You said…
“That hurts my feelings.”
Instead of getting angry, repulsed, peeved, defensive, enraged, livid, or furious…
You were to say…
“That hurts my feelings.”
Perhaps, many of us, myself included, have grown up learning that when we feel hurt, alienated, excluded, unseen, misunderstood, or scared, we are to get louder and seek retaliation or, merely, retreat and hide. Often, our focus narrows, and we desire to now emotionally hurt those that influenced our hurting in the first place.
But, what if we allowed ourselves to feel the hurt and be sad, dejected, and forlorn?
More than just allowed, what if we stayed with those feelings long enough to say with conviction, acceptance, and empathy (for ourselves): My feelings are hurt.
The Opportunity is… to give ourselves (and others) the permission to feel.
“Emotional sickness is avoiding reality at any cost. Emotional health is facing reality at any cost”.
M. Scott Peck
“Wellbeing depends less on objective events than how those events are perceived, dealt with, and shared with others.”
Marc Brackett, Permission to Feel
When saying “that hurts my feelings,” we are facing the reality of our own internal state AND sharing it. This is brave and empowering. It is also an act of expression, which can be extremely helpful when efforting to effectively self-regulate.
Our feelings hold valuable information. The more we choose to embrace them as they are, as opposed to trading them in for others that are easier or, seemingly, more acceptable to feel, the more we invite others to do the same as well as glimpse our emotional experience with compassion.
Remember, THERE IS AN opportunity to say… “Ouch… That hurts my feelings.“
