Watering Our Hurts
We all have hurts, from the little hurts of someone cutting us off in traffic to the significant hurts of someone breaking our hearts or betraying us in a big way. Hurt sucks. But too often, we get stuck in re-living those hurts. My aunt calls it "Watering your hurts." Watering your hurts means you cultivate them. You make sure your hurts stay fresh and green. You water them by re-telling them over and over and over. You keep a running list of all the times you have been lied to, betrayed, misled, diminished, or disrespected. Anytime you feel a little scared or unsure, you whip out those hurts, and you start watering them. Making sure they stay fresh and green so you can constantly refer to them and say, "SEE that won't happen again, as long as this reminder stays fresh, I won't ever be hurt again."
And that is the big lie of the concept watering of our hurts. Watering our hurts doesn't keep us from being hurt again. Watering our hurts doesn't protect us from anything. All it does is keep us stuck in pain and agony. The only one we are hurting as we care and cultivate our past pain is ourselves.
A great example of this is in a new relationship. You meet someone, and you hit it off, and things are going GREAT! You are blissful for the first three months, and then things start getting a little rocky (as any relationship will). Miscommunications happen, conflicts occur, and doubts start to trickle in. You pull out your tray of hurts, and you start pruning them and watering them and remembering every time you have been in a relationship, and it has gone wrong. You remind yourself of every betrayal and lie you were told. So the next time you see your new friend, you are full of anger and resentment. In his/her mind, things were temporarily rocky as you move through the inevitable growing pains from the honeymoon phase to the real-life relationship. In your mind (because you are referencing only your past hurts), he/she is an assh@le whose sole motivation is to betray you. Watering our hurts keeps us stuck in the past. Watering our hurts forces us to assume that our hurts are destined to repeat, which is just not true. So what are we to do, let our past hurts die? What about all that PAIN and agony?
Make peace with your past hurts. This peace process involves experiencing and letting go of all the emotions tied to this particular hurt. This process can take many forms and is highly individualized. You may need to talk to someone neutral to figure out what works best for you. It might help to talk to a friend or visit the person who hurt you. Once you have made peace and are ready to let it go, I am a fan of a ceremony. My favorite: Write down everything that happened. You can write a letter to the person who hurt you, you can tell it in a story. The goal is to get the juicy hurt filled emotions out on paper. And then destroy it, e.g., rip it up, burn it in a ceremonial fire.
Write down what you learned from that particular hurt. Now that you have released all those hurt feelings, think about what you learned from that relationship? Taking what you learned, what boundaries can you set, or what needs can you speak that will help prevent that hurt from coming up again. (remember no guarantees here). Let's say someone cheated on you in a past relationship, and you want to let that hurt go. Maybe you learned you need 100% transparency in a relationship or consistent communication if your partner is running late.
Practice Self Compassion. Even though you have burned them or destroyed your hurts, you will still be tempted to return to the crime scene. So when you are tempted to pick up that watering can, practice self-compassion and remind yourself you are not your past hurt. Move forward with the lesson you learned from that hurt. Repeat as often as necessary.