Hurt

I have seen quite a number of counsellors over my life. However, it was the last one that I saw whose sessions have stayed with me over 10 years later. Hers are the words that I heed when things get tough or I am feeling “wistful”.

Like everyone I have been hurt in my life. I also trust easily and sometimes that blinds me to my natural “instinct” about people or things. One counselling session we talked about hurt and the feelings around hurt.

What I learned was that “hurt happens no matter what” and the higher we build walls around ourselves to stop the hurt, the harder the hurt will be. With this in mind I started to pull down the walls that I had put up to stop being hurt. I opened myself up more to people and began to trust again. When hurt happened I accepted that hurt; while unfortunate was part of life.

The other thing that we talked about was our reactions. We talked about a particular instance when I was angry and my counsellor asked me how I felt and I said “angry” and she said “no what did you really feel” and I said “anger”. We went on like this for a bit until she said “if you really think about it, what you were feeling was “hurt”. When I thought through the whole situation I realised that she had hit the nail on the head. So I now realise that a lot of our emotions and reactions will stem from a particular emotion, and not necessarily the emotion that we think.

A lot of my anger and frustration comes from a starting point of hurt and sadness. I am sure I have blogged before about not feeling that I can get my words out or tell people when they have upset or hurt me. This means that my resentment grows; but hurt was the seed. I find it hard to move on from things because I cannot say what I truly want to say. Ironically it is probably because I am afraid of people taking things the wrong way or even hurting them.

Recently an amazing woman Mel told me to not be afraid to speak my “truth”. A few weeks ago I read something that Mel had written about speaking her “truth” and how she had kept silent over the years because she did not want to rock the boat and I can completely relate. I want to be able to speak my “truth” with honesty and integrity.

So at the end of the day I believe that to move through hurt we need to pick our battles and determine what is truly hurtful and what could be a silly mistake. For me it is about speaking my “truth” and being honest with myself and true to my feelings. It is about controlling my own reactions to situations and being able to let things go rather than hold onto them.

I am still learning and have a way to go; but I am getting there.