Prisoner Self-Help

From Hurt to Wholeness

by Michael Mallows

Hurt – Hate – Hope – Healing – Wholeness

Inevitably,  the elements overlap and intertwine, and no matter how hard we’ve worked, or how far we’ve come, it is always possible to relapse, which doesn’t necessarily mean that we have to start over!

Hurt is the pain we carry, like a burdensome thing, as a result (or so we tell ourselves) of our past; all the betrayals and abuse, the rejection and ridicule, the physical assaults, all psychological as well as psychic blows. And the shadow of the past might be very long indeed because it probably echoes not only our own childhood, but that of our parents and grand-parents, and beyond.

Hate is usually externalised in our contempt and disdain for others. We talk to or about the bosses or bullies who have caused us distress. We build walls against people who are different, we treat children with disrespect, we betray the partner we cheat on. Blaming them (or our past) is a smoke screen for the deeper hurt and the greatest hate – that we are out of love with who we think we are, as evidenced by the countless ways in which we treat ourselves unkindly or even dangerously! In short, when ever we treat others in ways that demean or degrade them, we reveal how we really feel about our selves! 

Hope by definition, hope is wishful thinking; if we have it already, hope is redundant! We hope for something that does not yet exist. When we focus on what’s wrong with other people, hoping they will change so that we will feel better about ourselves, we are not paying attention to our own faults and failings. This is hardly surprising if we don’t really like ourselves very much, which is evident in the way we deny and delude ourselves that the problem is caused by other people – past or present – and we are only the effect. If we have nor resolved, let alone recognised how our sense of self is riddled with feelings of inadequacy, hurt and hate, then hope is already contaminated.

Healing will only truly start when we recognise our meanness of spirit – to self and others, when we acknowledge our spiteful thoughts and gossip, when we admit our narrow minded prejudices, when we take responsibility for our vindictive acts and attitudes.And we can heal deeper wounds if, in the moment that we hurt the most, when we believe, and others agree, that we would be perfectly justified in retaliating, in seeking revenge, in hitting out with words or actions, in getting our own back by making others suffer, if, in that moment we choose not to seek vengeance or retribution.In that fleeting moment, even though we are hurting, if we go against the habit of hurting back, we have transcended the terrible weight of personal and collective history.We have chosen to act from a wellspring of love (even though we might still feel hateful), and to create a little and yet a vast space into which we and others might choose to grow.

Wholeness requires that we include rather than exclude other people, even if they are not as we would wish them to be. We treat them as we would like to be treated and would treat ourselves if we were filled with self-validating self-esteem. In this place, we become exemplars of the way we’d like to world to be. We stand as the possibility of love where, all too easily and all too often, we have previously been willing to hit out, to hurt, to hate, ‘just to teach them a lesson’! The lesson they learn when we pass on our hurt and hate is hopelessness in a bleak world because what we do is what we teach. And everything we do says who we think we are! If the above does not apply to you, you might anyway find it a useful frame of reference when you listen not only to what people tell you, but what they don’t say.

Michael Mallows is a psychotherapist, supervisor, trainer, consultant, author and expert on adoption. He is developer of SET (Social Effectiveness Training) and CRAFTY Listening.