The Healing Power of Saying ‘This Hurt Me’
Healing Power. The words often feel impossible to form—that simple, direct acknowledgment: “This hurt me.” Instead, we find ourselves taking endless detours around this fundamental truth. Perhaps we minimize the impact (“It’s not really a big deal”), intellectualize the experience (“I understand why they did it”), or skip directly to forced forgiveness (“I’m already over it”). Maybe we express the hurt as anger or withdrawal, hoping others will somehow translate these signals back to their emotional source. Or possibly we direct the acknowledgment inward through self-blame (“I shouldn’t be so sensitive”).
These indirect paths serve immediate purposes but ultimately prevent the profound healing that becomes possible through direct acknowledgment of hurt. The simple statement “This hurt me” carries transformative power precisely because it does what all these detours avoid—it brings the vulnerable truth of emotional impact into relational space where it can finally be witnessed, processed, and integrated rather than carried alone.
Notice what happens in your body when you simply imagine saying these words to someone who has caused pain. Perhaps your throat constricts slightly, your chest tightens, or your breathing becomes shallow. Maybe you feel an impulse to qualify the statement, to soften its directness with explanations or reassurances. These physical responses reveal the vulnerability inherent in direct acknowledgment—and point toward why this acknowledgment carries such healing potential.
The avoidance of directly naming hurt often begins with early experiences where emotional honesty met dismissal, criticism, or further harm. A child whose pain received responses like “Don’t be so sensitive” or “Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about” quickly learns that vulnerability invites additional wounding rather than care. Another whose expressed hurt triggered parental guilt or fragility develops unconscious protection of others from the impact of their actions. Still another who witnessed caregivers themselves swallowing hurts without acknowledgment absorbs this pattern as the normal approach to emotional pain.
These early adaptations create specific physical and verbal patterns around hurt. Some people develop characteristic tension in their throat or jaw when attempting to express impact, physically blocking direct acknowledgment. Others experience rushing speech that quickly moves away from the vulnerable core toward explanation or reassurance. Still others notice profound fatigue when attempting to articulate hurt, the body’s signal of the exhaustion that comes from carrying unacknowledged emotional weight.
Healing Exercise #1: The Body Response Awareness
Think of a relatively manageable hurt you’ve experienced but haven’t directly acknowledged to the person involved. Notice your body’s response as you imagine simply saying, “When that happened, it hurt me.” Where do you feel tension, constriction, or activation? What impulses arise—perhaps to add explanations, to minimize the impact, or to reassure the other person about your current state? This awareness reveals your particular pattern around acknowledging hurt.
The Healing Journey
The healing journey begins with recognizing the specific ways you habitually move away from direct acknowledgment. Do you consistently intellectualize hurt through analysis that remains safely in your head rather than vulnerably in your heart? Do you automatically shift into reassuring others about the limited impact of their actions? Do you move quickly toward solutions without allowing space to process the emotional wound itself? This inventory reveals the landscape of your avoidance patterns.
Healing Exercise #2: The Deep Breathing Practice
Many find that conscious breathing helps maintain connection to the vulnerable truth of hurt without either disconnecting from the feeling or becoming overwhelmed by it. Try this: Before expressing impact, take several slow, deep breaths into your lower abdomen. Feel your feet connecting firmly with the ground. From this more regulated state, the simple truth—”This hurt me”—can emerge without either defensive armor or overwhelming vulnerability.
The practice of direct acknowledgment holds particular power because it simultaneously honors two fundamental truths that detours often force us to choose between. It respects the reality of our emotional experience rather than minimizing or dismissing genuine impact. And it maintains connection with the other person through direct communication rather than expecting them to interpret withdrawal, anger, or other indirect signals. This integration creates healing possibilities unavailable through either suppression or reactivity alone.
Healing Exercise #3: Direct Acknowledgment with a Trusted Person
Try this practice: With a trusted person, experiment with direct acknowledgment of a minor hurt. Rather than expressing the impact through criticism (“You always do this”), withdrawal (saying nothing but becoming distant), or immediate reassurance (“It’s fine, I’m not upset”), try the simple acknowledgment: “When that happened, it hurt me.” Notice both your internal experience and the interaction that follows. This small experiment creates valuable information about what becomes possible through direct communication.
Understanding the Limitations of Others
Importantly, not all relationships can immediately support direct acknowledgment of hurt. Some people respond to vulnerability with defensiveness, dismissal, or additional harm. The capacity to receive another’s hurt without making it about themselves reflects emotional maturity not everyone has developed. Beginning this practice with people who demonstrate capacity for non-defensive listening creates foundation for gradually expanding direct communication into more challenging relationships.
Separation of Acknowledgment and Accusation
Another healing dimension involves distinguishing between acknowledgment and accusation. Many people avoid naming hurt because they conflate impact with intention, believing that acknowledging pain implicitly assigns deliberate harm. This confusion prevents the possibility of simultaneously honoring your emotional experience while maintaining compassion for another person who may not have intended the impact their actions created. Learning to separate these elements supports the healing power of direct acknowledgment.
Healing Exercise #4: Compassionate Language Practice
Try this approach: Practice phrases that acknowledge impact without assuming intention. “When that happened, I felt hurt. I don’t think you meant to cause pain, but I wanted to share the impact.” This distinction allows the vulnerable truth to be spoken without automatically triggering the other person’s defenses around their intentions, creating space for both emotional honesty and compassionate understanding.
The healing process unfolds differently depending on how others respond to direct acknowledgment. Some relationships experience immediate deepening when vulnerability meets attuned response—the other person receives the hurt without defensiveness, offers genuine recognition of impact, and participates in authentic repair. Other situations involve more complex integration, perhaps requiring multiple conversations as both people gradually develop capacity to stay present with the vulnerable reality of hurt and its repair.
Some circumstances involve acknowledging hurt without reasonable possibility of response from the other person. Perhaps they’re no longer alive or accessible, lack capacity to respond non-defensively, or remain potentially harmful. In these situations, the healing power of acknowledgment can still operate through witnessed expression—speaking the truth of impact with a trusted person who can provide the validation and compassion unavailable from the original source of hurt.
Self-Compassion in the Healing Journey
Throughout this healing journey, self-compassion remains essential. Many people unconsciously blame themselves for both the original hurt and their difficulty directly acknowledging it. The reality is more complex—both the impact and the challenge of its expression often reflect intelligent adaptations to environments where vulnerability proved unsafe. Honoring these adaptations while gradually, compassionately developing greater capacity for direct acknowledgment supports sustainable healing rather than creating additional layers of self-judgment.
With practice, many discover that the simple acknowledgment “This hurt me” gradually becomes more accessible, requiring less preparation and creating less anticipatory anxiety. The throat that once constricted around these words loosens, allowing natural expression. The chest that tightened in anxious anticipation softens, creating space for both vulnerability and resilience. The impulse to immediately qualify or minimize the hurt diminishes, replaced by growing trust in the healing power of emotional truth directly expressed.
This expanded capacity transforms not just individual interactions but entire relational patterns. Partnerships develop deeper intimacy through honest processing of inevitable ruptures rather than their suppression or escalation. Friendships gain authenticity when impact receives direct acknowledgment rather than indirect signals. Even professional relationships transform when appropriate acknowledgment of interpersonal impact replaces either silent resentment or reactive criticism.
Remember that the healing power of saying “This hurt me” unfolds gradually rather than through immediate transformation. You’ll have experiences where direct acknowledgment creates immediate relief and connection alongside situations where the vulnerability still feels overwhelming. You’ll encounter relationships where this honesty deepens trust as well as contexts where others cannot yet meet this directness with maturity. Through it all, each small choice toward honest acknowledgment builds capacity for the emotional truth that ultimately heals not through its avoidance but through its integration.
Keywords: Healing Power, Anxiety, polyvagal theory, gestalt therapy, psychotherapy, parents, parental trauma, somatic experiencing
Contact us: Feel and Heal Therapy Office
