When Others Hurt You

One of the most challenging experiences that can happen to us is when someone we love and trust hurts us. What can and should we do when others inflict emotional pain on us? Instead of healing from these wounds, we often turn towards four unhealthy responses. But we can, thankfully, heal from these hurts and move on.

Transcript

Welcome to the happiness podcast.

I'm dr.

Robert puff if we live long enough Sooner or later all of us are gonna face someone that we thought was our friend Someone that we cared about that hurts us and it can hurt a lot particularly when they're close to us like a spouse or a life partner or a dear friend that we deeply loved When this happens,

It can really rock our world and make us wonder.

What do we do?

What do we do when people that we love hurt us?

How do we respond in ways that don't take away from our happiness?

But also help us to heal from the wounds that have just been inflicted upon us This is particularly challenging when we don't see it coming when we don't expect it and it seems to come out of nowhere Someone that we trusted that we put our faith in and that we thought was there for us Changes and they turn against us and they hurt us whether intentionally or non-intentionally the pain is still horrific as A clinical psychologist where I see this happening so often is when two people were deeply in love years later get divorced and And instead of just deciding to end the relationship and moving on they go through a horrific divorce battle Where one or perhaps even both partners do things to each other to just hurt the other person It is so sad for me to see that and I do my best to stop that behavior and help them realize That they had a life together where they once loved each other and they don't need to end it painfully They can end it Peacefully,

Even though they now don't want to be together or another case that is common that I see in my practice is where someone was raised in an abusive environment and The person who they were supposed to trust and to be trustworthy Like a parent or a sibling or a grandparent turns on them and hurts them These pains can be horrific Or another one I see is when a parent or both parents pass and there's something left over And instead of just peacefully dividing up what is there as her parents had wished One of the children Turns on the other and tries to be very patient and take far more than was her share And a lot of hurt occurs in these situations or someone we just fall in love with and have a relationship with or a dear friend that we just so much enjoy and something changes and They hurt us and It's painful because again our hearts were open.

They were vulnerable There's lots of ways in which life we can be hurt but the question we want to look at here is how do we heal from these hurts and not let them destroy our lives or Worse yet go on the path of hurting others So when someone does hurt us There's four things we do not want to do that will cause us to suffer in response to that hurting from the other person The first thing is not to stay in that hurt not to stay stuck We go through life and sooner or later someone we trust probably will hurt us There can be an infinite number of reasons why they do that.

I'll talk about them and These three points but the main thing is we don't want to stay stuck We want to make sure that we heal that we move forward and live our lives well And that's the thing we don't want to do.

We don't want to stay stuck in that pain Again,

Haven't we all known people that something happened to them five ten twenty thirty fifty years ago And they still this moment they talk about it can feel that anger and that bitterness or that sadness over what happened They haven't healed They haven't moved on and we want to make sure that when people that we love hurt us That we don't stay stuck in that hurt Life can be very painful at times our job that we can control is not staying stuck in that hurt Healing from it moving on and making sure that we have a beautiful life So the first thing we do is avoid staying stuck in the hurt the second thing we do is we don't numb ourselves to that pain and this is also very common a Person goes through a breakup and the person they broke up with did horrific things to them horrible things and It's so overwhelms them They turn towards booze or they turn towards drugs or they turn towards something that numbs himself in that pain It doesn't heal the pain.

It doesn't help them move forward it more numbs it It's like shooting novacaine into a horrible horrible pain The numbing that we're doing may take away from the pain temporarily,

But it will not heal it We have to face what happened look at it and go through the steps of healing to make sure that we're okay There's so many ways we can numb ourselves food distractions sex drugs alcohol So many different ways we have to be very careful not to do that is that can cause us to stay stuck For the rest of our lives and we never heal them The third thing that we can do that isn't helpful is a little more complicated But I think it will make sense if I explain it It's where we take on what they did to us and we begin to hurt ourselves In other words,

We think well if this person who I loved and I trusted did this to me There must be something wrong with me.

I must deserve this.

I Must look in the mirror and say I hate you because they hated me Otherwise,

They wouldn't have done this to me and we take on the pain they threw at us and now we throw it at ourselves We hate ourselves because others Hurt us and that too is the path of suffering We can look at Myriads of reasons why people hurt us But taking it on is not going to be helpful We can learn from it if we did make mistakes and they lashed out then we need to learn from these mistakes But taking on and hating ourselves because someone we loved hurt us is not going to help It is too going to keep us stuck and we're not going to heal and move forward And the fourth thing that we do which may explain why other people hurt us is that when we get hurt We hurt others I remember the first time I vividly saw this was my first year in college I had a classmate who told me about someone he really cared about and trusted hurt him And because of that he felt justified in hurting others He thought life is hard and I was hurt and now I'm gonna hurt others.

That's just the way life is It's that I for an I mentality if you hurt me,

I may not be able to hurt you back But I'm gonna hurt someone else because I have all this anger inside in me About what that person did to me.

So now when I'm with someone else,

I'm gonna hurt them And that's exactly what this guy did He stopped caring about other people and if he needed something or wanted something He'd do whatever he needed to get that and even if it meant hurting other people,

Which he did It was very eye-opening to me thinking that he justified his behavior because he was so upset how someone hurt him So he felt justified in hurting others A lot of people do that when they hurt others.

They're hurting others because they've been hurt For example in my work as a clinical psychologist I've worked with thousands of people who have been hurt by someone when they're being raised That was supposed to be safe and trustworthy a sibling a parent a grandparent Someone they trusted and that person hurt them But when we're able to explore That person's history we always find that they were abused too growing up And instead of healing from that hurt they're passing that hurt on It's like I got punched i'm gonna punch you and you might as well go ahead and punch someone else Of course,

My clients don't want to hurt others.

That's why they were seeing me to get better and heal But that is a response that some people take They get hurt so they're going to start hurting others And I think that's why we see people hurting us So these are the four responses.

We don't want to make we don't want to numb ourselves We don't want to stay stuck.

We don't want to hurt ourselves and we definitely don't want to hurt others But when we do get hurt It can be very painful So let's briefly talk about why do people hurt us?

Again,

The main reason is because they were hurt They may have been hurt by us We may not have meant it.

Maybe we did but when people get hurt there's a tendency to punch back Or they feel they were punched or they're punching back They think they feel that we did something to them Now they want to hurt us because we hurt them But sometimes like I said,

It just comes from they've been hurt by someone else and now they're gonna hurt us There's a myriad of reasons why people hurt other people That we cannot control But you know what there is something we can control And that's our response to hurt when someone we love when someone we trust hurts us The one thing we can control is our response And the number one thing we want to do is Heal we want to make sure that we heal from that hurt And the way we do that is we heal ourselves Heal from that hurt and the way we do that Is first by feeling our feelings.

Wow That really hurt perhaps talking to someone about it getting the counseling and expose that hurt and let those feelings out Sadness heals our tears can heal and so can our anger but not at people just by expressing it Perhaps going to the gym or journaling.

There's so many great ways that we can heal from hurt And you know how we know when we're done from the hurt?

Is when we can think about what that person did and we don't feel anything anymore.

We don't feel sadness We don't feel anger.

We just see it as an event in our past It happened that we learned from that we healed from and now we're moving on We're letting it go I think another thing that can be really helpful Is realizing that this is just part of life in love in relationships Sometimes there's misunderstandings.

Sometimes people do hurt us intentionally But it comes from their pain.

It comes from their anger.

We don't need to take that on We realize that yes,

Sometimes people will hurt us But we are going to focus on living a good life And not letting that hurt keep us stuck For all the different things we can do instead of healing And moving on But the expectation that we should get through life without being hurt by it That too is the path of suffering because then we create a story that life is unfair.

This shouldn't have happened Why did they do that?

Who knows?

Or really is it even relevant?

What's relevant is the relationship change.

It went south and hurt occurred I hopefully didn't do too much to hurt them back,

But I felt hurt And I let that heal and now i'm going to move on And that's the last thing we have to do Is when hurt does occur we have to ask ourselves was this a misunderstanding?

Is this something the two of us can work through?

Or is it something that I need to perhaps go on a different journey from this person?

And not be around them anymore because they keep hurting me We do need to learn from other people and sometimes what we learn is boundaries That we need to stop being around people that hurt us Some people are hurt by the way that they hurt us And we need to learn to be around people that hurt us some people of course Don't try to hurt us.

It's just misunderstandings I mean they may hurt us,

But they're not trying to and we talk to them about it And sometimes they're very apologetic or sometimes they have reasons for the way they are But if they are able to change and start treating us with respect and kindness,

Then we may stick around with them But if they can't Then we have to ask ourselves is it time to move on?

If a person is hurting us and we keep going back to them Then we have to look at ourselves and say are we perhaps stuck on one of those four things?

I talked about at the beginning the four things that keep us stuck Perhaps we feel that we deserve it There's many things that we can do to keep us stuck But what we need to do when anyone hurts us is move away from that hurt Whether by talking to them and setting up boundaries or perhaps having very little or nothing to do with them at all The key of life is what we can control We can't ultimately control if someone is going to hurt us But the two things we can do Is when they do hurt us?

We can make sure that we heal from that hurt.

That's number one And number two,

We can decide what types of boundaries we need to set with this person going forward So they don't keep hurting us Because if we stay there and they keep hurting us,

We're not growing.

We're not learning from the experience And lastly the thing I would recommend is doing our best to surround ourselves with loving and kind people That really go out of the way not to hurt others even when they're upset Even when they're angry or even when they're hurt It is a choice not to hurt others when we're hurting Be around people like that.

They do exist Be one of those people that other people want to be around because you don't have to be around them And they don't want to be around because you don't hurt them when they hurt you If we choose this path We will find that our lives can truly be beautiful And when the bumps of life come We heal from them We make decisions that are good for us and the other person And we move forward And we just realize that life truly is a beautiful adventure Even with the bumps of life Thank you for joining me on the happiness podcast until next time Accept what is Love what is

Reviews

So very insightful and digestible. Thank You!

Just what I needed after I got really hurt by my dad and his girlfriend. Still not sure what to do, but sure I will be oké in the future and that I'm not alone.

I was just hurt in a way that left me not knowing *what* I was feeling. I was in shock. I'm glad I listened to this first. I'm grateful to find this effective first aid here. It's late at night and I'm not sure what to do next, but I'm glad to be certain of what I don't want to do. That is somehow grounding.

Thank you. A helpful talk. It is very sad that some people take out their pain on other people.

Exactly what I needed right now. I have had to set boundaries & move on from hurtful people. Thank you.

Great message on how to deal with hurt. Thank you!

You always help me to see things more clearly. Your wisdom is needed & refreshing. Thank you, Dr.Puff. 🙏🏼♥️

So true. Thank you. I enjoy all of your talks.

Thank you, Dr. Puff. Really needed this today after feeling triggered over a past relationship wound. Your words helped me see what I’m doing right and where my heart was stuck.

Thank you for this! I needed it today. 💜