Breaking the Cycle of Hurt

Most people reading this blog have felt pain throughout their life. It’s one of the most common human emotions. This pain can feel overwhelming and out of our control. Today, I want to explore how we can move on from this pain, and as a result, leave the world a better place.

There are two things that we can do to let go of this pain: first, we must take the time to heal, and second, we must not pass this pain onto somebody else.

As a clinical psychologist who has worked with thousands of patients, I have learned that hurt people hurt people. Sometimes we do this intentionally, and sometimes we do this unintentionally. As a result, our friends, family, lovers, and even strangers can get caught in the crossfire. Our job, which I will discuss today, is to focus on healing our wounds, so we don’t pass them on to others.

This pain has many root causes. It can stem from a failed relationship, losing a friend, or a parent not being equipped to provide us with the love we deserve. Even though pain can feel like a tidal wave, we do have the power to heal from it.

I was a camp counselor during the summer months while I was at university. Before the kids arrived, we toured the campus, and I noticed a dangerous eye-level branch hanging from a tree. Fast-forward to the last day of camp. I was playing capture the flag and ended up running headfirst into that very branch I deemed dangerous two weeks prior.

To make sure my wound healed, I went to the nurse’s office, and he cleaned out my cut, bandaged it up, and told me it needed some time to heal. I didn’t yell at the branch for being there or at myself for running into it. I simply went through the necessary steps to tend to my injury, and over time, it did heal.

So when someone hurts us, how do we heal?

There are three things we can do.

1. Release our pain.

The first one sounds simple, but I think it’s extremely important to the healing journey. We need to let out our pain, and one of the best ways to do this is through tears. It’s important to let ourselves feel our emotions without commentary or judgment. Crying allows us to feel these emotions and provides us with a healthy outlet.

When I fell in love for the first time, I thought I would be with this person for the rest of my life. Over time, I noticed that she had changed from the woman I knew when we first met. She started to pick fights and wasn’t being as kind anymore. When I asked her if anything had changed recently to affect her behavior, she admitted that she cheated on me.

My initial response wasn’t yelling at her; it was crying uncontrollably. And through these tears, I could feel some of the sadness and weight lift off of my chest. Of course, this wasn’t the only thing I did to heal, but those tears were the first step on my journey to healing my heart.

2. Express our anger in healthy ways.

Another thing we can do is allow our anger to heal, but with one big qualifier—we can never take our anger out on other people or ourselves. My first book was all about this—How to Express Your Anger and Still Be Kind. Here’s what I did. When I was in graduate school, I started to see a therapist to prepare me for entering the psychology field. When I did this, I discovered that there was still some lingering hurt from my childhood that needed to be addressed.

At the same time, I started taking karate lessons. This activity provided me with the space to release the anger that was leftover from my childhood. I didn’t hurt anyone, and it felt great to work out and release these feelings through movement.

Now there are a lot of ways to express our feelings of anger. We can take a walk in nature, talk things through with a friend, listen to music, etc. It’s important to find what works best for us.

3. Examine our self-narratives caused by pain and trauma.

The third thing we can do is recognize how much our thoughts affect how we see the world. I have learned over the years that our thoughts have the power to create narratives, and these narratives can affect us negatively. When we tell ourselves the story that this person has hurt us on purpose and doesn’t care about us, we obviously feel more pain. But when we gain control over our thoughts, we gain control over our feelings too. We can shift our focus from blaming ourselves and others to simply living a good life, and we’ll find that a lot of the pain and hurt disappear.

The best thing we can do to heal our past traumas is to make the time to work through this pain. This may be through crying, being angry, or feeling our feelings, or maybe seeing the situation through a different, more positive lens.

When we’re able to let go of our expectations and just flow with life, we’ll stop categorizing things as "good" or "bad"; they’re just things that happen to us. Most of the time, people hurt others because they are dealing with their own pain. When we realize this, things that used to cause us a lot of pain will not affect us as much.

Realizing how our thoughts affect us is no easy task. I bring this up frequently throughout all 330 episodes of the Happiness podcast, and I urge you to listen to past episodes to learn more about this topic.

Lastly, I want to address the importance of not passing on our own hurt to others. People hurt other people, most likely because they are hurting themselves. As humans, we learn how to move through the world by observing other people, so if we see that our parents communicated through nasty words and anger, we might communicate this way too. Our job is to make sure we break these cycles by healing from this pain.

For example, let’s say your mom worked long hours growing up and frequently missed your recitals or games. Now you're a parent, and you find yourself doing the same thing. If you face the pain you experienced as a child, you’ll be better equipped to stop the cycle and not pass those habits onto your children. Once we realize that we don’t have to pass the hurt on, we gain a lot of control over our feelings and our life.

We have the power to change most things about ourselves, specifically how we react to our circumstances. If we can address our pain and focus on healing ourselves, we’ll find that our hearts become lighter and our lives become more beautiful.