Getting Out the Door By Overcoming Hurt
So, there you are sitting on your couch, the plan you had of becoming fit and doing great things is only a vague distant wish. You reach for another cookie, a soft drink or beer, and then turn on the TV to watch some meaningless mind-numbing soap opera.
Why can’t you get out the door? Where did the dream go? Where is my will-power?
There is always one big emotion that keeps you on the couch of heedlessness, the emotion of hurt. Its favorite strategy by far is procrastination. Whatever you are not getting to in your great plan of life starts with hurt. Everyone has been hurt because hurt arises from having been abandoned in one form or another. It is part of the human experience in the age we live. Perhaps distant future ages will not suffer it as we have, but for now, the unity of the world that we all long for has not yet arrived.
We keep apart and keep away from acting and seeing our dreams by hanging onto hurt. Maybe you have been fired or ignored in a relationship or severely criticized and put down. Hurt is the feeling that allows you to close the doors to opportunities and protect yourself in a shell of negative thinking. When you are hurt, your mind is taken over by obsessive negative thoughts that can last for decades. It is a living hell.
Most of us hang onto hurt for a long time because we expect someone else to fix it or heal it in someway by acting toward us in a kind and loving way. We can wait a long time, can’t we? It maybe the single most difficult act in the human experience to overcome; to let go of expecting someone else to do the right thing and heal our pain, but it is exactly what is needed if we are to get out the door to our dreams.
The difficulty with hurt is the infection it causes in the mind. It is like it entraps our mind in negative thinking that spins itself over and over. If your mother abandoned you or your boss treated you unfairly or your friends gossiped about you, then you feel hurt, and your mind believes that they should fix it. Then your mind starts thinking of all kinds of negative things to do so that they can fix the hurt, but instead of any positive results, you stay in a heap of hurt and negativity, and no one wants to be around you. Your dreams go on the procrastination button.
There is only really one way out of hurt as painful as it maybe to admit. The way out is first to realize that you allowed yourself to be hurt by the abandonment. Not everyone automatically feels hurt over abandonment so it isn’t a given that you have to feel it. Someone can do something negatively to me like viciously criticize me, but I am the one who allows myself to be hurt. I do something to allow the hurt to function and then close the door. What you do, in an unconscious manner, is to believe that you need to close the door and protect yourself from the behavior of another. To get out of the hurt you can believe that protection can be a choice, that you don’t have to feel hurt. You can actually experience detachment in otherwise hurtful situations, by believing that there are other options besides protecting yourself.
Usually hurt is experienced as a metaphor by people so when it is dealt with, it is good to describe it as a metaphor. It may feel like being stabbed in the heart or stabbed in the back, or that your guts are being ripped out, or that you have been trampled over. These are a few of the metaphors. So ask yourself what the hurt feels like inside. What is the metaphoric experience?
When you are detached from the metaphor, it no longer affects you. I have heard people say that their whole family turned on them as if they were surrounded by a gang that beat them up. When you are detached, you can see that it is the other person and not yourself who is hurt before you became hurt. This changes everything. Believe me it does. Try it. Instead of feeling like you were stabbed in the back, step out of your body and see the stabbing and the person doing the stabbing and you will notice that they are hurt from a former stabbing. They only ever repeat what was done to them.
Now ask yourself as you are being stabbed, but watching it from a distance how that person is ever going to heal your hurt. They are NOT going to do it. So get over that idea. They are in too much pain themselves. They actually need your healing, but not the other way around.
As soon as you get to detachment over hurt by seeing that the person doing the hurt is actually full of hurt, then youcan drop the bag of Oreos and head out the door with your own plans. When you are detached, your mind will automatically become much more positive and optimistic, but first you have to get to a state of zero expectations from the other person. Don’t succumb to it. It is deadly and is like being caught in a whirlpool, like being on a permanent spin cycle inside your washing machine. Drop the oreos and get out the door.
Review of the steps with hurt.
1. Remember the dreams that you are currently procrastinating. Write them down.
2. Describe the hurt in metaphoric terms.
3. Detach yourself from the hurt by seeing the person doing the hurt as the one who is really hurt. Accept the fact that they are not going to heal your hurt. Then just let go of all of the pain.
4. Take the first steps out the door to your dreams and then allow yourself to be guided.
I wouldn’t mind hearing your metaphors on the hurt issue and what your experience is after detachment. They may help others with their own hurt.
I think I will go take a run.
Richard Hastings is an expert in change work and dream work and author of Dreams for Peace. He is a 
Dreams For Peace 
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My metaphor is that I I feel I am trying so hard to be the right guy and at he end I find all my efforts of trying to prove to the one I love, how ever when she didn’t return it back I felt the whole world is out on me. Now I feel she is the one who has been hurt and not me, I am out of the relationship though and I hope to start all over again. Thanks
thanks for the great sharing.
My metaphor is just being thrown away, not wanted. I’m adopted and this never bothered be until I started meeting a lot of my biological sisters, brother, aunts, cousins, and mother. I am pretty hurt but I also know that I lived a better life for being adopted. I couldn’t have asked for better parents. My grandpa even said that Abdul-Baha gave me to him (our family) as a gift (and he actually meant this or believed this when he told me. He wasn’t just trying to make me feel good). When I met my birth mom and then came back the next day and found her was drunk, I really saw why I was adopted and why she gave six of her children away. It was the best decision she could have made. But it still hurts. I feel like I shouldn’t complain because I’ve had the best childhood and family anyone could ever ask for. But I still feel unworthy. It’s true I don’t know how to give myself self-worth. I’ve always relied on support from others to feel good enough or that I can do something.My family is very supportive, my friends are supportive, my husband is supportive, my host teacher in my practicum is very supportive. I have no self-worth without them. My mind is very negative to the point of having to not listen to it because I often over-react to situations. I think the world is going to end and then I face a situation and I come out of it in-tacked and with support. I often feel like people don’t like me or that I’m bothering people or am just in the way. My mind is poisoned with these types of thoughts often and people end up “supporting me” by saying they like me or enjoy having me around. And then I can calm down. I give myself no break. I’m the hardest on myself and yes I procrastinate like there is no tomorrow. And I have a million excuses for not working towards my dreams.
When I spent time with my biological aunt, many years ago now, she told me the history of my mother’s generation. I won’t go into details but it wasn’t good and I began to understand my birth mom’s situation and why she is the way she is today. I understand that my birth mom cannot heal me or take the pain away and I know that she is in greater pain than I am. So, now I’m stuck on how to detach. I mean really detach. Sometimes, in the past I have attempted to detach but then I always fall back into my dark outlook on myself and life. Maybe it wasn’t detachment. It was more like pushing myself away from where I came from. Like, never wanting to be around alcohol or freaking out when alcohol was around me and then I’d run from it. Or in being the best university student I could be because I told myself I could do this but only at the expense of cutting myself off and not having a social life. I have learning disabilities and as you can imagine it’s caused many wars within my mind. So, I’ve tried burying parts of who I am in order to achieve my goals but who I am always comes back into the picture. So, this isn’t detachment.
Oh detachment. So, I understand that my birth mom is more hurt than I am. Now I have to let go of the hurt and take steps towards my dreams. I understand this intellectually but my self-worth isn’t coming along with me. I want to be a great teacher and travel and teach ESL. I know I can do this but I’m not allowing myself to do this. Instead I’m scared and feel like dropping out of school everyday. But I don’t, drop out. I just torture myself in the process. Am I scared of succeeding? Like, really succeeding, without burying any part of myself? But why? Why am I afraid of succeeding? If this is even the case. Anyhow, I’m going to stop writing now. I have a lot to reflect on. I really appreciate you writing this article Richard. I think it will help me in the long run. Thank you. 🙂
My metaphor is of being thrown in the garbage. Through the quality of detachment, I have gotten myself out of the garbage bin, wiped away the dirt and now I am ready to take a shower and find my own worth independent of another person. This way I can truly find my true spiritual place in the world.