Hurt

This is the second blog in a series on feelings.

I read a story about a child that has a congenital disease that prevents him from feeling pain. When he was three years old his mother was baking cookies and left the kitchen just for a minute. The child had been asleep, but at that moment he got up, smelled the cookies, and went to the kitchen. He opened the oven, grabbed the tray, and began to eat the cookies. He severely burned his hands, arms, face, mouth, and throat. The child couldn’t feel the pain. 

The truth is, pain, or hurt is a gift. This is true with physical hurt, and it is also true with emotional hurt. I have often thought life would be amazing if I couldn’t be hurt. The ability to feel hurt allows us to seek healing. As a child, a family joke was that all the emergency room nurses knew me by my first name because I was in there so much. When the doctor would walk into the room, he would always begin by asking, “where does it hurt?” If he was going to help me heal, I needed to admit that I was hurt. The same is true for us when we experience emotional hurt. I can’t begin to count the times I have been hurting emotionally and someone close, a spouse or friend has asked, “what’s wrong?” My natural response is to shoot back, NOTHING! The way I have denied that I am hurting has only made it clear that my pain is real. If I am to experience healing, I must admit that I have been wounded. That admission needs to be to myself and to close, trusted community. Emotional hurt takes place in community and healing from that hurt takes place in community. As we admit that we have been wounded we can ask for and receive healing. As we experience healing, we receive the gift of courage. I experienced a lot of broken bones as a child and as I owned my injuries, asked for help, and received healing, I received the courage to move forward. 

There is also an unhealthy response to hurt. When we refuse to acknowledge our hurt, we experience resentment. In resentment we refuse to even attempt to allow healing and our wound festers and becomes infected. Resentment will move towards blame and revenge. In revenge we want others to hurt because we hurt. We can take on the role of inflicting hurt on the one that hurt us or sometimes we inflict hurt on everyone around us. When we respond to our feelings in an unhealthy way we always move towards isolation and isolation always leads to death. In isolation we lose the ability to be human.

There’s never enough space in a blog to speak to a topic in detail. If you have questions or comments on hurt feel free to shoot me a message at rwcoaching2@gmail.com. I’d love to hear your thoughts. Next week I hope to speak to the feeling of loneliness.