Often when people get their feelings hurt they take what happened to them and re-run it through their brain again and again. Sometimes we can see that we should have said something different, and sometimes we just get madder and madder.
We Rehash Painful Experiences in an Attempt to Understand Them
This situation happens in all our relationships, especially with the people we are really close to. I know that when I used to get mad at my partner I would just “stew” over what happened. It was as if I was marinating in the juices of what was done to me.
The more I sat in the stew the madder I got. You see how this works? We get our feelings hurt, something normal that happens in relationships, and then we run it through our minds over and over and over.
Rehashing Reinforces Our Sense of Being Wronged
We might get a little bit more information about the event, but we don’t get the least bit of healing. Rehearsing and rehashing our hurts just makes them stronger and more fixed. They become their own thing without any air they can’t alter, and then we become stuck on what happened and we can’t alter either.
Here is what I have learned. Hurt feelings are real. People hurt us and most of the time they don’t mean to do so and yet it still happens. If you make someone wrong for something they did, you will stay inside the story of what they did to us.
Sometimes this gives us a little relief, but it always keeps us separate from the one person that might be able to understand us and our hurt feelings. Here is what I believe. Hurt feelings need to be felt.
We Have to Feel and Address Our Hurt Feelings
The story of the circumstances of how I got my feelings hurt then becomes secondary. I must take care of the hurt feelings which could be sadness, rejection, disappointment, dismissal, any and all of these feelings hurt intensely especially if the one we love is in our minds causing them.
But that’s just it, your partner doesn’t live in your body and doesn’t know what is going to touch a trigger point for you. No one knows you as well as you know yourself. I want you to get to know what happens to you when you get your feelings hurt. Learn what got tapped inside of you. Lay down the story which just keeps you mad.
Examine Your Feelings and Articulate Them to Your Partner
If you can understand those feelings and discuss them with your partner, your mate will get to know you at a deeper level, and that’s what we all crave: to be really known by our beloved.
Try and get out of the habit of replaying your wounds. See if you can unhook from what happened and instead feel what is happening to you in your body. Because if you can do this, you are on your way to feeling better. Your healing depends on it.
Communicate with Confidence in Your Relationship
Read a Book About Relationships
Learn how to communicate more confidently in your relationship, by reading Linda’s book Safe. Happy. Loved. Simple Skills for Your Relationship. It might just help you both feel closer, better understood, and more assured of one another’s feelings. Give it a read.
Get Couples Counseling
Come in for couples counseling. Couples counseling can help you and your loved one get the most out of your relationship. It'll equip you with coping strategies and tools for communication that can help you argue less and love more.