
Learning to embrace the pain is like being given truth that hurts. I would rather have someone be honest with me, even when it hurts, than to stretch out some soft blow over a long period of time. The difference is I know that’s only their truth, and while it might be real to them, I don’t have to let it be real to me. And if they really feel the way they do because they don’t see my worth the way I am, then maybe I need to evaluate who they are to me. I’ve let a lot of people go recently, and will continue throughout my life.
Be good to others, your harsh word, broken promise, or inability to see things from their perspective may hurt them more than you know, you might mean more to them than they tell you, and your ability to hurt them might far exceed your expectations.