You hurt my feelings

There are two sides of telling someone your feelings are hurt. On one hand, in order to walk open and honest, you need to express when your feelings get hurt. On the other hand, never lose perspective that your feelings being hurt is your issue. What that person did or said is filtered through your belief systems, perceptions, and past experiences. You are the one that had an issue with it.

The primary things that need to happen when your feelings get hurt is giving and getting information. You need to give them information of what they did or said, how you interpreted it, and how you felt. This will help them understand how you tend to translate things and communicate with you more compassionately. You need to get information about what they intended. In other words, find out what they meant by it.

Since it is critical for both of you to understand that your feelings being hurt is your issue, it is often beneficial to use I statements and take responsibility for what you’re feeling. You might say, “When you said, ‘Why did you do that?’ I took it that you were suggesting that I did it the wrong way. I felt hurt.”

So telling someone they hurt your feelings is actually not the most effective way to tell them they hurt your feelings. Hmm? Better to own how you interpreted it and how you felt.

The challenge is of course that when you are expressing your hurt feelings, it is challenging to own anything. Because after all, your feelings are hurt. It feels like they were mean to you… mistreated you… were insensitive… and whatever else. So there is a tendency to assume that they were.

So why not take a step back and ask them?… “When you said, I was ______, what did you mean by that?”

Emotional responsibility.

 ”All of your feelings eventually do come out to play. You can either address them willingly- or on your hands and knees” Bart Anderson.

People stress taking responsibility for all kinds of things these days. But what about being responsible to what you are feeling? The overall healthiest thing you can do with a feeling is to express it. Feelings are energy; energy works best when we experience (feel) it and release it. So it would follow that emotional responsibility is committing to whenever you experience a significant feeling, you find someone to express it to. Think of it as being responsible to yourself.

It needn’t always be the same person. One person may better accept one feeling and another person may  more readily accept another. Discernment is essential when identifying someone to share your feeling with. Their ability to accept the feeling you need to express is the most essential quality in choosing someone to express your feeling to. Someone that has a similar life experience may be able to understand and relate to the feeling.

Obviously some feelings are best expressed to the person you are feeling them toward. Relational feelings such as anger and love work best when they are expressed directly to the person you feel them toward.

Journaling is also an excellent tool to express your feelings. Often feelings and their corresponding thoughts will cycle around and around your psyche until you place them outside of yourself. Writing allows you to concretize your feelings outside of yourself so you can relate to them. Just like sometimes you need to hear yourself saying something to someone in order to understand it.

And don’t think about it too much. Note that you are feeling something, identify someone to share it with, and start expressing.

You might feel a little vulnerable afterwards- that means you are doing it right.

Holidays a big deal at the emotional level

Like it or not- at the emotional level, the holidays and birthdays are a big deal.

Have you ever said to yourself, “What is the big deal? Christmas Eve or my birthday is just another day.” And then spent it by yourself or in some “business as usual” fashion. And then got hit with this wall of emotion. Often it is sadness about being alone or not with people that are able to make it special for you.

So this year prepare. Think about where you want to be. I recommend being with the people that are most important to you. And think about what type of celebration will meet your emotional needs. Even if you say Christmas it is all about the kids or about family. There is some little thing that makes the holiday special for you. Find it.

And then make sure you celebrate it. Do not blow it off. This is no time to be a martyr. You are a human being. You have emotional needs. I guarantee some of them are correlated with the holidays.

Maybe it is a tradition that you like to celebrate. Or maybe it is time to create a new tradition- with a new family or new significant other. Now is the time to think about it and plan it.

Or maybe now is the time to adjust your plans. Does sleeping in twin beds at your in-laws on Christmas Eve really work for you?  Money sent on a motel room can be worth its weight in gold at times like this. Your significant other may say, “But it will hurt their feelings if we don’t stay with them.”

Simply say, “Yeah, but it will hurt my feelings if we do.” Whose life is it anyway?

Take it personally why don’tcha

The sad fact is that most people do not have a clear notion of who you are. Most have not taken the time to get to know you. They do not understand you or how you process. They project themselves and how they process things onto you. They make assumptions about you. They accept/reject you and relate to you based on their notion of you. They judge you because what you do is threatening to them.

They cannot feel your feelings. They do not know how it feels like to be you.

Yet most of us look to others to get information about ourselves. We look to them for validation- to tell us that we are OK. When someone gets mad at us, we assume that we did something wrong. We take it personally. We ask someone out and they say no. Or we flirt with them and they do not respond. We feel rejected. There must be something wrong with us. We make a presentation and someone doesn’t not like it. It must not have been any good. We personalize it.

When someone does not like us or something we do, we are getting information about THEM. It has nothing to with us. It is, however, valuable information about them. We can draw on it to make determinations about what type of relationship and interactions we want to have with them (if any).

But… other people’s perceptions of you is NOT an effective way to get information about yourself- that has to come from you. Another cannot validate who you are; you have to validate yourself. Your estimation of yourself (self esteem) has to come from how YOU feel about how you interacted. You need to evaluate if you feel like you did everything you could to relate clearly to them or connect with them.

Do you feel good about how that went? Maybe you need to adjust how you interact with them. That IS about you. How they respond to you is about them. Let them have it.

Pure emotion is a stimulus for movement

Is it emotion or emotional? Emotion is the pure feeling, and emotional is the reaction to the feeling. Sadness is the the pure emotion. Moodiness, depression, self-pity are reactions to the sadness. We often indulge in the emotional or reaction to in order to avoid the pure feeling.