by Brianna Cheney, M.A.
When I first learned that hurt was considered an unhealthy negative emotion (UNE) in REBT, I was admittedly confused. I could not understand how feeling sorry or disappointed could be healthier than feeling hurt. Years later, having made an effort to observe my own and others’ behaviors, I concur with REBT that feeling hurt tends to lead to self-defeating rather than self-enhancing action.
When feeling hurt, many of us tend to cut off communication with the person who offended us. This often manifests in the form of limiting our communication with the person to one-word responses, completely ignoring the other, or some non-verbal, indirect method of sending the message that you are miffed (e.g., edgily snapping that you’re “fine” when the other asks if something is wrong). The goal of such passive aggressive behaviors –regardless of how conscious- is to express our hurt; however, these behaviors fail to directly communicate our needs and wants and, ironically, often push the other person away. Perhaps even worse is that we stew over our hurt (and all past hurts) as we passively wait for the other person to get the message. Furthermore, expecting that the other person should be the one to initiate an apology may set us up to feel even more hurt when the offender (who may or may not realize their offense) fails to fulfill this expectation. Thus, in many ways, our hurt actually hurts ourselves more than anyone else!
So how can we target feeling disappointed rather than hurt? For starters, we might acknowledge that the demands we place on the other person (e.g., that they shouldn’t have done what they did and, therefore, should be the ones to fix it) are irrational, because the other person already did what they did and –in the words of Dr. Ellis- “should”-ing all over ourselves is not going to change it! Next, we might benefit from identifying our preferences that were not met and clearly communicating our wants and needs to the other person. While it may feel unpleasant to have to be the one to speak up, in the long run, assertive communication is far more likely than the cold shoulder to get your feelings acknowledged and your preferences met!
