Hurt Feelings: How to Consciously Express and Repair Them

We cannot escape hurt feelings in life, nor particularly in our romantic connections. Yet, seemingly, most of us can feel shocked and dismayed when this natural human experience, this natural relational experience, happens. One of the most important relationship skills we can develop is learning how to navigate and express our hurt feelings. The sooner we repair, the more open our heart remains, the more happiness we feel and the higher the quality of our love.

As humans we can have a distorted relationship to our emotions. We often have expectations that if life is going well, we will never feel hurt, we will never feel upset. Yet all of us know that we do obviously experience contractive, or so-called negative feelings. It is, in fact, our resistance, judgment, and even fear of hurt feelings that often creates the most significant issues and causes the real damage  in our intimate relationships. What if we built a new more empowering relationship with hurt feelings?

Here we will define hurt feelings while we also consider different types of hurt feelings. We’ll then continue with an explanation of how to express hurt feelings in words as well as how to tell someone they hurt your feelings. Finally, we will conclude with wisdom and insights to make friends with your emotions so that you and your relationships thrive.

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Hurt feelings meaning

What does it mean to have hurt feelings? Before we answer that, let’s consider a more basic question. What does it mean to feel, particularly in a relationship? To feel means that we are aware of and attentive to the bodily sensations, and associated flood of chemicals within the body, as we experience emotions. The emotions we experience may open and relax our body, feeling quite good. Others may tighten and contract our body such that we feel hurt or pain.

Surprisingly, many people resist “positive” expansive emotions as much as they resist “negative” contractive emotions. So, if we allow ourselves to truly feel, some expansive emotions we experience as joy and elation. Others feel like excitement or gratitude. Still others might come in the form of tenderness, compassion, or sympathy. On the other hand, contractive emotions can obviously feel more intense like anger, resentment, and fear.  Then, of course, we have the various types of hurt feelings:

• Rejected
• Diminished 
• Insignificant
• Ignored
• Abandoned
• Unimportant
• Judged
• Misunderstood
• Unseen
• Disregarded
• Disrespected
• Unappreciated 

Ultimately, when we experience hurt feelings, we feel missed by another person. We can experience it as a lack of love or care, or as if we don’t matter. Of course this is by no means an exhaustive list of all emotions or all hurt feelings. They are intended to point you in the direction of having a conscious relationship with your own feelings and developing the capacity to express them, whether they feel great or they hurt. 

Also as we list these examples, we must acknowledge that the idea of hurt feelings is relative. What one person feels as hurt, another may feel as misery. For many though, we can contrast these examples of hurt feelings with distinct examples of devastating feelings such as betrayal, anguish, heartbreak, and distraught. The more painful the feeling the more intentional and specific the repair process may need to be. 

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How to express hurt feelings in words

In reality, expressing hurt feelings turns into the easy part of the equation. Everything that comes before the expressing usually causes the most difficulty. If we know what we feel, we simply have to say the words, but most people don’t actually know what they feel. 

Unfortunately, we rarely get an education in emotion. Yet we must feel if we want to know true love. We must feel our own emotions and welcome those of our partner if we want to “succeed” in relationships. Additionally, most of us were conditioned not to feel. We’ve been told to “get over it” or “suck it up”. We’ve been told we “shouldn’t be so sensitive”. Similarly, internally, we might fear that if we express how we feel we might start an argument or upset. We might imagine that we should be “above” having hurt feelings. We might silently tell ourselves that conscious people don’t get bothered and upset. But, we would be wrong.

So, again, expressing hurt feelings is not the problem. Instead we need to put our attention on identifying them and giving ourselves permission to express them. Those in our Soul Love Program series know  that learning to interact with all feelings, and having emotional consciousness, matters to the success of their relationships.

Take a moment now. Reflect for yourself on how easy or difficult it has been for you to identify the specific hurt feeling that you have. Or, do you, usually only know that you’re hurt? That’s of course totally OK and you’ll want the capacity to go deeper. The more specifically you can express, the more effectively your partner, or the one you’re relating to, can make amends and make up for the hurt feelings.

Then, because we often don’t give ourselves permission to feel, you’ll want to consider your belief systems about emotions and communicating them. Are you allowed to feel? What are your beliefs about conflict? What are your fears about authentic relating? Unfortunately, most don’t realize that if you avoid conflict, you will rarely express what you feel.

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Who is actually responsible?

Building on our exploration above about how to put hurt feelings into words, now we want to understand how to consciously tell the one we love how we’re feeling. Those who have strong sustained conscious relationships know that they need both the ability to express and the ability to listen. They also know it’s important to correctly place responsibility. But what do we mean by that?

Many people don’t want to talk about responsibility for feelings because they often don’t like what they hear. Many resist the truth. Yet once they accept this fact it has a transformative impact on their relationship dynamics. That truth is that no one can make you feel anything. It may seem that your partner hurt your feelings, but at the deepest level, you experienced feelings as a result of the other person’s actions. The difference may seem subtle, but getting it and embracing it matters. 

In fact, we feel things because of the ways that we interpret and give meaning to the experiences we have in life and love. For example, two people can have the exact same experience and each feel two very different feelings. It’s not the experience that creates the emotion. It’s our interpretation of the experience. That means our thoughts become part of recognizing, understanding, expressing feelings. We also need the ability to articulate our thoughts, our beliefs and the stories that accompany our emotions. This will help us much more effectively tell someone that our feelings are hurt.

Notice again, that we said, tell someone that our feelings are hurt vs telling them that they hurt our feelings. This distinction matters. This of course does not mean that people don’t speak callous or unkind words sometimes, but still we remain responsible for our feelings. 

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How to tell someone they hurt your feelings

Now that we know that, yes, you are allowed to feel and express hurt feelings. And, you now have some insight on how to say you’re feeling hurt, let look at the steps in more detail. 

1. Get present to yourself and acknowledge the fact that you’re feeling hurt.
2. Reassure yourself that it’s OK to feel that hurt.
3. Become aware of the stories that you’re telling yourself or of the meaning that you have given the experience(s) that created the feelings.
4. Use “I statements “ to let your partner know the experience you’re having. Say things like: “I feel rejected.” “I feel unimportant.” “I feel misunderstood.” 
5. Continue, if it feels supportive, to say “I tell myself that our relationship isn’t as important as it used to be to you.” “I make up the story that when you forgot to do what you said you were going to do, I didn’t matter to you.” or “I tell myself that my needs aren’t important to you.” Don’t try to justify or explain. Simply share.
6. Then pause. Give your partner space to respond. 

If you can take these steps in the moment, that’s ideal. Some people however, especially masculine beings or those in masculine energy, may need more time to get in touch with and identify the types of hurt feelings they have. That means they innately, especially in the beginning, may need to pause and come back to the conversation at a later point in time. Once they’ve had a chance to connect with themselves, then they can come back, asking their partner for time to continue the conversation. 

We must say that things can get tricky here. Your conscious expression of your hurt feelings will hopefully create a conscious conversation that both repairs connection and sets the stage for a different experience in the future. However, it may not always flow that easily. Since many people have unhealed and unresolved hurts from the past, those hurts often get triggered in the present. That means many couples find it difficult to navigate the repairing process. Unconsciously, instead of listening and repairing they may lean towards justifying and defending, reacting, or even denying. So let’s look a bit deeper.

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Being emotionally conscious in relationship

The level of emotional consciousness the two of you have individually and together will impact the resulting experience when hurts happen. To respond to someone’s hurt feelings we must also have the capacity to feel. To repair well we must have some level of empathy. Yet, at the same time, you probably wouldn’t be surprised to hear that in general our society conditions us not to feel. As a result, because emotions are the language of intimacy, it is our inability to feel, and our judgment of emotions, that sabotages our capacity and availability for true love.

How many times when someone has told us that they feel hurt as a result of something we did, that instead of acknowledging and validating them, we justify and defend our actions, implying that the other person shouldn’t feel the hurt they feel. Most couples have experienced this many times. But why?

When we carry wounding from prior experiences in life, sometimes from childhood, sometimes from previous relationships, that wounding often can feel like an exposed raw nerve. The more exposed and unhealed that nerve, the more excruciating, a simple light brush near it becomes. The more healed it is, the more pressure it can take before it feels pain.

Our emotional dynamics in relationships play out similarly. This explains why we all need to do our own emotional healing. Otherwise we blame our partners for everything that we experience and feel. When we take responsibility for our feelings, when we heal emotionally, it allows us to be more available for consciously navigating the inevitable hurt feelings, upsets, and even conflicts that every couple will face. Blame never works, but communication does.

If you want to become masterful at emotional connection and healing, you’ll also likely want to remember that men’s emotions and women’s emotions almost always express differently.

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In closing, as you reflect and integrate these ways to express hurt feelings we invite you to consider: Are our hurt feelings really a problem in our relationship? Obviously, by definition, they hurt. Yet what if they offer us an indicator that something has gone awry in our connection. What if they offer us a sign that our heart, our partner’s heart, or maybe both hearts need attention? 

What if repairing hurt feelings and consciously navigating conflict actually brought us close together and strengthened our relationship? What if?

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Since 2006, highly conscious men and women, with a commitment to extraordinary relationships, have chosen Ecstatic Intimacy to find and cultivate Soul Partnershipsfrom their bedrooms to their boardrooms. Ecstatic Intimacy believes in coveted relationships, for all. 

You too, are invited…

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