Hurtful Comments

We’ve shared some thoughts about how to reframe painful comments that people sometimes makes, even with the best of intentions.

Many of you have voiced your thoughts about whether that strategy could work.

But here’s the piece de resistance.

When a stranger or someone unimportant in your life say something that’s hurtful, it’s “easy” to brush them off and explain the comment away as an ignorance; They simply don’t know how to talk to someone who is struggling.

But when those comments come from someone you love, you trust, you deem as “safe,” it’s much harder to do the reframing. These are the people who know the depths of your pain. They know how much you suffered. You presume that they should know better, or at least care enough about you to not hurt you even further.

These are the comments that sit with you for days, weeks and years because it’s hard to reconcile this “loving” person with the one who hurt you so deeply.

And how do you come back from that and learn to trust again? I don’t pretend to know the answers, but the more we talk about this and the more people who see this, the fewer people will act callously. Instead they’ll have the tools to be able to help when you’re suffering.