I Feel Hurt.

“I feel hurt.”

“You hurt me.”

How often do you find yourself saying that — or feeling it?

How did someone else get the power to hurt you?

They got it from you.

Did you mean to give it?

Someone lies to you.

Someone disappoints you.

Someone behaves selfishly, avoids responsibility, says one thing and does another, or repeats a pattern they have been repeating for years.

And almost immediately, we turn what happened into something that happened to us.

They hurt me.

Sometimes what happened was painful. People betray us. People abandon us. People behave recklessly. People can do some really nasty things.

Pain is part of being human.

But I am increasingly interested in what happens next.

Because there is a difference between experiencing pain and giving someone ongoing authority over your inner life.

Someone lies to you.

What if, instead of immediately becoming hurt, you simply became informed?

Not simply informed that this person is capable of lying. Most human beings are.

You learn something about this person’s relationship with truth.

Maybe they lie when the truth is inconvenient.

Maybe they lie to avoid responsibility.

Maybe they need their version of events to remain intact so badly that they distort what actually happened.

Maybe they have been lying to themselves for so long that they no longer know where the truth ends and the story begins.

That is useful information.

It may disappoint you.

It may change how you see them.

It may change the relationship completely.

But why must the revelation become a wound?

The bigger wound may have been not knowing.

Trusting what was not true.

Building your choices around a version of someone that did not actually exist.

Living inside a reality that the truth would eventually dismantle.

The revelation may be painful.

But now you know.

And if people lie to you frequently, there is another question worth asking:

How solid is your own relationship with truth?

Do you recognize what you already know?

Do you explain away contradictions because the truth is inconvenient?

Do you keep believing someone’s words after their behavior has repeatedly contradicted them?

Do you keep participating in a story because you prefer it to what is actually happening?

Sometimes the lie that hurts most is the one we were helping ourselves believe.

Sometimes We Hold On to Potential

Sometimes we hold on to the potential we believe someone has.

Or to a version of them we have actually seen.

Maybe they were open once.

Honest once.

Tender once.

Accountable once.

And because we know that version exists somewhere inside them, we keep waiting for them to live from it consistently.

But potential is not the same as capacity.

And a person they reveal occasionally is not necessarily the person they are able or willing to be every day.

At some point, reality asks us to stop relating to who someone could be and pay attention to who they repeatedly show themselves to be.

That is not cynicism.

It is information.

Sometimes the Problem Is What You Wanted

Sometimes the problem is not what you expected.

It is what you wanted.

You wanted honesty from someone who is not honest with themselves.

You wanted consistency from someone who lives inconsistently.

You wanted depth from someone who does not have access to that depth.

You wanted accountability from someone who avoids themselves.

The information is not necessarily that they failed you.

The information may simply be that they are not capable of giving you what you want.

That is useful to know.

You do not have to be hurt by it.

You do not have to excuse it either.

You can simply be informed.

The Story We Tell Matters

The story we tell about what happened and the meaning we give it are intertwined.

Someone lies.

The event is the lie.

The story may become:

I can’t trust anyone.

The meaning may become:

People are dangerous.

Or:

I am foolish for trusting.

Or:

This always happens to me.

And once the story and meaning begin reinforcing each other, they start shaping a reality we may not even want.

We become more guarded.

More suspicious.

More certain that the next person will do the same thing.

And then changing that reality becomes much harder, because we are no longer dealing only with what happened.

We are dealing with what we decided it meant.

That is why becoming informed matters.

The event can teach you something without becoming the architecture of your life.

If the story becomes:

They hurt me.

People always hurt me.

I can’t trust anyone.

This always happens to me.

Then the original event begins shaping the reality we carry forward.

We become watchful for the next injury.

We interpret ordinary disappointment through the old wound.

We notice evidence that confirms the story and miss what contradicts it.

Eventually we may find ourselves living inside a world in which people keep hurting us.

Not because nothing painful is happening.

But because being hurt has become the organizing story through which we understand what happens.

The event happened once.

The story can recreate it for years.

Changing the story is not denial.

It is responsibility.

Maybe the more useful story is:

This happened.

It showed me something.

Now I know.

What will I do differently with what I know?

Who Has the Power to Hurt You?

If everything hurts us, we walk around hurt all the time.

What an exhausting way to live.

Someone says something we do not like: hurt.

Someone does not respond the way we wanted: hurt.

Someone disappoints us: hurt.

Someone behaves according to patterns they have demonstrated for years: somehow, another fresh hurt.

At some point I think we have to ask a different question:

Who have I given the power to hurt me?

And then another:

Who believes I have the power to hurt them?

Because blame is often sitting underneath all of this.

You hurt me.

And contained inside that sentence can be another idea:

You are responsible for what I am experiencing now.

Sometimes another person absolutely caused harm. Actions have consequences. I am not interested in pretending otherwise.

But blame can keep us tethered to the person long after the event itself has passed.

If you are responsible for my inner state, then I remain dependent on you to change it.

I need you to apologize correctly.

I need you to understand.

I need you to admit what you did.

I need you to become different so I can finally stop being hurt.

And what happens if you never do?

Do I remain hurt forever?

That is an enormous amount of authority to give another human being.

What If You Simply Became Informed?

Someone lies.

You learn something.

Someone avoids responsibility.

You learn something.

Someone repeatedly cannot give you what you want.

You learn something.

You do not have to decide whether you are hurt or not hurt.

You can simply become informed.

This person has shown me something about how they operate.

This is what they are capable of right now.

This changes what I choose to share.

This changes how close I stand.

This changes what I ask of them.

This changes nothing about my worth.

Information gives you choices.

Hurt can sometimes give you only more hurt.

And if being hurt becomes the story through which you interpret every difficult interaction, the world will provide endless evidence for that story.

Everything will hurt.

Not necessarily because everyone is trying to hurt you.

But because hurt has become the meaning you assign to what happens.

The story begins creating the reality.

And then we wonder why we keep living the same experience.

Pain Is Not Yet Wisdom

Pain by itself does not make us wise.

Neither does being hurt.

We can remain hurt for twenty years and learn almost nothing.

Wisdom comes when we allow the experience to change what we understand.

What did this reveal?

What did I miss?

What did I keep wanting from someone who could not give it?

What story did I build around what happened?

What meaning did I give it?

What am I being shown now?

What do I know now that I did not know before?

Those questions move us somewhere.

“They hurt me” may simply keep us standing in the same place, looking backward at the person who did it.

Maybe the work is not becoming so invulnerable that nothing ever causes pain.

Maybe it is learning to meet reality with enough clarity that every unpleasant truth does not have to become a wound.

Sometimes someone simply showed you who they are.

Stay neutral.

Pay attention.

Be informed.

And decide what you are going to do with what you now know.