Emotions are powerful. When your feelings hurt, every fiber of your being hurts.
We don’t like to hurt.
So, hiding our hurt feelings helps us cope. We come up with good reasons for keeping everything inside.
“Silence is safe,” we think.
But unfortunately, invisible emotional pain creates a domino effect of psychological and physical ailments.
Hiding our hurt feelings eventually results in the inevitable–an inability to hide anymore.
Ironic, isn’t it? We hide our feelings because we fear getting hurt again, but then end up getting hurt again anyway.
There are many reasons we choose to suffer silently.
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at 3 of the reasons we continue to hide our hurt.
We hope our insights encourage you to share your hurt with others so you don’t have to bear the pain alone.
Shame sends you into hiding when your feelings hurt
The definition of shame according to Oxford Languages is:
“A painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior.”
This “consciousness” of wrong or foolish behavior can be a result of something we’ve done or an action someone else has taken. Usually, our feelings get hurt because of another person’s behavior toward us. Therefore, for the sake of explaining shame here, we’ll talk about it in relation to how we believe someone else wrongly treated us.
There is a wide spectrum of shame. We all feel shame to some degree. But when it comes to relationships and shame, we hide hurt feelings because our pain is the door to our shame. Once our loved one opens that door, we suspect there’s no turning back.
We fear that our partner will dig deeper if we disclose our emotional pain.
As an example, our shame can be triggered when we feel our spouse insulted us.
On the surface, it seems like we should easily be able to tell our spouse they hurt our feelings.
We wonder if our feelings are stupid.
But, we believe our feelings might be invalid because they’re tied to the shame we felt a long time ago as a child.
Your husband’s innocent teasing reminded you of your parent’s “harmless” jabs which always resulted in verbal, and maybe even physical warfare between your mom and dad.
You fear your relationship will end up the same but you’re afraid to say so. In reality your husband meant no harm, but he will never know the extent of your hurt, if you don’t share your shame.
This is just one example of how shame shapes our habit of hiding pain.
Of course there are other extreme examples. But, we hope this example gives you a starting point for being more vulnerable with your husband or wife when it comes to hurt feelings.
Lack of Trust scares you from opening your heart
Of course, lack of trust impacts our willingness to share our feelings with others. Especially when it comes to revealing shame. But there are different ways a lack of trust can stop us from opening up.
Think of a time when you told a friend or relative about your hurt feelings. Did they invalidate your feelings by saying things like,
“I can’t believe you are letting that bother you!”
“You’re so sensitive!”
“Well, now I know I need to be careful around you!”
All of these statements cause us to distrust when it comes to being transparent with our emotions.
But aside from outright disrespect by others over your feelings, there’s the more covert dismissiveness.
Perhaps you finally get up the courage to share your hurt feelings in a relationship. However, your significant other responds by stubbing up to make the point that they’ll never win with you.
There’s a new popular term, “gaslighting” that therapists use to explain these behaviors. But the fact is, we’re all gas lighters to some degree. It’s up to us to persist in explaining our feelings. If your partner continues to pretend “you’re the crazy one,” it might be time to take a more drastic action, such as a temporary separation, to get their attention.
If someone loves you, they’ll pay attention to your grievances and show a willingness to find a solution.
Whether you trust others or not, trust yourself!
Your feelings are important. Keeping it all inside will be detrimental to your mental and physical health.
Societal norms invalidate your hurt feelings
Lastly, societal norms impact our level of comfort when sharing our hurt feelings.
There’s the obvious misnomer that “men don’t cry.” How can someone be expected to share their hurt feelings if they aren’t even allowed to cry?
The irony in many relationships is that wives want their husband to be more vulnerable but when husbands try to be more vulnerable, wives secretly wonder if this signals his weakness.
Of course, many romance movies depict the man who transforms into a big teddy bear, after many years of stuffing his feelings.
But the reality is, men are still at a disadvantage when it comes to society’s view of openly sharing their feelings.
Does this mean women have it easy?
Not necessarily. Men are largely let off the hook where expressing their emotions are concerned. But this may snowball into impatience and detachment when it comes to hearing their wives out.
Some women don’t want to share their hurt feelings because they don’t want to play into the expected norms.
We realize a lot of these points are cliché and in many instances, not applicable anymore. These emotional imbalances can occur in many types of relationships, regardless of one’s sex.
Conclusion
To summarize, it’s imperative you learn to share your hurt feelings. Whether you’ve been keeping it all inside because of shame, trust issues, societal expectations, or a reason we haven’t covered here–it’s healthier to express yourself. Invisible suffering will ultimately kill you. Kill your spirit, kill your relationships, and slowly kill your resolve to improve your psychological and physical health.
LoveLifeLinks.com believes the cornerstone of a successful love relationship is freedom of expression, even when it hurts.
Remember, you can feel love anywhere. Anytime. All the time.
