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Are Hurt Feelings a Choice You’d Rather Not Choose?
Bruised but not broken
“Feelings,” my mum used to croon, “nothing more than feelings.”
She loved this old ’70s song; she normally sang it to me when I was in the midst of despair. Now, with that wonderful trick of hindsight, I can see she tried to make me smile and feel better, but back then, I felt as if she was trying to shut down my capacity to feel by making fun of my misery.
In hormonal teenage times, everything is feeling. Your heightened responses indicate how you think at the time, and although you might put on a great show of being calm and collected as you age, nothing changes throughout your life. Everyone lives by feelings.
But when my mum sang that song, she hurt my feelings.
You hurt my feelings
She didn’t really, of course. I managed to feel hurt all by myself.
It’s a strange thing. I have a thought about how I think you’re thinking, and I feel hurt. But let’s trace that back for a minute. I have a thought. My thought is about what I imagine you think. And then I feel hurt by your thought. The thought I created and assigned to you.
Can you see the common link here? I. I thought, and I think. I hurt myself.
But your hurt feelings may seem to come from someone else’s actions or words because you judge yourself by others. You see yourself through their perception and feel hurt if they say or do something that doesn’t support how you want to be seen.
“I am not who you think I am; I am not who I think I am; I am who I think you think I am.”
This quote comes from an American psychologist, Charles Horton Cooley, who coined the term “looking-glass self” in 1902. The Looking Glass Self is made up of three areas, which are all unique to everyone:
- People imagine how they appear to others.
- People imagine others’ judgment of that appearance.
- People develop feelings about and respond to those perceived judgments.
If your interactions with others create your sense of self, it makes sense that…
