I’d like to preface this blog by saying if you are being hurt physically by anyone please call 000 for an emergency if you’re in immediate physical danger or call 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) to speak to an Australian support and counselling service anonymously. Alternatively you can visit https://www.humanservices.gov.au/individuals/subjects/family-and-domestic-violence or https://www.lifeline.org.au/get-help/topics/domestic-family-violence for further advice, guidance and support. This blog is not about physical harm but mainly emotional harm.

Now, this blog is all about ‘feeling’ hurt by someone else in life, but I am here to tell you that there is not much you can do about what the other person is doing. I do have some good news though, YOU can change the circumstance but you have to do the work. Ultimately this blog is all about your mind and learning how to change it with some steps. Recently I’ve had a few people in my life express to me that they have been ‘hurt’ by someone else. This has come in many different forms; emotionally, mentally and spiritually.

And I will not sugar coat it, it fucking hurts when it happens. Sometimes we do not understand WHY someone is hurting us, sometimes we have done something to hurt them and it’s a retaliation, sometimes it comes from a place of jealousy of the other person, sometimes it comes from lies that have been told but regardless of the circumstance it is ultimately really really hard to deal with. I know this because I’ve experienced it in my life many times over. But I have changed the experience of being hurt now and it effects me much less than what is used to. It no longer becomes part of my story and identity. It just becomes a ‘thing’ that I experienced.

I’ve detached from letting it become a part of me and so can you. So, how did I do this? What can YOU do to do this? STEP ONE: ACCEPTANCE! Firstly the toughest thing to swallow is that during life we will continually be hurt by people whom we love, trust, respect and admire (I do manifest though, through the power of my mind, that this does not happen often). It’s often very difficult to navigate how you feel and what to do in these situations without making them worse or causing further anger. BUT once you take the path of least resistance, life will become easier for you. Once you learn NOT to resist hurt, you will be hurt less. Once you learn that it is OKAY to get hurt and be hurt, then you are already setting yourself up for a shorter fall when it does happen. It’s also great to teach your children that ‘bad’ things do happen in life, even to good people, and that we need to accept that in life.

That’s a huge lesson to learn. Now, I am not saying go and hang out with toxic people and let them emotionally and mentally manipulate and damage you – don’t do that. I am saying become accepting that sometimes in life we will hit rough patches and we will be hurt and horrible things will happen. This is life, you cannot go around avoiding these things. You can begin to accept that part of life’s journey is that we will get hurt, we will feel uncomfortable and awkward at times and that’s okay. This acceptance of the fact ‘bad’ things will happen helps you to detach from the emotion it brings with it, in the long term.

It also helps to end your suffering quicker. These days a lot of messages are all about ‘being positive’ and ‘avoiding negativity’ and ‘dodging all the bad stuff’ but the ‘bad stuff’ and the ‘negative stuff’ is where we GROW. Through each life experience, ‘good’ and ‘bad’, we learn more about ourselves, about other people, about what we like, what we do not like. We learn so many lessons in the bad, more so than the good most of the time. We learn appreciation for other people and circumstances, we learn how to handle situations, we learn about ourselves, we learn how to support other people and this is what our journey is about. Learning and growing. So the first thing you need to do is get comfortable with the fact ‘bad’ things do happen and we will be hurt throughout life. Start to look at hurtful and painful experiences, as a part of life and a vital one to becoming a more educated, self-aware and insightful human. It also arms you with strength and resilience. So start practising saying ‘okay, I am hurt, I am feeling anger, pain, frustration, absolute devastation…but this is a part of life, this is just another experience for me. What can I learn from this?’ This will take a long time to perfect but if you keep exercising this muscle (the muscle of understanding that ‘bad’ things do happen in life) then you won’t feel like such a victim or in such shock that it has happened.

STEP TWO: YOU ARE IN CONTROL! The way I have overcome these circumstances and made my life easier by reducing my own suffering is by understanding I am in control. I am not in control of what anyone says, thinks or feels about me. But I AM in control of how I handle this situation and what I think, say and do. Ultimately what someone else says, thinks or feels about you is absolutely none of your business. It is not a reflection of you. It is a reflection of them and who they are and how they’re feeling at that time in their life. There’s a saying I like too, ‘you can be the juiciest yummiest mango on the tree but there is always going to be someone who doesn’t like mangoes’. This also links into understanding that bad things do happen and you cannot avoid them throughout life. The only free will that you have is how you are going to react to every situation that you have CHOSEN to be in (‘choosing’ your situation is a whole other blog I will write one day). You have the choice to retaliate and engage in the gossip, the action or the circumstance or you have the option to stop and think about how you can react.

The first thing I do is speak to my daughter about it. I trust her, she’s level-headed and very honest so she comes from a neutral place and has no problem ever telling me if I have stepped out of line or am reacting impulsively. Sometimes it’s great to call upon a professional therapist of some kind (a kinesiologist such as my recommendation Gerald Burns, or a sharman such as Mark from ‘OneTribe’, or a counsellor, or a psychologist etc.) Or I think about the reasons this person may feel the need to hurt me. So is it greed? Jealousy? Retaliation? Do they feel hurt by me somehow? For their own ego? Sometimes it helps to list the reasons it could be. Sometimes you will have no idea but it does not mean you cannot control how you approach the situation.

Once you think about WHY they could be hurting you, then you can view them from a place of compassion, understanding, sympathy and/or empathy (just remember, someone cannot say anything about another person, that is not in themselves first. Therefore if someone is feeling their own pain then they often dump it on someone else and that could be you. If you understand this then you can come from a place of compassion). This helps to change how you then FEEL about the situation. All the sudden it goes from anger, hurt, devastation to sympathy, understanding, compassion, love and empathy. Instantly you’re going to FEEL differently because you are THINKING differently. And let me teach you this; all feelings stem from THOUGHTS. What you think creates a feeling in you. A feeling then leads to an action and an action then leads to your results. So if you change your thinking first, then you are ultimately going to change the outcome of this situation. This is how you MASTER the art of being in control.

So now all of a sudden, well with some work and diffusing, you are going to be able to make a much more reasonable response and it’s going to begin to hurt you a lot less because you are now in control of how the situation is about to change. You might choose to let the hurt or issue go, or you might choose to address it from a level-headed and well though-out perspective. Suddenly the ball is in your court and you are choosing how you feel about this situation, rather than just being a victim of it. You cannot control them, but you sure can control you and therefore how you think, feel and do about the circumstance. STEP THREE: FOCUS ON WHAT YOU DO HAVE AND NOT WHAT YOU DO NOT HAVE! A lot of the time when we are in pain or hurt or anger, the world becomes so small and those emotions consume us. We think about what is being said or done and say things like ‘It’s just not fair’, ‘I don’t understand why they’re doing this’, ‘Why does this always happen to me?’ ‘Can’t I catch a break’, ‘Why are they pushing me away’? ‘I’m losing my friends/family’, ‘I have no one’ etc.

and we begin to feel horrible again. What we need to do is change your thinking. Now you have learned that bad things happen and you are in control of how you feel about the situation, the next thing is to put energy into the things you have that are not bringing you suffering. Such as your job, your other friends who are NOT causing hurt, or your other family members who are not getting wrapped up in gossip or causing you pain. Because it’s as the saying goes ‘where energy flows, attention goes and that thing will grow’. Once you are thinking of what you do not have with this person or circumstance, then the situation will grow. Instead its time to shift the focus, put your energy into something else, give it your attention and let the positive grow. This could mean you call another family member you haven’t spoken to in a while that you still love and who aren’t causing you pain, or calling another friend up who is not hurting you, or spending time being present with your children who are only bringing you love, or taking your partner out on a date. Focus on what you DO have that IS serving you. It does not matter what it is, as long as you are focusing on what you DO have in your life, rather than what you do not have. Before you realise it, you will be putting energy into something that serves you and will be hurting a lot less. This is all about being in control of yourself to go through the hurt, experience it but not let it become apart of who you are.

You use your mind to manifest the things you want in life, including how you feel when ‘bad things’ do happen. The more often you use your mind for your benefit, the less often you will be hurt, because you will not be engaging in that kind of energy. You will draw positive people and circumstances into your life gradually. Love of oneness and blessings to you, Debs xx