Some Thoughts on Emotional Hurt
Some of the pain we experience in the conflict is not from the other person, but because we are wounded. And to have healthy conflict resolution, we absolutely need to be self-aware about the presence of these sore spots.
In a recent article, I wrote about some of the nuances of emotional pain, and how pain relief and healing are not necessarily the same thing. We must be discerning that what we call healing is actually true healing.
A related topic is how many people in our culture use the word “hurt”—specifically around the topic of emotional hurt. It is the common language of conflict in our culture; instead of saying to someone “you wronged me” or “you sinned against me”, we say “you hurt me.” Notice how we have moved the emphasis away from the objective wrong doing of the other person, to the subjective pain that I am experiencing in the conflict.
This is not necessarily wrong. “You hurt me” may be the right way to enter into a process of conflict resolution and reconciliation - as long as that statement is said with humility, understanding there may be many sources of the pain or hurt. For example, it could be the other person’s sin that is hurting me, it could be my own sin that is hurting me, or it could be an existing unhealed wound that is hurting me (unrelated to the other person).
Like the last article on the topic of emotional healing, I think comparing emotional pain to physical pain can be helpful. Consider five scenarios where an interaction with a person caused me physical pain:
You punch me
In this case, a person has done something sinful that has caused me physical pain. “You hurt me” and “You sinned against me” are basically synonymous.
You knew that I had a wound, and you deliberately pressed on the wound to cause me pain
Normally pressing on someone’s skin is not sinful, but deliberately aggravating someone would be sinful. We should be sensitive to each other's wounds and weaknesses, and Christian love will try to be gentle around them. So again, “You hurt me” and “You sinned against me” go together here, but it is a little more complicated. You didn’t cause the wound in me.
You bumped into me accidentally, and ran into a wound on my arm that you didn’t put there, but it caused me pain
In this case, “You hurt me” was not the result of you sinning against me. In this case, I should say to you, “Hey, just so you know, I have a gash on my arm that you are bumping into. It is not your fault, but I just want to let you know.”
You gave me a hug, and I had a wound on my chest that your hug pressed on
In this case, not only are you not sinning against me and trying to hurt me, or even doing something neutral like brushing against me, but you are actively loving me, and I experience pain from the love. In this case I’d say, “It hurts when you hug me, but I need these hugs in my life, so I can’t run away from the pain.”
You have a wound that has dirt in it, and I am a doctor who is cleaning the wound, causing you pain in the process
In this last case, “You hurt me” is an act of service, and I need to be willing to stay in the pain because it is good for me, and I should thank you for being willing to care for me.
So while it is okay to say, “You hurt me” in a conflict, we need self-awareness and also need to add clarity about where the sin is
What these all show us is that “You hurt me” does not equate to “You sinned against me.” It could mean that you sinned against me, but not necessarily. In fact, we all carry around emotional wounds from our past, or from our own former and current sins. Some of the pain we experience in the conflict is not from the other person, but because we are wounded. And to have healthy conflict resolution, we absolutely need to be self-aware about the presence of these sore spots.
So if I am in a conflict with my wife, it may be helpful for us to say to one another, “When you said this, it hurt me.” It does give an opportunity for compassion. We don’t want to hurt one another, and it is helpful information to know the pain we are experiencing in our interactions. But often in our culture, “You hurt me” has been equated with “You are in the wrong,” which is not necessarily true.
In fact the Bible tells us there are some kinds of pain that are actually acts of kindness and love. Consider Psalm 141:5:
“Let a righteous man strike me—it is a kindness;
let him rebuke me—it is oil for my head;
let my head not refuse it.”
I don’t think this Psalm is literally talking about being punched by a righteous person; it is about being rebuked. To be hurt by a righteous person’s rebuke, though it is painful, is a kindness. Proverbs 27:6 is similar: “Faithful are the wounds of a friend…”
Also, my pain might be the result of my own sin. For example, if someone has a bitter and ungrateful spirit, they will be miserable all the time, and will find reason to be upset with just about everything. They will have constant emotional pain—except the source of the pain is actually not other people, but themselves. If we give sovereign authority to the statement “I am in pain,” we will often enable people in their own sin and the ways they are hurting themselves.
So while it is okay to say, “You hurt me” in a conflict, we need self-awareness and also need to add clarity about where the sin is. “I think when you said/did this, that was wrong (or unfair, or sinful).” Or, “When you said this, it hurt me, but I realize that it was just touching on an old wound, and that is not your fault.” Like in so many things, the subjective needs to be paired with the objective. The subjective pain needs to be evaluated against the objective law of God. We can’t give our emotions free reign. Otherwise, we use our pain as an excuse for pointing out other peoples’ flaws with no self-examination.
Emotions are the great idol of the modern world. We have made our own inner life a god. While emotional pain does give us helpful information that something is not right, either in ourselves or with someone else, emotions can also be sinful or deceiving. We must be humble as the Lord shows us which it is.
