Sorry this is so long but there are a number of thoughts I wanted to share.
I think our sensitivity makes us very vulnerable to feelings of hurt. Sometimes people deliberately say and do things to inflict hurt on us because they want to undermine and control us but I think it may also be because they feel they “can” like a bully at school who feels they can get away with it until someone stands up to them. Maybe it’s because they’ve always been allowed to have their own way that they don’t have respect for others so feel they can always bully people into getting what they want.
However, I feel the majority of people cause hurt when they don’t mean to but because of their own issues, they can’t see what they’ve said or done that has offended. Also though, words can be said or things can be done that were well-intended but our sensitivity or own issues make us interpret things in a negative way so we can feel hurt and zap back which then causes hurt in return and before you know it there are words flying backwards and forwards all due to a simple misunderstanding. I think though that sometimes when so much hurt has been inflicted and felt by both parties, it can then be very hard to make-up and forgive.
I can remember when my father used to lose his temper and have a go at my mother. I hated seeing my mother upset but she never fought back. She always walked away and stayed silent. However, seeing her so upset would make we want to fight back for her but as soon as I tried to she would tell me I was adding fuel to the fire and to stop. I couldn’t see it at the time and nor could my older brother because he would also say she should fight back and not just take it. However, when my brother was young, my father and he would have terrible arguments and I would be shielded by my mother.
As I grew older I could understand my mothers behaviour. You see, my father Truly Loved my mother and there is no way in the world that he would want to cause her hurt or harm. I later realised that the reason my father lost his temper was because he was hurting himself because he felt so upset or frustrated by something. He had to vent his feelings and my mother realised that. She knew that once he’d vented his anger, he would then calm down but also knew that if she tried to fight back, she would be adding fuel to the fire and his venting would then lead into a very hurtful argument for both of them. She also knew that after my father had vented his anger, he would beat himself up because he would feel so bad and guilty for losing his temper and hurting my mother. My mother had a great understanding knowing that he loved her and that it was his hurt, upset and frustration talking and not him. She used to say to me, just leave him alone and he’ll be ok, and after he’d calmed down they would make up and she would forgive him because she knew he had a good heart and was just letting his feelings out but that he could never harm her deliberately.
As I’ve grown older, I can see myself in my father. When my wifes illness frustrated me to despair I felt like exploding so would find a pillow to hit rather than hurt her. I would though lose my temper just like my father but would then beat myself up because I felt so bad, even though her illness would drive me to it. Whatever I said, it just went through her with no effect because she couldn’t feel emotion or empathise with my feelings. In the end I took my frustration out on myself by self harming just to relieve my pain inside.
My mother is a sensitive woman just as my father was when he was alive but they both dealt with their sensitivities and hurts in different ways. When my mother was hurt she would go quiet because her silence said more than words could say but when my father felt hurt, he would react and explode. As a result, when I was young I always felt I couldn’t talk to my father about certain things so would turn to my mother. He used to say to me I would never talk to him but I couldn’t tell him why. I was afraid of his temper. I remember telling him once that I used to like Captain Kirk in Star Trek. He asked me why and I told him because Kirk said “sorry”. My father couldn’t because he felt too guilty for losing his temper.
As my father grew older though, he mellowed and we became much closer. He became my Best friend so now he’s not around I miss him desperately as we used to have such a strong bond. I came to understand him as I could see myself in him. Likewise, he knew what I was feeling and thinking so I felt he was the Only person who Truly understood me.
Sensitivity produces fine qualities such as caring, compassion and empathy but it also holds a dark side in that we’re easily hurt even when the hurt isn’t intended. If we then don’t stop to “think” if there is another side to the coin in case what was said wasn’t intended but instead react as if someone has deliberately gone out of their way to offend and then that person reacts back because they can’t understand why we’ve reacted in such a way against them then from a few misinterpreted words, WW3 can break out and finding a way back through forgiveness can be very hard to do.
However, it is possible to learn to control our sensitivity so that we only react when the hurt we feel was deliberately inflicted.
Often we react as we do because of our past. We have become so used to being hurt and belittled that we start looking for it subconsciously in everything that people say rather than seeing what was said in a positive way. It’s all part of our fear and negative thinking. We become defensive by putting up barriers that we don’t realise we’ve created. When someone says something that can be interpreted as causing hurt then that’s often the way we’ll see it because of our sensitivity and our bad past experiences that have made us so used to feeling attacked. We lash out without thinking maybe what was said wasn’t intended in the way we interpreted it.
We often carry so much hurt from our past that we have an increased sensitivity which makes us more liable to react to things that touch a nerve. Just like fearful thoughts, we must allow things to go through us without reacting to them. If we allow things to get to us, we create tension and that tension makes us irritable which then affects our sensitivity making us lash out to what we perceive are attacks due to our negative thinking which then leads us to beating ourselves up and feeling depressed.
Everything affects everything else. Fear touches all our thinking and reactions to life and what people say around us.
The expression “laid back” comes to mind. When we are laid back, we don’t allow things to get to us. If we let things go through us and don’t react, we then feel more relaxed and less sensitive. Instead of thinking with our sensitivity, we can then think more rationally so are better able to defend ourselves when we’re deliberately attacked but not react to things which can be misinterpreted. If we can learn to think beyond our own sensitivity and instead try to understand what is really meant and why, we can create a better understanding and are then more able to come to terms with our past and learn the art of forgiveness in the present.
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) this is the hardest thing for me to do. I've been told "Well, it's a choice, you choose to forgive or not forgive". Ummmmmmmm I don't think it's that simple, for me it's like, if the person is sorry then I forgive them but if they don't ackowledge that they have hurt me, well I just don't forgive them. And may I say that 99% of ppl don't acknowledge my feelings, so that's all those unforgiven ppl
now if i went away from that and was mortified by my bahviour , mulling over and over it for hours maybe days and berating myself for being a really bad person then im just going to feel bad about myself, and i will be incapable of viewing somebody else behaving this way in any way other than how ive judged myself - HARSHLY!!!! if i walk away from that situation, cringe and then laugh and just ge ton with life and say 'oh well that was pretty stupid and embarrassing but hey im only human i make mistakes!' im going to jus tlet it go and ill be more inclined to feel the same towards someone who does that to me in the future - which they have, and ive just said to myself ' oh poor sod, they must be really screwed up about something today!' i dont take it personal and i dont dwell on it i jus tmove on happily, and this can be applied to everything else.
