Love The Broken Part Of You.

Life comes with the good, the bad and the ugly, sooner or later,  we get to experience all of them. However, today, I want to talk about the bad and the ugly, since those seem to be the one which affect our quality of lives. These feelings, these ugliness and pains, come in all shapes and sizes. They can come suddenly and ambush us like a tornado, or they can come crawling like dark clouds and suddenly turn to monsoon. No matter how they come, their arrival is often so powerful that they can make us lose complete perspective of our reality. Most of them, if not all of them, are beyond our control.  The feelings might be caused: Overhearing a person whom we consider a friend talking about us behind our back (feeling betrayed,) or someone we are close to excluding us from something important, being rejected by someone we liked and though liked us back, or it could be as impersonal as The weather, The Traffic, The government, The media etc. No matter what the cause is, the only thing we can control is our reaction.

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Would life be so much easier without hurt feelings? Maybe, but I feel that hurt feelings can also provide a powerful opportunity for self-awareness and healing. So, instead of going in 'blaming spree,' we need to take responsibility for our part in it. I am not saying that others did not play a part in our misfortune, but there is nothing we can do about them. But by controlling our reaction, we will control the situation. We can be a victor instead of a victim.

Regardless of what might have happened in our past. We have a choice in this moment to choose what our experience of ourselves and life will be today. If we want to be happy, being a victim doesn't serve us in any way. It takes real courage to forgive and let go. It takes courage to take responsibility for our inner experience, especially when someone has wronged or hurt us. The degree to which we take responsibility for our inner experience determines the degree of freedom that we will experience in our lives. So how much freedom do we want to experience?

The first step to coming into acceptance of our hurt feelings is to take ownership of them and not blame someone else. No one else is responsible for our feelings. We are responsible for our own. To say that someone else “hurt my feelings” is to give our power away. It is like saying to ourselves that another person has the power to make us feel a certain way and as we all know, it is not true at all. It is only so because we say so. It’s more accurate to say, “In this particular situation, I allowed my feelings to get hurt,” and to be in the driver’s seat.

What makes it hard is that when we have hurt feelings, we judge ourselves for having them, and we most likely judge the other person in the circumstance. If we have the wit to forgive ourselves for judging ourselves the minute we have them, then we are shifting the gear to neutral and there is not going to be as much change. From that place of observation and non-judgment, we can start to let go of them and have some altitude about the core issue, which could be lack of control, making comparisons, lack of self-love, feeling excluded, feelings of unworthiness and placing tremendous value on external circumstances or simply good old entitlement.

When I used to get hurt feelings, I would try to pretend they weren't there and shove them down. I used to think I was superior to them, and they were too petty for me, and I would try to eat them away. Something would occur and I would get hurt feelings. Instead of acknowledging it, I would pretend it didn’t happen, and my energy would be depleted and unavailable to be productive and the whole day became more stressful and difficult. I would walk around feeling like I had knots in my stomach, which might erupt at any minute. One day, I realized that my hurt feelings could be a big part of my self-healing and growth.

What I learned was that if in the moment that the situation happens, I instantly admit that I just got hurt feelings, and give it a voice, at least to myself, I immediately felt more empowered. If I can handle it right there and then, then I can take responsibility for it and stop being a victim. The way to take responsibility over them is to give them a voice and accept them. That is the beginning of unbinding our hearts.

Sometimes hurt feelings need to be cried out and it helps to have a person we trust that we can do this with. Sometimes, depending on what the circumstances are, it might take a little while for healing, but we don’t have to build a monument for our hurt feelings. We can recognize the part that hurts is ultimately a part that needs to have our love and attention. It is a part of us that hasn’t been healed and needs to be embraced. If there is a part of ourselves that hasn’t been fully claimed, then we cannot experience the fullness of who we truly are. The times that I have felt whole in my life, and I was fully present, there was no lack. Therefore, the things that could have affected me when I was in needy and lacking place, just did not affect me as much. Our hurt feelings are an incredibly powerful tool, because they bring our awareness to places within ourselves that are still needy and lacking. This awareness is the first step into healing.

Hurt feelings can also make us aware of our deeply-ingrained emotional and behavioral patterns. If we keep experiencing them or responding in a certain way to similar circumstances over and over, then there is likely a limiting pattern we still need to work through. There are two things that perpetuate a lot of hurt in our lives: judgments and expectations. We expect that people are going to act a certain way. Usually, this looks like we expect people to act in exactly the way we want them to. When people inevitably fail to act the way we want them to or the way we think they should, we experience hurt. This is when we have an opportunity to shift our perspectives. We can realize that people are going to behave and act according to their own rules, and commit to just love and support ourselves regardless. Let’s be our own best friends! If, on some rare occasion, others act in a way that fulfills our expectations, then hurray for us! If they don’t, then so be it. If we give ourselves the latitude to realize that each person we encounter has a whole other movie going on inside of their heads and their own script they are following, we can accept that we have no clue about what their reality is like, what is present and important at that time for them, and not make assumptions about their motives. We are the authors and the stars of our own movie – not anyone else’s.

The most important thing to realize is that our hurt feelings are not more powerful than us. This can be the most liberating knowledge and affirmation for us. We can have them, we can feel them, we can own them, but we don’t have to drown in them. When they come up, welcome them! Don’t sweep them under the rug. Don’t shut the door. Say welcome! Come sit on our lap and let them comfort us, like the most loving and attentive lover. Listen to that part that hurts. Nurture it, love it, give it its voice and forgive it. And when we are ready, and only when we are ready, let it go. Fill that place that’s been hurt with an abundance of love and affection. This is the path to untie our hearts.