A theory of hurtfulness

On my private blog I (narcissistically) asked for some candid feedback about how these people – my internet friends – perceive me or how they suspect I am perceived by Wehr in the World readers whom I am less friend-y with.

I was nervous about reading their comments because I thought it was going to hurt (some of these people take pride in their honesty and directness, which I love about them). But when I read the comments, even though some of them were of the negative feedback variety, I felt nothing – no pain or ego bruise – just a little bit of confusion about what exactly they meant. And that led me to theorize about what kind of feedback hurts. And the answer seems exceedingly simple:

What hurts is what seems reasonable but we haven’t yet accepted as true.

For example, you can call me reclusive, stubborn, narcissistic, socially anxious, and immature all day long, but it won’t hurt a bit (unless maybe you’re really mean about it) because I’ve already accepted these things as true.

When I say “accepted” I don’t mean that I’m content with them and I’m glad they’re there; I’m just saying I’ve acknowledged their existence. I’m not hiding from their reality. And so when my internet friends offer this feedback, rather than feeling hurt by it, I feel slightly positive about it because it’s like, yep, good observation, we’re seeing the same thing. Perceptions are not completely out of whack.

Which leads me to a second, related, but significantly more questionable theory: The reason why some stuff hurts is because it’s motivation to change, or at least to acknowledge it as true so that you can start changing.

Similarly, I suspect we feel exhilarated by positive feedback when it seems reasonable but we haven’t yet accepted it as true. And maybe the reason why we feel exhilarated is so that we can absorb it as part of “the happy bucket” of our identities so that we can get down to the business of doing something with it.

The implication is that if you feel hurt or exhilarated by a piece of feedback, you probably ought to be paying attention to it and asking what it means (as opposed to trying to downplay your irrational emotions [although sometimes you should do that, too]), because it might be trying to tell you something important (that you didn’t already know).