2 Things Hurt People Do without Actually Realizing It That Hurt Other People

Growing up in an emotionally volatile environment, I developed a heightened sensitivity and carefulness toward certain negative emotions people around me might experience in the moment.

Hurt people hurt people. As I began to see the depth of the pain of people who often hurt and take from others, I began to understand why they do what they do.

Often, they come from a place of being hurt, neglected or abused in the past. As they learn how to cope with what happened, they develop unhealthy patterns out of survival and not knowing better.

This is not an excuse to tolerate hurtful behaviors from anyone. However, by understanding where they come from, we can begin to heal and understand that such behaviors are also not our fault.

#1 — hurt people focus on themselves much more because they are in pain

Years ago, I came across an article where the author shared how toxic people often seem to be mostly about themselves, but they do so because they are depressed.

“Narcissism” is a very common label, often used to label those who seem to focus mostly on themselves while not caring about how they are hurting others.

However, as I paid closer attention, people who seemed too focused on themselves were doing so because their pain made it hard to pay attention to anyone or anything else.

People who go through pain and hurt, when they don’t know how to cope with it, they might eventually numb themselves and repress the pain. While it seems as if they overcame the situations, unresolved emotions such as hurt, anger, sadness and resentment would still linger and accumulate in the subconscious, consuming a lot of mental space and energy in the background.

They would often become bitter, as those emotions silently corrode them.

They become absorbed in their own negative emotions, caged within their own suffering they are not even fully aware of.

In an accident, when we have a painful wound, we tend to focus on our own wound and bleeding and we become temporarily unable to pay attention and empathize with someone else’s wound.

Emotional wounds are not all that different, and they become so loud that people have a hard time giving attention and importance to anything else.

#2 — they might be critical and harsh because that’s the way they are used to speaking to themselves

I’ve been used to harshness and criticism for so long, that it took me a lot of learning to even become aware that certain ways of speaking with each other is not ok. Because of the familiarity with this pattern, I’ve been accepting harshness from loved ones, and I was even harsh myself at times without realizing it.

When someone goes through life being told that they should just suck it up, many people disconnect with their own pain of not having understanding and compassion and simply echo these harsh words whenever they go through something.

They assume that it is a form of tough love and that it’s good to push through the situations in that way, while not realizing the harshness of it.

So when it comes to others, they speak the same way they are speaking to themselves.

Because they were deemed weak when they were hurt by the same harshness in the past, and had to toughen up themselves, they assume that others should follow the same pattern and be tough instead. They simply don’t realize the damage created in them and the damage that’s being propagated through the continuation of the same harshness.

Since they are disconnected from their own pain, they are unable to connect or even see the same pain happening in others.

How to navigate through toxicity

Instead of blaming ourselves, it’s important to acknowledge that certain things are not personal. Hurt people might do certain things out of hurt, without even being aware of how it is hurting others.

And while their pain is real, your pain is just as valid as theirs.

Compassion for others might not take place without first having compassion and validation of how toxic situations make us feel.

Forgiveness naturally takes place, without the need to force ourselves to do so, when we can be understanding with not only others but first with ourselves.

And forgiveness doesn’t mean allowing others to continue with hurtful behaviors. It means that we can have understanding for everyone, and still love ourselves and others enough to have healthy boundaries.

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Mónica Valverde is a daydreamer navigating the experience of human life. She’s in love with Spirituality, Inner Work and Relationships.

If you find this interesting, feel free to check out other related articles:

A Truth I Learned About Toxic, Manipulative People

Why It Can Be So Hard To Understand Each Other During An Argument

The Danger of Overusing the “Narcissist” Label

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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