EP 60: How to Tell Someone They Hurt You
Welcome fellow confidence, crusaders, neuro nerds and success equalizers. This is your podcast, Real Confidence. I'm your host, Alyssa Dver. And I'll be sharing a bit of basic brain science, some surprising social secrets, and a touch of tough love. Why? Because I believe confidence is everyone's fundamental right and choice. So, let's get to it.
Alyssa Dver:
I've been an Elton John fan for almost 50 years and my favorite song of his massive catalogue is “Sorry, seems to be the Hardest Word.” And as much as I love Elton, in that song, I'm going to say that I'm not sure it's right. I think it is even harder maybe to tell somebody that they hurt you, that they made you sad or angry or frustrated; that they did something that genuinely they should have, or you want them to know that they shouldn't have. I think that's harder. And I started to think about this the other day, I had a situation with two of my best friends and it was something so petty, but they forgot to invite me to something that they had organized with some other people. And I was really hurt by that. I suspected that maybe they just forgot and were so busy or maybe they thought that I didn't want to go, or it could have been 100 different reasons. But the fact that they didn't invite me just made me so sad, like, very left out.
And I said, yeah, I'm not gonna say anything and it really kind of burned me. And so, I did address it with them. And I'll tell you what happened at the end of the pod. But as I was going through this question of, should I tell them? Shouldn't I tell them? If I should tell them? How should I tell them? And why is it so damn hard? Now, I'll give you some maybe obvious reasons. But as usual, on the podcast, it gives us a little bit of an opportunity to think through some of these profound things, nothing all day long to us all the time. And yet, we kind of swallow it and move on. And we don't understand the impact. But you know, when you don't tell somebody that they hurt you or they upset you in some way, obviously, it's going to impact the relationship, I don't care how good actress or actor you are, it's going to affect how you relate to them, it's certainly going to dent some of your trust. And it certainly doesn't feel good creates extra stress. So as we're trying to figure out how and why this is so hard part of the exercise, of course, is to figure out not just how to resolve it, but maybe how to avoid it too. So, let's dig in a little bit.
Why is it so hard to tell somebody that they hurt your feelings? Well, it shows some vulnerability, right Brene Brown in her massive bodywork as well, all of it ties to this fact that when we admit some weakness, it can be hard. And again, Brene would argue that it's hard no matter who you are, it's hard if you're female, male, or however you identify gender wise, but age and experience, it doesn't make it any easier to show us show that vulnerability, hard work to say on its own. So right off the bat, we know that there's a little bit of resistance to show that weakness in ourselves that somebody hurt us. And related to that is allowing ourselves and admitting to somebody else that we're letting them control how we feel. Right? So, you did this and as a result, I feel this way. Sounds so objective, but when you say to somebody, hey, you really hurt me. You've allowed them to hurt you, right? There's that vulnerability again. And in many ways, we're deferring blame, in that I didn't do anything. You did something that hurt me. So, there is a little bit accusation built into there. So, there's a lot of emotional stew going on. And of course, you don't know how they're going to respond.
You know, you question yourself, you question a lot about who you are, and does that person like me? Do they care about me, just like I described I did with my friends. And that accusation of why did they do that to me? You know, you assume, and you are whether passively or actively accusing somebody of behaviors that you believe were intentional. And so again, a lot of cognitive energy spent in this rumination of why do I feel this way? Why did they do this? Why did I do to deserve it? And should I allow them to know and fix it and all that? Junk, right? So, again, I invite you, if you're sitting there today listening to this going, oh, my god, somebody just hurt your feelings, or somebody hurt your feelings in the past. And you're still letting that pollution in your brain reside there. Let's figure out what to do with it.
Now, I'm going to dig a little deeper into that beautiful brain of ours that we both have and really understand like, what's going on? Well, all that emotional overhead that back and forth questioning of why did they do it should I tell them, you know, there's that amygdala that we talk about all the time on our podcast, that part of your brain that's looking at the world wondering if it's gonna hurt you, when I say wandering, it's always on alert, it's looking to see if you're gonna get hurt. And so when you do get hurt, and it could be trivial, like the situation I described, or maybe it's something really big, like, somebody really went out of their way to hurt you, you may be in your workplace, you know, went after you with a vengeance in some way, tattled on you, or at school or at home or through your family. You know, come on, there's so many examples that we could go into. Maybe it was something really small, like they didn't notice something you were wearing or something that you did, maybe they didn't congratulate you on an achievement. Or maybe they really, like it said, went out of their way to diss you and to knock you down. Whether you deserved it or not, but knock you down, maybe prevented you from getting a promotion or raise or created an image or reputation of something that you really don't feel like you deserved. All these things, your amygdala is looking to see if you're going to get hurt, damaged or otherwise wounded, and jumps into action. And the amygdala at that moment looks at that danger looks at that warning signal and says I gotta get some part of the brain another part of the brain involved to deal with us. So, it can shoot that message down to your brainstem and your brainstem is where all your reactive strategies are. So that cave person, fight or flight. Fun is also one of those reactions that they throw in there. And that bundled of eugenic, try and make it better by protecting yourself, so that you don't have to deal with those emotions.
But instead, you get either really aggressive and fight back, or you get shy and hide and just don't say anything. Those are reactive behaviors of your brainstem, and your amygdala has the option of tossing that warning that danger warning down to the basement of your brain. And that's where, again, you're going to get protection. But in that moment, or somebody's hurt you and you're deciding if and how you should react, you can actually push it into the top part of your brain right behind your forehead, the prefrontal cortex. That's the part of your brain that has all the thinking skills, really the correlation calculation, it's where you're making your decisions in a more rational, confident way. And so, if you take that moment where you go, Ooh, yeah, I feel terrible. They just hurt me. I feel lousy. They don't like me. Or Dan, that person just did something that really pisses me off. You can go into your prefrontal, so to speak, push it in there and say, okay, let's figure this out. And if you are calm enough to kind of, go, huh, it's possible they meant to do that. But it's also possible that they didn't mean to do it, that they did it accidentally, that it was something that was thoughtless. And maybe just maybe, it would help us both, if I brought that to their attention. So, can we not be so reactive, defensive and be more contemplative and compassionate? Of course we can. But it all starts with that moment where you are feeling sad, where you're feeling yucky, rejected.
Now how to deal with that once you recognize that that's where the magic is. So come on back after the ad, and we'll talk about some easy steps, some easy ways to make that phrase you made me sad, so much easier to say.
This podcast was sponsored by the American Confidence Institute. ACI uses basic brain science to teach you not what, but how to think with more competence. ACI is endorsed by top universities and business experts. And it is accredited by the Society for Human Resource Management. And the International Coaching Federation. Learn more about ACI as uniquely empowering keynotes, workshops, online training, and coaching certification at www.AmericanConfidenceInstitute.com.
So, once you identify the fact that you're feeling hurt, that somebody did something that makes you sad or angry, or just bloody, frustrated, hurt, emotionally, what are you gonna do about it? Well, you have a lot of options, of course, you can tell yourself, you know what, it's not that big of a deal, I'm not going to be bothered by it and move on, that's always an option. But perhaps a better option, especially if it's something that you really are feeling hurt. And I gave you the example in the beginning of the pod about my friends who just happen to forget to invite me to this event. It was not a big deal, right? The event itself was just kind of like, hey, my friend, girls you forgot about me, right, made me sad. But there's some better ways to present this to other people, where not only can you express yourself with a lot more confidence, but you can give them the confidence to for them to come back and then say, in good old Elton phrase, I'm sorry, without making it terribly uncomfortable for everyone in the short term, and hopefully making it much better in the future.
So first and foremost, phrase it in a way that makes them realize that you think that it maybe they didn't think about what they did. All right, what does that mean? So, something like this? Billy, it may not have been intentional, but something that you did really upset me, and I'd like to tell you what it was. And you give them that moment and take a little bit of a breath so that Billy or whoever it is, can come back and say okay, and is prepared to listen. If you say something like, I'm feeling very sad about something that you did, or something that you said, and I'd like to let you know about it, and you say it with some real compassion, with some sense of I want to talk about this, not accuse you about it, you have a hell of a better chance of not raising their fight or flight response. You could say something like this, you could say, hey, Billy, this is really hard for me to talk about, so I would really appreciate it if you could just listen to something I want to share with you and then you can respond. Is that okay? So again, think about not making them get on the defensive. You're not, that's not the point. You don't want them to defend why they did what they did. You just want to let them know that you feel yucky as a result of something they did and likely they did it without intention to hurt you that you realize that.
Now, you're probably scratching your head in some way and thinking, well, what if they did intend? Okay, well, if they did intend it that will come out in their explanation in their response. And even if it was intentional, I think it will be very clear how and why they did it once you have a legitimate conversation about it. So again, invite the response without making the other person defensive. You may also be saying to yourself, why do we have to carry this burden of kind of pussyfooting around the person? Who did whatever it was to us? Well, you know, if you want to be a confident individual, and you want to manage your own feelings, that's part of the responsibility, right? I'm giving you great power, as they say, in the Marvel Universe, but there is a great responsibility with it. And the responsibility is this is that in order to really get what you want, which is the real information, the real answer from the other person, or people, if you put them into their brainstem, you're never going to get it, you're never going to get the real information, the real data that you need the real apology that you seek, if they're down in their brainstem acting like a cave person. So, it's not manipulation. It's a way of having calm, confident conversations, especially when there's a lot of emotion boiled around it.
So, resolution between me and my two besties, I told them, you know, it really hurt me when you didn't invite me. And one of them said, it was a total accident. We've just very disorganized, we weren't thinking and the other one said, you know, we really didn't think you'd want to go. And I then said, well, why would you think that? And we talked about it. And you know what? They were right. I didn't really want to go. It wasn't my kind of thing. But they also acknowledged that it would be fair to let me make that decision, not them. So, guess what, tonight is another one of those same events. They definitely invited me. And they also said to me, if I don't want to come it's okay too. So, carry on. Don't let other people hurt you in a way that makes you stay on it forever if you can avoid it. I hope this gives you tools to address that really tough raise you made me sad because I don't want you to be sad, I want you to be confident. Always.
Before we totally wrap up, I want to let you know that full transcripts and show notes for this and other real confidence episodes can be found on www.AmericanConfidenceInstitute.com/podcast. I also want to remind you once again, that the best way to get confidence is to give it to others and you can do it just by liking and sharing this episode on your preferred podcast and social media channels. You can even give me some confidence by noting topics you'd like me to consider for the future. So, for now, this is Alyssa Dver, thank you for helping to bring more confidence to the world.
Master editing done by Ben Weinstein with original music performed and composed by Jeff Mitchell. Real Confidence is a production of American Confidence Institute. All rights reserved.
