It's not that most of us don't know how to feel hurt. We have not learned how to creatively feel hurt and disappointed. We get hurt when we either are the recipient of invasive physical or verbal blows or do not receive enough attention and feel forgotten. Attack, revenge and withdrawal are the typical non-creative reactions to feeling hurt. I have employed withdrawal much of my life accompanied by an imaginary curtain that symbolized the end of all contact with whomever hurt me. This dramatic reaction suggested that somehow the hurtful behavior was an oddity of the human condition and could not be tolerated. One day, I looked over my shoulder and saw too many folks banished behind the curtain. I decided it was time to learn how to be more creative with my hurt.
Hurting Creatively
Being creative with feeling hurt mostly means learning how to support ourselves while feeling hurt and to support our rapport to the person who hurt us. There are several steps supporting the ability to be more creative with our hurt.
• Feeling alone, helpless and shamed. Most of us felt alone, helpless and shamed when we felt hurt as children. Our feelings were either ignored or greeted with: "Don't be a baby!" "Stop making a big deal about nothing!" "I'll give you something to cry about!" "See if you can stop being so selfish and consider how others are feeling." Consequently, we need to learn how to bring in supportive folks, feel empowered and be able to manage our shame.
• Naming and Feeling. The first step toward feeling empowered is to be able to recognize that we are hurt, to name it and feel it. The three most popular distractions that are disempowering are: obsessively condemning the perpetrator, ruminating about tactics of revenge and turning the energy of the hurt into anger and rage.
• De-shaming. There is no way to make peace with feeling hurt as long as our feelings are shrouded in shame. An elementary step is to name the shame, which can considerably diminish it. Once we are mindful about the shame accompanying hurt we can take the de-shaming process a step further. We can create an image in our minds, standing with strength and saying, "I am the good person whose hurt feelings are absolutely acceptable and legitimate." Next, we find where in our bodies this new declaration might reside. It might, for example, be over the heart. We then focus on the heart and notice what happens next. The energy of the story might travel to the solar plexus, so we focus there and see what happens next. We continue to track the flow of energy until achieving a feeling of calm, relaxation, or empowerment. Another option is to work with a more vigorous image, where we are standing angrily giving back the shame to whomever gave it to us in the first place. We follow the same process, identifying where the image can rest in our bodies and what happens when we focus on that area.
• Getting Support. We interrupt the aloneness attached to feeling hurt by speaking about the hurt to those willing to hear the story of our hurt. I like appreciating the power of a gaze, a tone and demeanor that communicates, "I'm sorry you got hurt and your hurt is welcome here." We can make reference to the person who hurt us, but it is important not to get distracted by getting lost lambasting the perpetrator. It can also be beneficial to bring our hurt feelings to the perpetrator. We do this only if we believe perpetrators can hear our feelings without dismissing them or attempting to justify or explain their behavior. The potential gain is a deepened intimacy when we can speak without attack and the perpetrator can hear us empathically.
• Accepting the Inevitability of Being Hurt. We grow some emotional resiliency regarding feeling hurt when we accept that it is inevitable when living with open hearts. However, this does not mean we set ourselves up to be unnecessarily hurt. People must earn our trust. We take the risk to open our hearts based upon how trustworthy we deem the other. Even then, hurt is likely, however, the hope is that it occurs without intent or malice.
• Diminishing Self-Righteousness. When we are hurt, it is very easy to make a case that the perpetrator's behavior was not only unacceptable, but also, an aberration of the human condition. These indictments are usually our way of validating our hurt. It can be helpful to pause, remembering times we hurt others and acknowledging the likelihood that we will hurt others in the future.
Creatively Disappointed
We can think of disappointment as the interruption of our expectations by either someone else's choice or an act of nature. Again, when we creatively experience disappointment, we are able to support ourselves and our rapport with the other person. We don't feel alone and helpless, nor do we sink into the depths of despair and cynicism. Our relationship with the person who disappointed us remains under repair. Here are several ways to cope with disappointment that can help the creative process.
*A Couple of Learnings. On a very basic level, many of us need to learn that our expectations won't always be met. Frustrated expectations are not so much about our lives, but rather about life itself. If the interrupted expectation is beyond our control, then we have an opportunity to deepen our capacity to accept what we can't control. We can learn how not to allow what we are powerless over to control us by hurling us into excessive bouts of anger and frustration. Secondly, we manage our expectations more creatively when we remain flexible about how and with whom they will get met. Frustration tends to build when we rigidly assign expectations to one particular person. For example, we expect a spouse to join us at the opera. When he or she refuses to go, we sacrifice ourselves by not going rather than inviting someone else.
*Take Inventory. How disappointed have I been? When a particular person has disappointed us, it is important to review how that person has received our expectations in the past. If there is a significant track record of disappointment, we need to explore our attachment to expecting water from a dry well. Being disappointed can also relate to how we create our expectations and how we talk about them. If our expectations are not clear, we run the risk that others will be confused about how to meet them. Our expectations may also be excessive, such as in the example where we want people to continuously prioritize our needs over their own.
There are several injurious consequences when we do not learn how to creatively be hurt and disappointed. The first is that we garrison ourselves with a host of defenses, not allowing anyone too close. We become emotionally isolated, accompanied by a deep sense of emptiness. Secondly, when our defenses include repression, we increasingly become numb, sacrificing an important criterion for assessing the value of our relationships. Third, when we increasingly feel anesthetized from hurt and disappointment, we sacrifice being emotionally touched and moved, which inform us about what is important to us and worth being alive for. Fourth, numb morphs into depression, or deadening of the soul's vibrancy. Lastly, we run a very high likelihood of having an adversarial relationship with life, guaranteeing that we regularly feel victimized by life.