So you’ve hurt a friend. You realized, after all this time that you have been stuck deep in victim mode and ended up inflicting wounds onto someone else by scratching their heart while trying to crawl your way out of the mess or hurt them by slamming the door on them so hard it hit them to stay in your own state of mind because you feared getting hurt again like you did in the past. After learning of the wounds you’ve caused your friend, you fall into another deeper abyss. You don’t know what to do now. Well, here’s what you can do.
- Accept that you’ve hurt someone. That there’s nothing you can do to change the past and how you’ve acted whether it was out of hurt, fear, resentment, or anger. But realize that you can change from now on.
- Take accountability. Don’t give excuses. Don’t justify your actions. Don’t deflect or place blame on them. Reflect on how you’ve acted, why you’ve hurt this person and why they are hurt because of you. Then, if they are willing to hear you out, apologize to this person. Sincerely express your feelings of remorse and that you understand why they are hurt by stating how your actions were harmful to them and that you wont repeat these actions again.
- Respect that your friend may want some time to heal and process their wounds. Give them space and wait until they are ready to be okay with speaking to you again. If you have also been hurt by this friend which lead you to acting the way you did, communicate this clearly with them and have a heart to heart talk of how the two of you can improve your friendship. Or, if they have stated they no longer want to be contacted, accept their boundary and don’t reach out to them to change their mind. Respect their decision and come to terms that your friendship with this person has ended.
- Give yourself time to heal and forgive yourself. Yes, you deserve forgiveness. Even if your friend did not seem to forgive you, you at least deserve forgiveness from yourself to move on from this. Give yourself the same compassion and understanding you gave your friend but also don’t forget what you’ve done and take it as a lesson to keep within you as you move on. (If you are stuck on this step, continue reading for further help.)
- Were you able to forgive yourself? Or are you in the process of forgiving yourself? If so, brace yourself for another thing you will have to accept. Ready?
Accept that you may hurt someone again in the future. As you live your life you will come across situations again where someone has been hurt because of you. Maybe you didn’t intend on hurting them, but it happened anyway. When that time comes: apply the steps above again and repeat. Forgive yourself. Move on, live your life while keeping in mind what you’ve learned differently or new this time and do the best you can to apply these lessons in your actions from now on and onwards.
For those still stuck on Step 4. It’s okay if you are still stuck on this step. If you still have trouble trying to forgive yourself, that’s fine. It shows how much you regret hurting this person and that you don’t want to cause hurt again. Yes, you may struggle with wanting to clear your conscious and coming to terms with the fact that you are the reason that someone else is hurting. Despite these heavy feelings you are experiencing about yourself. I still want you to give yourself the same compassion and understanding you give to others.
Yep, it’s the same as step 4. There’s no other way to forgive yourself if you want to move on. Alongside time, you must grant yourself these two things in order to stop living in the past and live in the present. Otherwise, you are only weighing yourself down and preventing yourself from further growth and opportunities to live as a kinder person. You will only live as someone trying to make constant amends with their past and that won’t really come across as totally genuine or sincere to anyone, especially not even yourself.
So…take your time to heal. And if you’re still having trouble on how to give yourself compassion and understanding, here are some thoughts you can keep to help you out. (These thoughts can also apply to Step 2 if you are having trouble identifying why you acted the way you did.) :
Before we begin. I want to clarify, these thoughts are just to grant yourself more understanding towards your actions and finding out why you acted the way you did. It is not to justify your actions or the hurt you caused. By understanding yourself better, you will be able to act from a larger perspective of not only yourself but of others. As you learn about the reasons behind your feelings and actions, you will also be able to give yourself permission to be compassionate towards yourself if you had trouble doing so.
Let’s think about it. What lead you to hurt this person?
Was it a situational moment where you took out your stress and anger about an overwhelming life event happening at the time and ended up lashing out on your friend?
Were you feeling resentment about your friend’s words or actions towards you but you didn’t really take the time to think of the words to clearly explain why their actions bothered you or why their actions made you feel resentment towards them? Did this end up in attacking their character with a poor choice of words to describe how you perceive them when you feel resentment towards them because you were too impatient to take the time to really communicate and clarify why you feel this way towards them?
Did you speak harshly towards them in hopes that they will understand you better and won’t hurt you again in the future but your words came out all wrong and offered no actual insight about how they made you feel and why?
Has some of their actions and personality traits subconsciously reminded you of aspects of yourself that you dislike or are insecure about yourself that lead you to actually projecting these feelings of insecurity towards your friend?
Do you feel as if you acted out of fear because of thoughts that your friend doesn’t actually want to be your friend so you end the friendship first in order to not get hurt when actually it was just you self sabotaging the friendship because of your fear of abandonment and to gain a sense of control in how you feel?
There are many reasons why your actions hurt your friend. It could be one of the reasons above or more or even all of them. Or perhaps it’s none of them and you will have to sit with yourself to find out why your actions hurt your friend.
Whatever the reason may be, once you find it and gain more understanding and clarity as to you who are as a person– you have taken the first step into forgiving yourself by granting yourself an open mind about the reasons behind your behaviors.
By understanding yourself better, you can now apply this understanding into patience towards yourself and others.
There’s a saying that hurt people hurt others. It doesn’t justify the hurt that is caused. But grants some perspective.
So if you apply this saying about yourself, may be you can see that somewhere inside you is hurting and needs your compassion in order to heal and grow so that you can prevent the same incident from happening again due to this hurt inside yourself.
Instead of laying in the guilt of hurting someone and closing yourself from the rest of the world altogether so that you will no longer hurt someone else- forgive yourself and live as a kinder person who brightens other people’s day whether they are a new friend or stranger. It is better than living in recluse of eternal self punishment where you are not helping anyone else, not even yourself.
You deserve to heal and become a kinder person. You deserve to love yourself.
You deserve to live a good life despite your past.