S1 EP44 – The Fear of Getting Hurt

Transcript

Hi everyone. Dr. Margaret Paul here with the inner bonding podcast. And today I want to talk about a topic that just about everyone has to deal with. And that is the fear of getting hurt. The fear of getting hurt is actually the main issue that stops many people from loving over and over. When I asked my clients why they continue to choose the intention to control and avoid and protect against pain, rather than the intention to learn about loving themselves and sharing their love with others, they almost always say I’m afraid of getting hurt.

And of course they are because they never learned how to manage the pain of rejection Or loss. One of my favorite quotes is from CS Lewis in the four loves To love At all is to be vulnerable, love anything. And your heart will certainly be rung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal rapid, carefully around with hobbies and little luxuries, avoid all entanglements, lock it up, safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.

But in that casket, safe, dark motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken. It will become unbreakable inpenetrable  illredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy is damnation. The only place outside heaven, where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love Is hell wow.

I was Blown away when I read that quote again, by CS Lewis in the four loves This wonderful quote States, the virus Totally important issue that many struggle with, to love or to protect against pain with various forms of controlling behavior. I had to confront this issue when I had my first child having grown up as a very lonely only child I had wanted children ever since I could remember, I wanted to experience the sweet innocence of a baby’s laugh and the, in the happy of children playing.

I didn’t have that sound in my house. There was nobody to play with. I wanted so much to give my love to a child, but I wasn’t prepared for the overwhelming feeling of love that I had when my first child was born felt as though my heart would just burst out of my chest. And of course, along with the profound love came the fear. What if something happened to him? Could I survive the pain of his loss? How can I love fully alongside of this fear With my son?

I decided that I would rather love fully rather than hold back and never experience the profound joy of loving fully the saying it’s better to have loved and lost than never loved at all. Took on great meaning for me at that Time. So is it possible to fully love without getting hurt as CS Lewis says, the answer is unequivocally. No, is this because love hurts Again? The answer is no, it’s not love that hurts. It’s the loss of love that hurts and love can be lost.

When a loved one dies when a loved one rejects you and leaves, or when a loved one becomes mean angry, abusive, distant, or disconnected In my work with individuals and couples and parents. I see that many people do not have the courage to love fully. Some people choose not to be in a relationship for fear of getting hurt. Some do interrelationships relationships, but hold back, being too afraid of not being able to survive the pain, if they’re rejected or if they lose their loved one today, Jeff, we all want love, Develop many ways of trying to get love and be loved from the time we’re infants.

We do not thrive without it. When we don’t get it. We may turn to many addictions to fill the emptiness that occurs when we don’t feel Loved. Yeah. As much as we want love, many people have a fear of loving, not a fear of being loved. A fear of loving because unless you’ve done your inner bonding work to create a strong, loving adult who knows how to handle rejection and loss, loving might feel too scary For you. The reason most people are scared of being is because they don’t know how to manage the deeper pain, the existential pain of loneliness, heartbreak, grief, and helplessness over others and over outcomes.

The truth is that it’s not possible to love without risk experience without risking experiencing these very painful feelings. You’re too afraid of them because you don’t know how to lovingly manage them. Then you might be protecting yourself from fully loving. Of course, no one wants to be hurt, but living a life without love hurts more than managing the hurt that comes with losing love. We learned this fear of getting hurt early on. Many of us experience much rejection and loss as little children, way too much for us to handle without a loving parent to help us through it.

But far too often, it’s the parents we’re doing the rejecting through various forms of abuse or our parents, siblings or grandparents might die leaving us with no one to help us manage the intense pain of loss when we’re rejected or abused by people we love, or we lose people. We love, we may become too fearful of being hurt to risk loving. For example, Derek was a highly sensitive child. He grew up with an emotionally unavailable mother and an angry, critical father.

He recalls numerous times as a very young children where he was just so devastated by his father’s anger and his mother’s coldness. Derek decided early on that it was just too risky to love. So he closed down his heart and learn various ways of trying to get love without risking, loving. Now as an adult, he loves only when it feels safe to him to do so. He loves his pets and sometimes his children, but he finds it very scary to love his wife. The problem is that Derek never learned how to love himself. So to love his wife and risk losing her and with no spiritually connected, loving adult, to help them through the pain of loss.

It feels too scary to him, to love. Losing a loved one to death is one of the most heartbreaking experiences in life. The only way we can manage the heartbreak of this loss is when we have a strong connection with the love and comfort of our spiritual without this source of love and comfort, loving might feel too scary yet. If we don’t love, we will never experience the greatest joy in life. The sharing of love, we never learned the important truth that getting love from another is not what feels the emptiness and aloneness with them within at least not permanently that emptiness and aloneness is filled only through loving ourselves and sharing our love with others.

So obviously the fear of being hurt is deeply rooted in our growing up years, I never met anyone who was not hurt by parents, siblings, friends, schoolmates teachers, or religious leaders for most people, childhood was filled with many hurts as little children. As I said, we were too small to manage these hurts. So we learned to close our heart to avoid the pain. It’s all we knew. It’s all we knew to do. However, as an adult, you can learn to manage the hurt and lovingly managing. It allows you to keep your heart open, to loving, since love.

And the pain of heartbreak exists in the same place in the heart as does joy. We cannot shut down the pain of heartbreak without also shutting down the love and the joy of life. Go inside now and see, which is most important to you protecting against the pain of getting hurt or being loving with yourself and others. You can’t do both at the same time as you practice in her bonding and learn to connect with spirit and bring love to yourself, becomes easier and easier to share.

Love to take the risk of being hurt. The risk of loving as Derek is discovering through his inner bonding practice. It is only in loving himself and then sharing his love with his wife and children that the alone and empty place within gets filled. If you’re not willing to be hurt, then you’re never going to experience the sense of connection and intimacy with loved ones that is such a big part of the liveliness of life. Emotional intimacy and connection is one of the most wonderful experiences we ever have.

Nothing else really comes close to the experience of sharing our deepest thoughts and feelings with another of being deeply seen and known of sharing love and passion. Creativity laughter enjoy the experience of intimacy, fills our souls and takes away our loneliness. When people avoid opening their heart to loving, it’s not actually the intimacy itself that people fear. People could be guaranteed. That intimacy would continue to be a positive experience. They wouldn’t have any fear of it. What they fear is the possibility of getting hurt as a result of being intimate, emotionally intimate with another what’s the first fearful thought you think when you think of feeling close to someone, a feeling loving and intimate someone, what many people say is I’m going to be rejected or I’m going to be, I’m going to be abandoned.

If I lose the person I love through death, I won’t be able to handle the pain. Some people say I’m going to be smothered and Gulf controlled. I’m going to lose myself yet. The fear of losing yourself is the deeper fear of loss of the other. Underneath the fear of losing yourself is the fear of losing the other person. People don’t give themselves up unless they’re trying to protect against the hurt of being rejected by the other person. These fears come from the pain of having been rejected or of having too much loss without knowing how to handle grief and heartbreak.

These experiences may have been so painful that you’re afraid to experience them again. The key to handling the fear of getting hurt is of course developing your loving adult self through your inner bonding practice. For example, you’re in a relationship with someone you really love one day out of nowhere, your partner gets angry with you, shuts down to you or threatens to leave you. If you’re operating from the ego wounded part of yourself, your reaction might be, Oh, what did I do wrong? Which mirror, which means that you’re taking it personally and feeling rejected, then you might also get angry or shut down to avoid feeling rejected.

Or you might scurry around trying to make things right, taking responsibility for your partner’s feelings out of your fear, you would likely try to control your partner. However, if you’re operating from your loving adult self, your responses might be, my partner is closed right now and trying to blame me or me for something. My heart hurts from being treated this way. But I know that his or her behavior has nothing to do with me. I can’t cause another person to act this way, nor am I responsible for how he or she chooses to behave. My partner leaves.

I will feel very sad, even heartbroken, but I can manage this feeling with deep compassion and tenderness towards myself. Now I wonder how I can best take loving care of myself until he or she opens up as a loving adult. You wouldn’t take your partner’s behavior personally, and you wouldn’t feel rejected by it, nor would you give yourself up, trying to get your partner to open up. You might ask your partner, what’s wrong with an intention to learn. And if he or she opens up, then you can have a productive learning conversation. If not, then you would compassionately tend to your own heartache and do something loving for yourself.

Like take a walk or call a friend or read a book or whatever else makes you feel good. You Would not fear being left by your partner because you would not be abandoning yourself. You would know that you can and will take loving care of yourself. Developing Your loving adult as a process that takes consistent practice. When you shift your intention from trying to get love and avoid pain, to taking loving care of yourself, you gradually develop your loving adult. The more powerful your loving adult is the less you fear loving you no longer fear rejection because you no longer take others’ behavior personally, and you no longer fear.

Engulfment because you no longer give yourself up to avoid rejection. As a loving adult, you learn how to manage loss so that you don’t have to avoid Love. Janie asked me the following question. I understand that in order to have a loving relationship with another person, I have to be willing to open up and let myself be seen. Even when I feel vulnerable and at the same time, take care of myself. How can I open up to receive from the other? If I’m scared of being hurt, when you’ve been hurt over and over in your relationships, you might be very hesitant to seek a relationship for fear of being hurt.

Again, it might feel challenging to overcome the fear of getting hurt and open to an existing relationship or to a new relationship. You might wonder as many of my clients do, how do I overcome my fear of being hurt again, in a relationship as I spoken about previously, it’s important to remember that there are two kinds of hurt. The heartbreak that comes from somebody being unloving, somebody lying, betraying you being angry or judgmental, suddenly ending a relationship and so on.

Then there’s the hurt that comes from what you’re telling yourself and how you might be judging yourself. Are you telling yourself things like, what did I do wrong? How could I have been so stupid as to believe him or her healing involves learning from and lovingly manage both kinds of hurt when your heart is hurting from rejection or loss or someone’s unloving behavior, you need to bring much kindness and compassion to yourself so that the pain can move through you rather than get stuck and continue to fester. And this might come up. You know, if it’s a big loss can come up over and over and every time it does, you need to lovingly manage it with kindness and tenderness and compassion towards yourself.

You need to move toward the pain rather than trying to avoid it in any way. You need to learn to comfort yourself. As you would comfort a hurting child, bringing love to the heartbreak and letting your inner child who is in pain know that he or she isn’t alone, that you are here with love. And your higher guidance is here with love. Whatever you do to avoid The pain, rather than embrace it with compassion, keeps it stuck in you fueling the fear of getting hurt. Again, You also Need to open to learning about what the heartbreak is telling you regarding the person who’s been hurtful to you.

You need to accept your lack of control over that person and accept that he or she isn’t likely to change. You need to value yourself enough so that you don’t keep going back for more abusive or unloving behavior healing. The fear of getting hurt again means that your inner child knows that you as a loving adult are not going to put him Or her back Into an unloving situation that you’re going to listen to your feelings about someone. Your feelings are an inner source of guidance, and you need to listen to that inner source rather than ignore that inner source or rationalize healing hurt feelings means that you become aware of what you’re telling yourself and how you’re abandoning yourself.

That is causing the fear of getting hurt. Again, judging yourself for someone else’s unloving behavior is a way to believe that if only or different, you could have control over them, which is a very common, false belief. Remember you don’t cause others to lie or be Trey or in any other way to be unloving accepting your lack of control over others will enable you to stop taking other people’s behavior. Personally, you take on other’s behavior personally, because you want to believe that it’s your fault and that if only you changed and did things right, then they would love you judging and blaming yourself is hurtful to you.

As you accept your lack of control over others and stop blaming yourself for their behavior. You’re going to find that you no longer suffer from the hurt feelings that you are causing with yourself, rejection yourself, abandonment. Once you know that you can lovely man, that you can lovingly manage heartbreak and that you’re no longer going to judge yourself for others, unloving and rejecting behavior. Most of the fear of getting hurt will go away. It’s not so much when someone else does that causes the fear. It’s much more about how you deal with loss and with others on loving behavior.

When your inner child knows that you’re not going to reject yourself in the face of a partner’s rejecting behavior, that you’re not going to take that person’s behavior personally. And they’re going to bring compassion to your heartbreak. You will likely feel safe enough to reach out again for a relationship. So I’ve discovered a very simple, yet powerful way of managing hurt, which I have shared before. And I’m going to share again, of managing the deep hurt of loneliness, heartbreak, grief, and helplessness over others. I’m sharing it again because it’s so important in opening to love again, number one, you name the feelings.

One of the most important aspects of lovingly managed hurt is to name the hurt. There’s something magical about saying to the hurting part of you, the feeling part of you, which is your inner child. I know that right now you’re feeling so heartbroken by what’s happening with your partner or your friend or your child or your parent, or over a big loss. And that you’re feeling very helpless over them and or over the situation. I understand how hard it is to feel this. We all want acknowledgement for our feelings and acknowledging these deeply painful feelings is vital for being able to release them.

Naming them is a powerful way to acknowledge them. Second, be kind and compassionate toward your painful feelings. When you feel hurt, you need understanding kindness and compassion. Put your hands on your heart and be kind and compassionate with yourself. It’s a very healing to give this to yourself, allow yourself to cry. If you feel that crying as tears are a healthy way of releasing these feelings out of your body, Stay With the feelings. As long as you need to maybe five minutes, maybe an hour or two hours, whatever, stay with them.

And when you feel them ready to release and number three, release the feelings to spirit. Say I released these feelings to spirit and ask for them to be replaced by peace and acceptance. You can then feel these feelings, at least for now moving out and being released. As I said, you might need to do this over and over every time the feelings come up, Number four, learn from them open to learn, Learning with your higher self about anything. These feelings are teaching you about a person or a situation. What truth are they telling you about this person or a situation?

Is there any Loving action you need to take for yourself in this situation? Number five, take a loving action. Yes. Except whatever truth you learn about and take whatever loving action you’ve been guided to take. And number six is notice how you feel now, notice that you likely feel clear and released and that it might not have actually taken very long with deeper pain. It might, but with the pain, like somebody being angry with you, it might not take that long notice that you can manage your painful feelings and that maybe you no longer need to feel so afraid of the pain of loving.

So sometimes Hard hurt stays with us forever. For me, there are certain past situations that will always cause the existential pain of helplessness, of heartbreak, of loneliness. When something triggers them. I don’t have an expectation that I’m going to reach a place where these particular situations won’t be painful for me, But that’s okay. That’s life. It will come up often for me now, but when they do, I embrace them with deep compassion. Of course, more recent heart hurts, needs more frequent compassion.

Gilda is experiencing both hurt feelings and hurt heart. She Said, I’m having a real challenge that someone that I allowed quote to hurt me deeply, not once, but twice who refused to apologize and take any responsibility. I acknowledge my mistakes in believing his words over his actions and the reality around me. He actively lied and manipulated to facilitate me believing things that turned out to not be true. I’m having a very tough time, forgiving myself for giving him and letting this pain and resentment go.

So one of the things that’s causing Gilda to feel hurt feelings is that she has an expectation that someone who would lie and manipulate her would apologize for it. This is generally an unrealistic expectation and having unrealistic expectations can cause hurt feelings also causing her hurt feelings is the fact that she’s judging herself for quote, allowing this inner self judgment is hurting her. Instead of judging herself, she needs to have compassion for herself so that she can explore why she did allow this and learn from the situation. No learning occurs with self judgment.

Gilda is also experiencing hard hurt. It always hurts our heart. When someone betrays us with lies and manipulations, she will likely not be able to forgive herself or him until she embraces her heart hurt with deep compassion. Her resentment is her way of avoiding her heartbreak and helplessness over the situation. If she fully embraces her heart hurt with deep compassion for herself, she will be able to allow the painful feelings to move through through her for the moment each time. Yeah, they come up, she will again, need to embrace them with compassion.

With time. They will come up less often. But as I stated earlier, there are some painful situations that will always hurt when they’re triggered, whether or not this is one of those situations for Gilda remains to be seen. Even when someone apologizes for past heart hurt, the pain might continue. I’ve had clients whose parents apologized to them. They had believed that the apology would take away the past hurt, but it didn’t. Sometimes this is because they’re still treating themselves in the abusive ways that their parents treated them. Other times the pain doesn’t go away because the heartbreak and helplessness were just too great to completely heal.

This doesn’t mean that we’re emotionally damaged just means that we need to continue to be compassionate with ourselves. Every time the pain comes up, hurt feelings resolve. As soon as we stop taking things personally and learn rather than judge ourselves, heart hurt resolves for the moment when we embrace it with compassion and also learn whatever it might be telling us regarding a person or situation. And of course we need to keep being compassionate toward ourselves. Each time the pain comes up, life is sometimes very painful.

It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you when you currently feel the pain of it or when pain of the past comes up, let’s be gentle with ourselves regarding the pain of life so that we don’t shut off to the love and the joy of life. The bottom line is this, are you willing to be hurt in order to love? Many years ago, I made this important decision. Not that I wanted to be hurt, none of us want to be hurt, but that I was willing to be hurt in order to be loving to myself and loving with others.

That decision, that very deep decision that I was willing to be hurt was life-changing for me when you develop your loving adult and you know, you can manage hurt. That’s when you will be fully open to love. At the time that I made that decision, I knew that I could handle hurt. I had been hurt so many times. I didn’t go crazy or die from it. So I made the decision that I was willing to be hurt rather than close my heart to love.

And that has made all the difference. I encourage you to go to the inner bonding website, take the love yourself course, to learn, to love yourself. Take the other 30 day courses, wildly, deeply, joyously in love, unlocking your inner wisdom, which will help you to have that spiritual connection that you need. Especially when you’re in pain. I send you my love and my blessings.