“Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been.”
– Marcus Aurelius
I was deeply hurt by someone just recently. I mulled over it and could not stop thinking about how they did what they did, and why they did what they did, how they could do what they did, etc.
After a few days of ruminating about it more than I’d like, the words of Marcus Aurelius popped in my head. “Choose not to be harmed, and you won’t be harmed. Don’t feel harmed, and you haven’t been.”
I suddenly realized that I had been choosing to be harmed by thinking of this person’s behavior the following way:
- As if it was personal toward me
- As if their actions reflect on my value
- As if whatever it is that they are doing means that something about my worthiness
- As if their reactions or lack thereof was a reflection on my value
- As if my having opened myself to care at a level meant something about my ability to think well, etc. I felt made a fool of for the fact that I cared.
I was choosing to be harmed, and I was afraid that I was being hurt when I was not being harmed at all. Nothing was happening to me except for my being triggered to feel destructive emotions. Those bad emotions were not what that person was doing at all but based on my interpretations and the existing fear in me, not them.
This was a significant opportunity for me to learn something valuable about myself, which needs healing and reexamining my story.
Often when someone does something that hurts our feelings, we automatically blame them and feel hurt and angry toward that person.
The truth is that when we feel something, it is useful to examine where the feelings are indeed coming from, and in most cases, the emotions are genuinely coming from ourselves.
It’s a hard one to swallow, but it is true, most of our feelings belong to us, not who we think are the perpetrators.
When we let someone else’s words or actions hurt us, and even if they were purposeful and intended to hurt us, it is still 100% our job to accept what they give to us. We could just step away from their throw, not receive the ball, and not get hit.