Hurt People Hurt People

Hurt people hurt people. We hurt each other because we ourselves are hurting.

How would it look if we would come to conversations Knowing that everyone is fighting their own battles?

This is very alive in me because of a conversation I had yesterday with a dear friend of mine. Our actions hurt each other, not on purpose, but they did. 

We hurt because we are already in pain, and this causes us to become defensive and self-protective. In its rawest, it seems a self-preservation mechanism. 

But are we in real danger? 

What do we actually fear? 

Can we acknowledge the pain?

We can and this is how we start healing. Seeing our pain, and seeing the pain in the other. If hurt people hurt people, the opposite must be true. 

We’re interconnected. If we manage to let go of ourselves and our need to be right, to hear an apology. 

If we allow the ice-shield protecting our hearts to melt, we might allow the other person to see our pain too. 

We are all doing our best. I trust that. So I think that apologising for the fact, doesn’t help. Because we did what we knew best with no bad intentions, but blindfolded by our pain.

Acknowledge that even by acting to the best of our abilities, we might hurt others’ feelings. And that, we can address - ‘I’m sorry that my actions caused you pain’. No need to understand or even agree with it. Empathise yes. The other person’s pain is real to them, as much as our’s is to us.

We may not agree with each other, not even feel or fully understand what the other person is going through, but we can accept and acknowledge that there is pain, that the other person’s feelings are as valid to them, as our own to us.

Everyone is the protagonist in the movie of their lives, so not taking anything personal helps. As does not making assumptions. 

Not seeing who has it better or worse, or who’s right or wrong. There is no such thing, and it’s not a competition. 

We see others as we are - we can only see in someone else what we have in us. So let’s just listen for a moment. How did our actions cause pain? 

Having an honest communication can help the other person realise that we’re also hurting, even if we failed to convey the message in the first place. 

Some conversations are tough to have, but how can we afford not to?