Excuse me, your pain is showing.
If the leg of a table leg causes you pain by hitting your toe it can be pretty irritating. If you continue to be injured by it you start to remember and associate pain with that table. After a while you may move the table or walk a different way around it. You don't get mad at the table. You don't start blaming the table for all subsequent injuries, you don't lose sleep over the table still being in your house and you don't remember the table with pain filled memories in the days and years to come. Why? Because the table had no intention of hurting you. It's an object. It didn't set out to hurt you and you certainly can't blame the table for your injuries if you are to one that kicked it.
The thing is that physical pain from an object is usually far more forgettable than pain from a person. We can think and rethink and over think again the pain caused by another person until it eats away at our very soul. Why is emotional pain so much more memorable then physical pain? I ask the question but without a degree in psychology I can promise you my ideas and answers are probably full of flaws. All I can offer as insight is what I have learnt in living my life.
Rejection is a physical pain.
I heard that in a podcast somewhere. Apparently, the same part of your brain that feels physical pain also registers rejection. This is why the feeling of being left, being left out and being lonely is so painful. More then this, being rejected confirms the little thought in your head that you really aren't enough. This can cause people to completely fall apart, to develop strong feelings of bitterness and hatred towards other. Other people will develop a fear of rejection that can cause them to do things or not do things based on fear rather then healthy cautious behaviours. When I have the courage I will write a blog about my fears of rejection. I'm not that bold yet.
We judge others on action and ourselves on intention.
I love love love this phrase. Remember when you were young and you unintentionally hurt your sibling? Mum would make you apologise because you hurt them.
"But mum, I didn't mean it", you would say
"I don't care," your mum would reply, "they still got hurt because of you, you need to say sorry".
Now, have you ever had the conversation with someone where you have said, "But I didn't mean it that way"
"You should know my heart"
"I don't need to apologise because I didn't mean it"
Same thing Bucko!
You didn't mean it but someone got hurt.
Now flip that back and reverse it. How about, if someone through their actions hurts you. You need to look at their intent. Did they set out to hurt you? I can promise you that most of the time there was no intent. Honestly that person's main crime is that they were probably thinking about themselves or something else at the time. If you measure all the times you have unintentionally hurt someone up against the hurt you have received. You would probably find you are pretty even stevens.
Now please bare in mind I'm not talking about abuse, manipulation or cruelty. I'm talking about when you know deep down that there was no intent to harm. It's time to judge people on intent.
People are flawed.
Tragically so. In fact the whole Christian belief system is based on this fact. We are all sinners. If we are all sinners then why do we expect so much more from some parties and nothing from others? Just because someone is given a position of power does not mean they know how to care for people or not hurt people. Do we really expect others to be perfect and are okay with our own imperfections?
Getting help is not only okay, it is encouraged.
It's not always easy to deal with the monsters inside. Sometimes pain can run so deep that it can distort how we live. Like people who have pain in their legs will walk with a limp, some people with pain inside will walk with a spiritual limp. You may not know that others can see it, but it is quite obvious in how you live your life. If you have an open wound then you will yelp and and recoil anytime somebody pokes at it. In the same way, if you have issues from past pain that haven't been dealt with, you will blame anyone who comes near that issue for hurting you again. If someone pokes a healthy and healed body, the worst it would do would tickle. If people can't poke you then you have an open or infected wound.
Forgiveness is the only healthy option.
Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.
Ephesians 4:31-32 NIV
Realising that people are flawed, knowing that we should judge people on intention, understanding that we see things through our own viewpoint and past hurts, it should be really easy to forgive right? Well sometimes no. Sometimes it's really really hard.
We know it's hard because when someone mentions their name we roll our eyes. When they talk to someone we know we don't want to walk over there and we get upset when anything good happens to that person.
The trouble is that we are the one hurting not them. We are hurting ourselves.
Remembering how much we have been forgiven for the crazy stupid things we have done is a great way to put it into perspective.
At the end of the day here is my point. You were not created to walk with a spiritual limp. You were created to be healthy and fully functioning inside and out. Isn't it time you made the move to be emotionally healthy?
