When Others Hurt Your Feelings: Healthy Responses

If others hurt your feelings often or in an intense way and you do not react, you will break down, little by little. Being strong is not about being able to resist more, be quiet or keep what you feel inside you. Being strong is about giving yourself permission to express your emotions, your needs, and setting boundaries.

We know this is not easy. However, taking care of and protecting your emotions is an activity that is both hygienic and healthy.

You will often hear that there is nothing more difficult than being an adult. Adult life consists of reaching the stage in your life where things like work, finances, family and personal satisfaction suddenly become aspects you have to learn to juggle on a daily basis.

However, many people forget something important. They forget that in reality the most relevant part of a person’s life takes place during childhood and adolescence. During these early stages of life, some of the most valuable learning and development takes place. One of these is undoubtedly the development of emotional competence.

Important lesson

Take a moment to think about it. When you were young, did anyone teach you how to distinguish between a mood and an emotion? Did anyone teach you to be confident or to believe in yourself? Or recognizing your emotional needs, as well as knowing how to communicate them effectively?

Unfortunately, the truth is that this learning does not always take place. This is often the reason why so many people in adulthood, are unable to navigate their narrow emotions, and get lost. They are vulnerable and very sensitive to the dynamics of their environment. This can make life harder than it needs to be.

At this stage, even the most important person in your life may be among those who hurt your feelings. What can you do when these situations arise?

When others hurt your feelings: Keys to being confident

When people hurt your feelings, you will usually react in one of two ways. Either by being quiet or by responding immediately, often driven by anger or rage.

But what happens when those who cross the invisible line of respect are people you love or who mean something to you? Your partner, for example, or a relative, friend or even your boss. Then everything suddenly becomes a little more complicated.

In these situations, there may be more reluctance. These people have undoubtedly hurt your feelings. But how do you deal with it? How do you find the courage to say something? How can you best tell a person that they hurt you? And how can you do that without losing your temper or being aggressive ? How do you get your message across clearly?

For this, emotional communication will undoubtedly be the key, and it is something you must actively work on. So we will now go through some of the key skills that can help you in such situations.

Learn to interpret your feelings in order to defend yourself in a confident way

Antonio Damasio, the famous neurophysiologist, published a study in the journal Nature. This study reminds us of the importance of knowing how to distinguish a mood from an emotion. To begin with, a state of mind is a whole collection of chemical and neural responses that you experience as a consequence of a stimulus.

• First, your body feels the effect of something that changes its homeostasis, your inner balance.
• Second, your mind translates that mood into an emotion. When you are able to translate what you feel into thoughts and words, a feeling arises.

So, what does this mean when someone insults or criticizes you?

People have an obligation to interpret or interpret the moods they feel. So, when you feel that lump in your stomach, or when your heart is accelerating, or your chest is on fire, stop, and overlook. Do not silence it. Do not tell yourself that there is nothing. Use the time and energy it takes to put into words what you are feeling. Identify and clarify your feelings.

“I feel”: The courage to declare your feelings through confident communication

Once you have put into words your feelings for yourself ( humiliation, indignation, pain, disappointment, sadness, a sense of deception, etc.), the next step is to communicate it. For this you must keep in mind the personal pronoun “I”.

Maybe you are not used to starting your sentences with this pronoun. However, this is very necessary for successful confident and emotional communication. So, when someone hurts your feelings, do not hesitate to say something like:

• “I felt humiliated when you made that comment. You may have said it without thinking, but I ask you to take it into account and not repeat it. “
• “I feel that you have disappointed me with the decision you have made. You did not take me into your views, and you did not ask for my opinion. ”

When someone hurts your feelings, you can ask them to take emotional responsibility

If someone hurts your feelings, keep this in mind. Defend yourself. Clarify and lay the foundation, so that something similar never happens again. For this purpose, you need to ask the other person to exercise emotional responsibility with you. What does it really mean? This is a good start:

• First, you need to establish an agreement on emotional responsibility with yourself. If someone hurts your feelings, that responsibility will fall on the other person. But if they do it again, and you have defended yourself, it will be your responsibility. However, this responsibility does not mean that you are to blame. Responsibility and guilt are two different things.
• Secondly, you need to make the other person aware of their attitude. You will make them understand that any kind of relationship requires respect and responsibility. What happened can not happen again. Both parties will learn from this event, and both will strive to create more empathetic, human and meaningful interactions.

In conclusion, we will point out only one aspect: These processes take time. Learning to be confident, and to manage your emotions in order to communicate them effectively, is something you will only achieve through practice. Therefore, it is important that you do not forget that if someone hurts your feelings, use the strategies you learned here. You will notice a change in your relationship with other people.