514: Moving On After Hurt

Today I’m talking about how to move on after you have been hurt.

Whether it is heartbreak, betrayal, disappointment, family pain, friendship breakups, or someone not showing up the way you hoped they would, hurt is part of the human experience. But moving on is not always as simple as forgiving, forgetting, or pretending it did not matter. When we are hurt, the pain can linger, and if we do not know how to work with it, we can start living from the wound instead of from our healthy adult self.

Transcript

Hello, Hello and welcome to the Adult Share Podcast. I am Michelle Chalfant. Delighted to be here with you as always. I hope you all are having a wonderful. It feels like summer here We are in 90 plus degree weather. It's been crazy with the weather here Yeah, And then Memorial weekend was high 16 rain. So I don't know what's happening. Seriously. There must be global warming Something's going on with the wacky weather, But I hope you all are having a lovely day spring slash summer season. I myself have been going to lots of grad parties and graduation functions. I've had my niece and two nephews graduate college just in the last month. So busy times, I know. And a lot of you have little ones that are going from like, It's so fun. And I was talking to one of the girls that actually works for me. And she's like, I'm sorry, I'm not going to be working tomorrow. I'm going to be on a field trip with my kids. I'm like, I miss this. Listen, If you're one of those parents that's listening to the fact you have to carpool and go on the field trips, I'm telling you what. Enjoy every second because it flies by. It is so fast. It's like I blinked and all of a sudden I'm not carpooling. My kids are out of the house. It's, It's, It's so fast. So enjoy every second of those little munchkins, Even when they're, They can be a big pain in the butt. I know. But guess what? They're gone before you know it. So there you go. And guess what? I've been giving the greatest grad gift of all. What do I talk about all the time? I wish I had, And I understood what the adult chair was when I was growing up because I'd be a much different adult by now. So I've been giving away my book. I'm like the adult chair book for everyone. All these grads. So it's a great grad gift. And by the way, It's a great summer read. I'm already hearing that from people. They're like, I'm getting your book. I'm going to the beach. I'm like, Okay, Let's go. So enjoy, Enjoy learning and embodying the adult chair all summer and give it to a student that really needs it, That's graduating from college or high school, Honestly. All right. I've got a show for you today. Yeah, I've been I've been I love reading the comments. I got to tell you, I love the comments. And every time you guys email in. My team takes notes of all the podcast topics that you guys want me to talk about and they write it down and I'm going through that list now. Today we are talking about how to move on after you've been hurt. Yes. How to move on after you have been hurt. This is something that I'm not sure if there's any human on the planet that will not at some point go through being hurt. I mean, We're human. This is part of our human experience. But the question is, What do you do? How do you navigate that? Because God knows with my clients, And I've even done this too. Way back in the day, Before I understood how to navigate hurt, I'd sweep it under the carpet or I'd get angry or I wouldn't set a boundary or my boundary would be too rigid. I was all over the place. But now as I sit here in my adult chair, I got to tell you, I can navigate it pretty darn well. And I want to talk to you about how to do that today. Not that I'm perfect. I definitely never claim to be perfect, But I know how to do it. I got the outline for you today. We're going to go through the whole thing. So how do we move on after we've been hurt? Because I can tell you, Many of us get stuck in the hurt, Right? We don't know how to move forward. Again, Who taught us this in schools? No one. Nobody talks about this in schools. And most of the time when we're hurt, You know, We hear something like, Oh, Just move on. They didn't mean it. Or, Oh, Just move on. It's in the past. You can't be stuck forever. You know, That's what people say. However, When we are hurting on the inside, Sometimes it's not that easy just to forgive, Move on, And I don't care anymore. Oftentimes it stays with us or it lingers. So how do we do that? How do we navigate that? And The thing is this, One of the hardest things in life is not getting hurt. It's learning how to move forward after the hurt because the hurt changes us. Let's face it. The hurt changes our relationship with that person that has hurt us. It could be things like heartbreak. It could be betrayal, Disappointment, Um, Even family pain, Friendship breakups. God knows I've had some of those in my, In my day. Um, Yeah. And people, Here's the other thing too, People that don't become who we thought that they'd become, Or people that don't show up in relationships as we thought that they were going to be. It's not about getting over it, I'm telling you. It's actually learning how to stop living inside of the wound. Because what happens is when we're wounded, We start living from that wound. So if we feel abandoned or hurt or betrayed, We live from that place instead of from our healthy adult self. So that's what I'm gonna break down for you today. So let's talk about it. So why do we get stuck? In the pain. I'll tell you why. I know this. I know this. And I know how to get, Get yourself out of it. The mind starts revisiting what the heart has not yet resolved. In other words, We go into this looping and we try to figure it out. This is why we get stuck in the pain. When somebody has hurt us, The mind just keeps going over and over and over trying to figure it out. Well, It was because of this, Maybe I should have done this. And it's like a bazillion ideas, But let me break it down from you for you, From the adult chair perspective. So our child part, The child chair, Is a part of us. That has all of those beautiful emotions. So when we're hurt, We are activating that beautiful inner child part. However, In order to resolve it, We need our adult. But what most of us do, Because we're human and we don't know how to live that well in our adult chair, We zip on over here into the adolescent, Which is the ego mind. And the ego wants to come in and fix it. The ego wants to stop, Shut down, Close the doors on that inner child and all of their emotions. It does not know what to do with emotions. It does not know how to resolve. It knows how to numb. But what happens is when there's a very intense pain coming up with that inner child, The ego mind comes in to stop it. And the more intense the pain, The faster and more intense the looping in the mind. Let me say that again. The more intense the pain, The more severe the pain, The emotional pain that we're experiencing. Think about it. The ego comes in and goes, I got to figure it out. I got to figure it out. Is it this, This, This, This, This, And it rifles through ideas repeatedly. And our energy moves fast. Our nervous system gets activated. We're overwhelmed. We're exhausted all the things because our mind is keeping us on this treadmill of trying to figure things out. So think about rumination. That's what this is. It will replay conversations over and over and over. Over and over again. That's all the ego. It gets obsessed on things. I can't believe that they said that. I can't believe that they said that when really what's happening is we're feeling this pain underneath, But we're not even aware of the pain because the ego is trying to figure it out and it's rehearsing and reviewing, Going over everything over and over and over. It wants resolution, Does not know how to get it. That's what the adult does. We might have attachment wounding, Which is why we cannot move on. We're lost in our attachment wounding. So the next thing is we're searching for meaning that ego's like, I need meaning. Why the hell would they do this? To me. That was so mean. That was hurtful. That was this. It searches for meeting. Point number two. We also oftentimes attach to who we had hoped that that person would become. We say something like, Oh, I really thought that they'd be different. I didn't think they'd ever hurt me. I can't believe that they did that. I thought they were my person. If this is a partner, I thought they were different. I thought they were my person. This relationship, I swear it was going to be different. And then if it's a friend or family or whomever, Even a partner, We might say, How could they have hurt me in this way? You know, It's like we're living in disbelief and we don't want to see it. So we might be lost in this like fantasy or this longing of them or the potential of what it could have been, This relationship, This beautiful friendship, This marriage, This, All of the things. So we're waiting and we have emotional attachment to the possibility. Okay. So that's another reason that we get stuck. Sometimes we're grieving the person. But other times we're actually grieving the dream. So again, It's this fantasy. I thought it was going to be like this, And now this is what's coming up. Okay, Another one. Number three, Hurt activates. Oftentimes old wounds. So here's what's kind of crazy. Sometimes, Even if someone, Let's say hurts us, Someone breaks up with us, The marriage is over, The friendship ends, Whatever it might be, Or they say something really mean, Whatever it might be. If that happens. We feel tremendous amount of pain, Grief, Overwhelm, Whatever it might be. But we're actually feeling a wound that happened maybe from childhood, A really, Really long time ago. So let me give you an example of this. Let's just say that we were abandoned as children. Maybe dad left, Mom left. And even if they were in the house, They were never present. They were in the bedroom doing drugs. They were drunk. They were working all the time. And we felt very abandoned. Maybe dad left, Just up and left, Or mom up and left when we were children. So we have this really deep abandonment wound. We didn't feel wanted as children. We didn't feel loved because dad ended up leaving, Whatever it might be. But there's a really core wound, Inside. I call it the taproot wound. Tap root. The very heart of it all. Now what happens is, And it's kind of scabbed over, Now what happens is something today happens where my friend hurts me, My boyfriend breaks up with me, My marriage is over, And the amount of pain and agony and shame and sadness that we feel and grief is disproportionate to exactly what happened. Like it might feel like absolutely devastating because my friends said that to me when we were out to dinner and it created so much pain, I can't even get out of bed the next day. It's like, Wait, That doesn't even make sense. How is that so deep? What's happening here? What's happened is. Pain from maybe when you were five years old when dad left or when dad said that thing to you in front of your friends and embarrassed you. It's the same kind of pain that happened with your friend when you guys were out to dinner and your friend said that in front of your group. And it was so embarrassing. So if the level of your pain that you're experiencing or your grief or your sadness or your overwhelm or your frustration, Whatever it might be, Or the hurt, Is disproportionate in size to what actually happened, You're gonna wanna take a look under the hood and really go deeper into, Is there a deeper wound? That's linked to what happened here. Like your experience just might be taking the scab off, But it's opening up a gigantic wound that you thought you had put into the abyss of the unconscious mind. You'd never see again, Nor would you feel again. Which I have to say. Don't be mad at me. It's actually a really good thing because we don't want that wound, That taproot lingering around in the unconscious mind because in our unconscious mind is where we are creating our reality. So we want to go find these things and we want to work through that, That wound, That tap root. That's a part of us. That's a, That's a belief structure that we have deep inside of us that we want to work through. Okay. It's so important. Let's talk about what keeps people stuck when we are hurt and we are in pain. What keeps us stuck? Well, Oftentimes we get stuck because we are waiting for an apology that may never, Ever come. So therefore, I'm stuck. And I'm waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting. And the more I'm waiting. The next one is I'm replaying the story. Of what happened, It gets me more anxious and waiting even more for that apology. And also I'm going to say to myself, I'm not moving on until I get an apology. So as I say that. Are you able to hear? That I'm keeping myself stuck. And I'm going to be in the victim's seat. Because I am not getting an apology until I get it. I am not moving on. I'm going to be in a bad mood. I'm going to be mad. I'm going to hold my anger. Hear me again. I'm holding on to the anger, My anger. I'm holding on to pain. I'm holding on to hurt. I'm holding on to frustration. I'm choosing to hold it. I'm choosing it. Ultimately, I'm choosing it. I'm choosing to sit longer in my hurt and in my pain. Because I want an apology. And if that is the stance that you are in, God knows I've been there, I know exactly what this feels like, But I have also learned, This was my victim, Is sitting squarely in the adolescent chair, Which is the ego saying, I'm not moving on until I get this. Feel the energy of that. How old do we feel when we are in that stance? It's a younger part of us that's taken over. Yeah, And people will say, It's the principle of it all. Well. The principle is going to keep you really unhappy and your principles are going to keep you stuck. Now, Hear me say this. It's not to say that I wouldn't like an apology. I can prefer an apology. I would even like an apology. However, I'm not going to put my life on hold, Nor will I feel stuck. If I don't get an apology. Now again. I may not be friends with this person. I may not talk to them for a while. I got to do what I got to do in order to move on and to heal myself from the pain that this person caused me. But what I'm not going to do is sit and wait for an apology because it may never, What if the apology never, Ever, Ever comes? The way I see it is I got to do my inner work. And when I do my inner work, If the apology comes, It's the cherry on the sundae. I'm the Sunday. I got to take care of myself. I got to bring myself back into balance. I might go through a grief process for a while. I might be in disbelief for a while, But at some point I need to move on. And that's my job for my adult share to do that. So let me talk to you about how we actually move on. Okay. So moving on, Here it is. Moving on is not about pretending it didn't hurt, Because it did. It hurt. We need to acknowledge that. And again, A friend may tell you, Just, You know, Move on. What's your problem? Why are you so stuck in the past? Who cares? They didn't mean it. You know, They're going to make up all these excuses or your mom or whomever's going to say this to you. Here's really how you want to move on. This is how you. From your whole body move on, Okay? Because you don't want to just mentally move on. I've got a full body move on, Which means my mind and my body are connected. My nervous system is in line with what I'm doing. It is regulated. And able to help me to move on because I'm in a calm, Neutral state. Okay. Here it is if you feel hurt, And I don't care if it's a Surface kind of wound or this taproot wound whatever it is. You've got to work Feeling that emotion that emotion needs to come up and through you Okay, Remember we feel Process and metabolize our emotions you must feel it fully not just a little bit You got to feel that pain, And I don't know about you, But nobody taught me how to feel my pain People tried to stop the pain. You know, Most parents are like, Try to talk us out of our pain. We'll give us food like, Oh, Have a cookie. You're fine. And again, Parents do their best. I did my best, But we really need to teach our children and we need to learn how to feel our pain and our hurt, All of it fully. And what I have found through lived experience and with God knows how many people over the course of 30 years here. Emotion is an energy. That moves through you. The emotion will move through you. Here's the caveat, You gotta stop the story. What happens is as the emotion is moving through you, The mind comes in to make up a story about why you're feeling that emotion. That's what you cannot do. And you have to say to yourself, Nope, I'm just gonna feel this emotion. It might look like you're on the bed. Wailing and crying and pounding pillows. You may go for a run. You may be journaling and crying. You may not cry. It doesn't matter. You've got to be willing to allow the energy of that emotion because the emotion is just an energy to move fully through you. You cannot bypass it. You cannot numb it. You cannot spiritually escape and just do a meditation and think you're all done. That's not how it's going to happen. You've got to go through it. Okay? You may have grief, You may have rage, You may have disappointment, Sadness, Betrayal, Whatever it is, You've got to feel it. That's step one. Okay. Like I said before, Number two, Stop waiting for them. To free you. You cannot do that. Do not. You can if you want, But it's going to keep you stuck. So we don't want them. If I sit and wait for other people to free me, I'm going to be waiting a long time. Do not wait for an apology for them to change you. Because here's the truth, You have the ability to choose. You get to choose, I'm moving on, With or without an apology. It really does come down to choice. Um. . . It's just an interesting thing. It's like I've got to choose to not be in my victim. I'm going to wake up to this and say, Huh, Not doing it. I'm just not doing it. I'm not going to wait for them. You might be angry. Let it, Let it flow through you because you even don't want to make that decision out of anger. Although anger is not a bad emotion. I love my anger. It's actually very empowering. If the anger gets you do your empowerment around this, Go for it. But you don't want to then walk around with all this anger and a chip on your shoulder because you did not get an apology. Here's the next thing that will help you. You really want to get radically honest with yourself and find the learning in the experience that happened. Here it is. You ready? For you. I know. I know you're going to be mad at me. I used to be mad at me too. When I would hear someone say that to me, I'd get so mad. Like, What the hell do you mean this was for me? They, They hurt me. Okay. True. And there was a learning. Okay, So what did I learn about myself? Here's the question from this relationship, From this circumstance. Here it is from this hurt. What did I learn about myself from what happened out there with this person? Ask yourself that question. You got to choose to do that. I can't force you. No one else can force you to do it. But if you want to learn how to work your way through pain and hurt, This is how you do it. You have to get radically honest. Okay, So here's some things you might have learned. I think I realized in that relationship I was in fantasy all the time thinking that they were someone else. So I need to work on in this next relationship to stay out of fantasy. Yeah. So when I see a red flag or feel a red flag or something doesn't smell right, Look right, Feel right, I'm going to pay attention and I'm going to have a conversation about it. I didn't do that. Okay, No shame, No blame, No judging. Who cares? Move on. Maybe you learn about yourself. You know what? My friends have been telling me that I need to work on boundaries, And I'm realizing I didn't have any in this relationship. Huh. I think I'm gonna go read the adult chair book and learn all about boundaries. There you go. I'm going to work on self-worth also in the adult share book. Go get that book. Let me tell you, Maybe. Another thing you say to yourself is I'm going to pay attention to red flags in the future when I see them. Yeah. Red flags. They're there. Maybe you missed them. Maybe you just like kind of close your, Your vision to them. You're like, I don't want to see him. I don't want to see him. I'm going to pretend again. This is sometimes when we go into fantasy and think they really didn't hurt me. It was, They didn't mean to. Right. Follow your intuition always. Maybe you gave way too much in that relationship and it was out of balance. Is that true? Did you learn that? Think back on that pain that you're experiencing and that relationship that you were in. Did you give too much? Was it in balance? Was it out of balance? Did they walk on you and then apologize or be sarcastic about it and slough it off like it was no big deal, But it really hurt. Like what did you, Allow. I have found over the years so many of us blame you know, We blame that other person. Why did they treat me that way? Well, If it happens, Here it is. Let me say this again. I want you to hear me. I found over the years that when we blame others for treating us that way more than one time, We're allowing it. It's on me to set a boundary. And we'll get mad. I've listened to people for years say this, Well, They treated me like this for years and years and years. And my question is always the same. Did you notice that you allowed them to do that to you? That's a hard one. That's a hard one. I had to say that to myself about a few people in my life. Ooh, That does not feel good. And then it, Then it's okay. When I realized it's just an experience that we had and a learning, It's like, Okay. I did. That was on me. That was on me. I did not have healthy communication and share with them what I needed and what I was feeling. That's on me. And you got to own your part. Let me tell you what, Own it, Own it, Own it. I promise you there's a part within you. That can have a learning in this, If you are willing to look. And we do that from our adult chair. Maybe. You had a lot of intuition. And you just didn't pay attention to it. In the future, You're going to say to yourself, Yeah, I learned that. I kind of just didn't pay attention. Now I'm going to pay attention. When my heart starts to close, When they're doing that or saying that thing, When someone is saying that thing, I'm going to speak up for myself or I'm going to walk away. I'm going to do something different. So this is really important because there's always a learning in every relationship we have on the planet. I don't care who it is. If it's with a boss, If it's with a parent, If it's with a friend, If it's with a sibling, There's always learning and experiences to be had. And if we're willing to take a look at what we learned and how we can grow from that relationship, Even if there's pain and hurt, It's really a positive kind of thing that we can spin it. Not that I'm spiritually bypassing this by any way, But it's like, I wanna learn, Like, What's my part in this? What did I do? What didn't I do? How could I have done better? What did I miss? What's going on with the taproot? You gotta think about all those things. So we want to let the pain transform us instead of define us. So claim what's true. You know, When people say things like, I'll never let that happen again. I'll never trust again. I'll never have another relationship again. I'll never, Never, Never. It's like, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. So you're gonna allow that person. Do that one thing to you and now it's changing the whole course of your future? No. No, I mean, You can if you want, But wow, Think about it like this. You're giving that person a lot of your power. You're saying because they did that, I'm going to give them all my power and that's going to change my whole entire future, The rest of my life. I'll never trust again. I'll never have another relationship again. I'll never this. I'll never do blah, Blah, Blah again. Hold on a second. Let the pain transform you instead of define you, Right? Let's claim what's true. Again, If I can do the last step, Which is what did I learn? I might say something like, Huh, I know it's true. Yeah, I could have set better boundaries. And let's go through a list of what's fact and truth. I'm actually a really good person. I'm a really great friend. I'm a very giving partner. Maybe I gave a little bit too much. I want to pay attention to that, But I'm going to claim what's true. I'm a really, Really great partner. I'm a really great friend. I go above and beyond for people. Did I go too much? Maybe. I don't know. But claim what's true and start asking yourself, What else is true? What else could be true versus the negative thinking that you're having inside of your head. You got to ask yourself what else can be true. So let that pain transform you, Not define you and who you are, Because maybe you can own that you're wiser, You're more honest, You're more boundaried, Or you're going to be in the future. I'm more self-connected, I'm more awake. So, A lot of learning. Okay, So this is how we move through pain. This is how we move through hurt, Suffering, All the things. Moving on does not mean that the hurt didn't matter or it didn't happen. Let me say that. It means that the hurt no longer controls your identity or your nervous system or your future. In other words, Again, The hurt does not define you. We do not want that hurt to define you. You get to define you. Whoo. All right. Big stuff. You guys. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for dropping all of your future podcast questions and ideas because you inspire me for future shows. I love being with you. This has been so much fun. I will see you again very soon in the future. I love these solo cast. So more to come. I'll see you next week though. I've got another great show for you right here next week in the adult chair.