18. Hurt People, Hurt People

We've all been hurt by people ... and because we are human and make mistakes, we too hurt others.  Wounded people that haven't done the emotional and spiritual work of healing and growing are prone to hurting others without concern or knowledge of their effect on others.  We don't know what we don't know.  

As followers of Jesus we are called to know better and do better.   

This epidsode helps us shift from victim to owning our behaviors without dismissing the hurts that others have inflicted.  Repentance, forgiveness, and renewal are the goals of this episode so that we may live in peace and freedom.

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Transcript

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Thanks for tuning in to Forget People Pleasing. And today we're talking about how hurt people hurt people. Many of us became people pleasers because of our dysfunctional childhoods, because as little kids, we were trying to survive emotionally in homes where love wasn't always expressed in ways a child could actually feel it. As little girls, we wanted to see and feel the love of our parents. We wanted love expressed through hugs and snuggles and praise and attention, through someone looking at us and saying in one way or another, You matter. I see you. I'm glad you're here. I didn't get very much of that. My childhood was lonely, even though there were five of us in the family. My mom, dad, my sister, my brother, and me. But we all lived in separate silos. There wasn't much, if any, emotional connection. There wasn't much softness either. Chatting at the dinner table or in the living room was often hushed because the news was on, and somehow the news or the weather was more important than hearing about our stories or thoughts. Chores were often barked at us without any softness or doing chores together. The deal kind of was meet the expectations and you stayed out of trouble. That's kind of the message that we all got. But if you didn't like something, the message was basically too bad. And if you made too much noise about not liking it, then came the authoritarian tone, the tone that was meant to instill fear. And there's a difference between parenting from a place of training and teaching, and parenting from a place of fear. I wonder, does that resonate with anybody listening? Parenting that trains and teaches says, I'm going to guide you or I'm going to help you learn. But parenting that uses fear says you'd better obey or else. And those are very different messages to a child's nervous system. Now I can say today with more understanding and compassion that my parents were hurt people, especially my dad. He experienced his own trauma growing up and he carried wounds that shaped him. But as a child, as a little kid, that didn't matter to me. I wasn't thinking my father must have unresolved trauma. No, I was thinking, why doesn't my daddy show me love? Or why doesn't he show interest in me? And I wanted my mom, who was emotionally shut down. I wanted her to see me and value me more than all of the household chores, more than the tasks that seemed so much more important to her than connecting with me, building a relationship with me. I just was another obligation. That's how it felt to me. I was another task. And in my family, I didn't find anyone emotionally available or safe to connect to. So their parenting hurt me. It certainly stunted my emotional growth. Then in my teenage years, the butting of heads hurt me even more. And when I was emotionally and verbally iced out, it created anger in me that had no healthy place to go. That anger didn't just disappear. Unprocessed hurt doesn't vanish. So I had quite the mean streak as a result. Sometimes it turns inward and becomes shame, depression, anxiety, or self-hatred. Sometimes it turns outward and becomes rebellion, sarcasm, rage, or unhealthy relationship choices. And that was me. That's also how we can become people pleasers because we're still chasing the love and acceptance that we never got. And at 18, I escaped and did the unthinkable in my family and moved in with my boyfriend. And I wish I could tell you, and she lived happily ever after. But that's not how it went because hurt people hurt people. And I was a hurt person. That's a hard thing to say out loud and to admit that I hurt people. It's easier to talk about the ways we were wounded. It's much harder to talk about the ways our wounds caused us to hurt others. People who know me today are surprised when I admit some of the behaviors and choices I made in my earlier years. That version of me is not the version that exists today. And I have God to thank for that. I also have a lot of therapy, personal growth, honesty, accounting, and healing work to thank for where I am today, the version of me today, which is still growing by the way. But I want to be very clear, when we're hurt and we don't know how to heal, we often make decisions from our wounds. And as people pleasers, we may not always think of ourselves as hurting other people. Because we're really nice people, right? Well, people pleasers tend to help and overgive. We try not to disappoint and we avoid conflict. We want to make people happy. But people pleasing is not always as harmless as it looks on the outside. Sometimes people pleasing causes us to be dishonest. We agree when we're actually resentful. We stay when we should leave. We leave emotionally before we're honest about what's wrong. And we perform love, but secretly we're feeling pretty angry. And sometimes at the expense of other people's hearts. As people pleasers, we try to get attention, approval, inclusion, and sometimes at the expense of our own values, and sometimes at the expense of other people's hearts and feelings. As her people, we develop into people pleasers because the little kid inside of us is still looking for acceptance, approval, and inclusion. She's still looking for someone to choose her. And when that little girl grows into a woman, she may go looking for love in places that only offer attention. And attention can feel a lot like love when you've been emotionally starving. That's where many of us get confused. We mistake attention for affection and inclusion for intimacy. We mistake being wanted for being valued, and we mistake sometimes being pursued for being loved. And all of that can take us down another hard road of hurts, especially in romantic relationships. When we have a deep childhood wound of not feeling seen or chosen or valued, cheap attention can often feel better than no attention at all. Maybe you can recognize some of this in yourself. Maybe you can see places where your hurt spilled out. And maybe you chased attention and used people to feel less lonely. Maybe you made promises you didn't have the emotional maturity to keep. Maybe you abandoned yourself so often that resentment became your personality. Maybe you hurt someone who didn't deserve it because you were still bleeding from your wounds that they didn't cause. That realization can feel painful. We can have compassion for who we were and still take responsibility for what we did. You can say I didn't know how to love well, and you can also say I'm willing to learn now. You can say I was trying to survive, and you can also say, I don't want survival patterns to keep running my life. When we get to this place of realizing our role in hurting other people, it can be an open invitation to healing, repentance, to repair where possible, and become renewed, that newer version of yourself. My childhood hurt took me away from that organic, happy, energetic little girl God created me to be. And now through healing and growth, I'm finding my way back to her. A way that says, My wounds are part of my story, but they don't get to be the author of my life. So, what's the good news in this sad story that I'm sharing with you today? The good news is that God forgives us. Psalm 103, 12 says, As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. God does not hold our confessed sin over us forever. When we come to him honestly, he forgives. And God also renews us. 2 Corinthians 5.17 says, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. That means that the old version of you does not have to be the final version of you. The people-pleasing version, the angry, desperate version of you does not have to be the forever version of you. This is a version of you that can learn how to love yourself and others well. To be clear, healing usually doesn't happen in one dramatic moment or one session of therapy or even after one prayer. At least that hasn't been my experience or the experience of my clients. Healing happens in layers. We may heal from an experience at one level and then later find ourselves needing to heal from a different perspective. Something comes up when we realize, oh, there's that tender place again. For example, one of my childhood wounds was exclusion. And even today, if I don't get included in something, that wound can get picked at. Now I resolve it much faster than I used to, and I don't spiral as deeply. And I can talk myself through it with more truth and more maturity, but I can still feel the sting sometimes. That's what I mean by healing in layers. Healing doesn't always mean the wound never gets touched again. Sometimes healing means it doesn't control you the same way. The wound doesn't define your worth, it doesn't make decisions for you, and it doesn't get to rewrite what God says about you. And to do this kind of healing work, we also have to look at ego. Ego gets in the way of healing more often than we want to admit, because ego wants to justify. Ego says, well, I only did that because they hurt me. They should apologize first. I was the real victim, so I shouldn't have to own my part. But healing requires humility. And humility says, yes, I was hurt, and yes, I still need to own my actions. Owning our behaviors when we hurt others is necessary if we want to move forward. Apologizing when it's beneficial and available can be part of growing into our renewed self. James 5.16 says, therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. Isn't that great news? That does not mean, though, that every person from your past needs access to you. And it doesn't mean that you reopen unsafe doors. And it doesn't mean you chase down people to relieve your guilt. But when repair is wise, healthy, and possible, a sincere apology can be a big part of healing. A humble apology says, I can see that I hurt you. I'm sorry. I apologize. You didn't deserve that. I was not healthy then, and I take responsibility for my behavior. That is evidence of God's renewing work in us. Because the goal is not just to stop being hurt. The goal is to stop passing the hurt forward. The goal is to become someone who is honest, safe, who can love without performing, without being fake, someone who can give without resentment, and someone who can receive love without suspicion. That is emotional maturity and healing and freedom. So if you're listening today and you came from a painful childhood, I want you to hear this. Your hurt matters. What happened to you matters. The loneliness matters. The lack of nurture matters. The fear, the emotional silence, the absence of softness. All of that matters. And the little girl who wanted to be seen and loved, she mattered then, and she sure as heck matters right now. I also want to gently say this your hurt may explain some of your patterns. So at some point, healing asks us to stop saying only, look at what they did to me, and begin asking, Lord, will you bring healing in me so I don't keep living from this wound? That is the beginning of becoming the woman He created you to be. A big reason for my sharing my story with you in this episode is to encourage you to move from a place of being victim in case you're stuck. I stayed in an angry, resentful victim place for too many years. As daughters of Jesus, we can ask for his help in healing and growing and shift into accountability of how we may have harmed others. There's so much rewarding growth and maturity when we surrender to our own wrongdoings and ask for forgiveness from God and to who we may have harmed. This work shifts our focus to how we are sinful people too. And thank goodness for the grace of our loving Lord and Savior that offers us forgiveness. So this week I want to leave you with a few reflection questions. Where do you still feel like that little girl looking for acceptance, approval, or inclusion? Where has your hurt spilled onto someone else? Is there a behavior you need to own? Is there an apology that would be wise, healthy, and appropriate? And where do you need to receive God's forgiveness instead of continuing to punish yourself? Because healing is not pretending we were never hurt. Healing is bringing the hurt into the light with God and allowing him to restore what was broken, allowing him to renew what was distorted, and for God to teach us how to love from wholeness instead of wounds. Hurt people do hurt people, but healed people can help people heal. And that is the work God is doing in us. I hope that this episode has given you a place of reflection and maybe a shift away from being the one who was hurt to, if it's appropriate, recognizing who you may have hurt also as from a place of your wounds. We're all growing, we're all becoming more and more like Jesus. And I'm so glad to be on this journey with you. All right, until next time.