What if we kept it simple when our feelings get hurt?
How many times during the course of a normal week do you get physically hurt by someone?
How many times during the course of a normal week do you get your feelings hurt by someone?
Quite the stark contrast, isn’t it?
It is usually quite accidentally and unintentionally that we get physically hurt by another person. Fortunately we outgrow those childhood reactions to get into fist fights when we are in disagreement. But getting our feelings hurt — well that is a pretty common occurrence.
Stop to think about your normal reactions and responses to getting your feelings hurt. You become quite the contortionist, don’t you? We put ourselves through an emotional wringer when our feelings are hurt. We can even cause ourselves additional emotional pain by not acknowledging what hurts.
Joe Hudson, the master life and relations coach, wants us to get as comfortable with saying “ouch” when our feelings are hurt as we are when we are physically hurt.
This simple strategy is pure genius.
In order to see why “clear is kind” (as Brene Brown teaches) and why saying “ouch” when we feel emotionally or psychologically wounded is so incredibly effective, we simply have to see the difference.
Imagine for a moment that your child hits you in a moment of anger. You recoil and say “ouch”. In a flash, the dynamics change. Your child is immediately aware of their role in your physical pain. You have made clear that what they did really does hurt.
It becomes both a teaching moment and a learning moment.
It is clearly evident, even to a toddler, that what they did has had a painful impact. As a parent, you get to help your child learn that hurting others doesn’t resolve issues. These small normal incidents are building blocks for trusting relationships. Instead of hitting or knee jerk reactions, we help each other find reasonable solutions to disagreements, frustrations and emotional triggers.
Joe Hudson says we have made emotional injuries much more complicated than need be. We can simply say “ouch, that hurt”.
Now imagine that your partner says something hurtful to you. It could be one of those broad-brush, sweeping jabs such as “you always leave big messes for me to clean up!” Under normal circumstances, you become defensive. You want to point out that you don’t “always” make more work for others. If you aren’t careful, you might find yourself flooding your partner by “kitchen sinking”. That is the psychological term for pulling out a historical laundry list of all the times you did clean up your messes AND all the times your partner was the one also MAKING big messes.
In this familiar scenario, things can get out of hand fast. Emotional injuries can get blown out of proportion and all bets are off as both partners start to duke it out with verbal protective armor and defense mechanisms.
Joe wants us to get into a new habit. The habit of simply saying “Ouch!”
In this “take 2” version of the familiar scene, your partner makes a stinging comment and you simply say “ouch, that hurt”. Take a breath and pay attention to how the energy shifts.
Suddenly your partner is caught off-guard. Your spouse did not expect you to stay calm and state clearly “my feelings are hurt”. The emotional impact is now center stage. The game changes.
Let’s be real – we don’t want to be going through our days hurting each other. And we surely don’t want to spend our days on constant high alert, attempting to avoid getting hurt. But the emotional and psychological pain we inflict on each other is often quite invisible at first.
When we say “ouch”, we make it tangible and visible.
I’ve seen Joe Hudson role play this strategy in real time in his YouTube videos. It is like watching a magic trick. It works wonders.
When Joe says “ouch” the other person stops in their tracks and looks at him — really looks at him, with full eye contact. Joe remains calm, even approachable, but that single word “ouch” has shifted the dynamic.
You can almost see the other person slamming on the brakes and wondering “what?” Instead of gearing up to take that verbal fight to the mat, the person realizes that they have already caused pain of some sort to Joe.
Admittedly, Joe Hudson is a master of emotional, relational and psychological tools to effect positive interactions and build strong, trusted relationships. While you might think you will never reach his level of competence and emotional stability, he makes it feel very achievable through his live demonstrations. You too can flip the script and work the magic.
Are you willing to give it a try?
Sometime over the coming week, when you get your feelings hurt — simply say “ouch”.
Clear is kind.
Others will want to be kinder to you if they sense that their words hurt.
We can’t change what we can’t see. But when we make our emotional and psychological injuries as visible as a red mark on our skin, we begin to treat each other more awareness and much more kindness.
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