By Javinne J. McCoy
When someone hurts you, it hurts. It’s supposed to, because they Hurt us, they have caused us pain. When someone with whom we desire a relationship rejects us, withdraws from us, and withholds love from us, after we have let our guard down, and shared our vulnerabilities (albeit misguidedly) it feels unfair, and like we have been swindled.
Side note: I decided to start a new weekly posting feature on the LA Blog called Facts of Life Friday. These posts will be more geared toward personal empowerment and encouragement. They will be more inspirational driven as opposed to expository.
The hurt can really cut your soul to the quick if you were misled (experienced false confessions of love), deceived (they were a Charmer, presented a false-self, and misrepresented themselves by using flattery and oozing pleasantries, to cover up The Real Them, in order to get you ‘hooked in’), exploited (they used your vulnerabilities as a segue to get their needs met for the moment), and mistreated (emotional abuse, physical abuse, boundary violations, control and manipulation tactics).
When The Real Them unravels, the fantasy fades, and reality slams us down-Hard! We become enraged, our fight-flight reflex goes into high gear, and perhaps we even fantasize about exacting revenge, or continue to engage with them in an attempt to ‘force responsibility’, and get them to show empathy for their actions.
When it comes to EUPs, when that kind of someone hurts you, It hurts because the wrong person had the power to hurt us- an emotionally unavailable man/woman, a narcissist, a charmer, a player, a Jerk, a Jerkette, an untrustworthy person, a person who lacks empathy, a person without upright character (insert your type here). These are all the wrong people to get involved with from jump!
What we forget is that, if any of the above happened to us, we were not in a healthy, mutual, and emotionally available relationship to begin with. Chances are we ignored our inner checker (gut) and ignored crimson red flags. More likely than not, we gave them the time of a day because we have our own issues of inadequacy, and we chose this person because we already don’t feel worthy. At the time they are an energetic match for our unhealthy love programs and these folk will mirror any negative core beliefs we have.
The typical response when someone hurts you (we are talking about the shady variety of folk that are unavailable for healthy) is to do any number of the following:
- Give up on love
- Completely stop trusting yourself (and others)
- Drop into a Major Depression
- Develop some sort of addiction to avoid (i.e. sex, drugs, more unhealthy relationships, work, endless hooking up with folk to avoid loneliness)
- ‘Move on’ and ‘Get on with it’ (but miss the Forest for the trees-the insights, lessons, and growth opportunities…and we end up doing more repeats, with the same person, or down the line , repeat with The Same Person but Different Package.
- Convince ourselves that They Were The Last Man or Woman on Earth for us
- Wait around for them, hoping that they will come to a Startling Relationship Revelation, return to us, and love us back (you know like they do in Hollywood and Danielle Steele novels)
- Lose interest in our life. If they reject us, now we reject us.
- Stay with them even though we are getting less, less, less, and less. While we give, more, more, and more.
STOP RIGHT HERE!
These responses are about Retraction. Retraction is unhealthy. Retraction is about backtracking, getting worse, losing hope, giving into despair, reneging on you and your dreams, going backward, and backing down. This is exactly what was done to you by the emotionally unavailable person. Why would you do the same to yourself? You can be hurt but you must see that this person hurt you repeatedly because they have the emotional capacity of a stone and cannot empathize. You cannot be with someone like that and be in a healthy and mutual relationship
If you are really seething over the hurt it’s understandable but take many steps back and possibly more than several seats. Approach it from a different angle. Channel your anger to DO BETTER, and do the COMPLETE OPPOSITE, when someone hurts you. You want real revenge after someone took you for a ride on The Unhealthy Relationship Express? You want real revenge after someone discarded you, or pretended you don’t exist, or didn’t give a care that they hurt you?
Here is what you do- you dig deep, deep, deep down into your soul, tap up that inner strength, and you begin to think “EXPAND!”. You go for expansion. Expansion doesn’t give up on love because of the Mr./ Mrs. Messy Boots who messed you for sport. Expansion is about building you up, freeing space from unavailable people, raising and boosting your self-esteem, redefining your values and boundaries, reinforcing your commitment to change unhealthy patterns, and believing in your ability to create healthy love from within you, so it mirrors back to you.
When you think “Expand!” instead of “Retract!”, you are making a conscious decision to open up more to YOU and life. You DO NOT shut down! That is what the person who kept hurting you wanted you to do. You trade that copper of a person and buy stock in the gold of YOU. You Expand. You become bigger not smaller.
When someone hurts you, gets to scheming, and pulls shady behavior without the dear conscious to empathize with you (and God forbid desire to do things right by you -differently and decently), forget them! If you went through this with them, it’s time to boot em’ and Cut em’ out.
When shifty folk hurt you, and you respond to the hurt by retracting and recoiling in your life, you are giving them way too much of your power. They are not that serious. Seriously!
When you expand, you acknowledge that if a person mistreated you (don’t do victim mode though), the best thing you can do is to NOT let such an emotionally lowbrow chump discourage you from getting the love, joy, and peace you deserve.
Move them out of your life and go for EXPANSION-more, better than them, stepping up to the plate and loving you. No giving up on you. No giving up on love. No giving up on life. No giving up on the hope that emotionally available healthy people exist. They certainly do exist!
If an EUP hurt you, withheld love from you, and rejected you, they were communicating the false message that you are not worthy. When you expand, you take full responsibility to heal those unhealthy love programs that say ‘I am not good enough’, so you never have to breathe the air of these people again.
If you were dogged out, taken advantage of, and your vulnerabilities were exploited step away from them. Now! Retract on them! Expand on you (without them)! No exceptions. Don’t even worry about them! You will get your ‘revenge’ not by hounding them up for accountability or apologies (you cannot get people who lack empathy too be accountable or apologize-they are incapable), but by doing your own inner work, and healing whatever attracted you to them in the first place
Ask yourself “what is this about? Is it family of origin unfinished business-reactivation, regression? Is it the thrill of continually going for your elusive unhealthy ‘type’? Are you recreating relationships that mirror relationships with your original abusers from the past to ‘make peace’ in the present? Are you hell bent trying to extract validation from reluctant people?
When you go for expansion, you will get to the core of your issues, be able to answer these questions, choose different beliefs, make different choices, and by doing this work, you will inevitably open the door to healthy (over time). Now is the time to Expand! You have to believe that the love you deserve will be mirrored back to you in healthy way (after you give it to you first and accept responsibility to create it). Bunk the unavailable person who hurt you! Expand when someone hurts you! Don’t Retract! If you retract, the pain they caused you wins. If you expand, you win over the hurt.
You will win over the hurt because you have decided to open the door for healthy and taken up responsibility to create healthy in your life. Never let someone have so much power over you that you retract and stick your head in the sand because of their mess! That’s what they want. Hurt people, spread their pain and hurt others. If you retract on anything, it should be them. When someone hurts you, always go for expansion. Say“I will expand and not retract”. Make that your new chant!
Thoughts? Comments? Stories? Do you have a topic or a question on emotionally unavailable relationships that you would like addressed on the L.A. Blog? Please feel free to or comment directly on a post that has inspired and empowered you or email: [email protected]
The post Facts of Life Friday: When Someone Hurts You, Think Expand! Not Retract! appeared first on Love Antics- The Relationship Blog.
