4 ways to deal with hurt

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If you are human, your feelings would have got hurt sometime. Many times. Schools don’t teach how to deal with hurt. Parents don’t teach how to deal with hurt. If your parents taught you, then you are one of those lucky ones.

This post explores hurt and attempts to draw insights which will help the next time around you get hurt. I’m certain it will help me.

Healing your hurt

1. If someone hurt you, it means you didn’t have your defenses on which let the hurt happen. You let your defenses down with people you love. Sorry to break the news but only the people you love can hurt you. This is not philosophy but simple physics. So instead of telling someone “You hurt me” tell them the truth i.e “I love you.” The flip-side is that when someone says “You hurt me” they are actually saying “I love you.”

2. You choose who is worthy of your love and who is not. No point in blaming others for misusing the privilege you gave them in the first place.

3. When you get hurt, it is foolish to try to hurt the other person back. You will not be able to hurt the other person back unless that person loves you the same way. Physics. Even if you succeed in hurting, now you have 2 hurt people. Inflicting a wound on another person is not the same as healing yours. Biology.

4. Instead do this to heal your wound:

  • Remind yourself that you got hurt because you loved. It is being human to love. It is a privilege and blessing to love. Be proud of that fact. It is the surest of the signs that you are still alive. Decide to love more (may be another person) but don’t decide to stop loving. To stop loving out of the fear of being hurt is numbing yourself to life itself.
  • Let the feeling of hurt be. It needs awareness and time to transmute itself into soft power and expansiveness. These words will not make sense till you give it a try and experience for yourself. A simple sutra to apply is — the hurt is like a (bitter) medicine in your system. Let it be and do its work without interfering with it. It will do its job and dissolve by itself leaving you a stronger person.

PS. Originally published on July 8, 2017 on Medium.

 

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