Not All “Hurt” People Hurt People: Turning Pain Into Purpose

There’s a phrase: Hurt people hurt people. But this is only half the truth. The whole truth is that hurt people can choose to heal and help people instead.

Whether it was the pain caused by abuse, discrimination, betrayal of a spouse or friend, criticism from a parent, addiction, bullying, miscarriage, loss - the list goes on and on. The reality is simple: If you’ve lived, you’ve been hurt. Pain is universal. The journey to healing begins with deciding what we do with that pain.

The Cultural Pressure to Be "Unbothered"

This is where the healing journey gets complicated. As Taylor Swift reminds us in her song, “Eldest Daughter,” it’s hard to be sincere publicly because that’s not what our culture rewards. Our society pushes us to adopt a public self—a tough, "unbothered" façade that makes us appear too busy to care. This cultural reward system results in a public life we portray and a private self we only share with those we trust. When we’re pressured to be tough and unbothered, we’re discouraged from admitting we’re hurting or have been hurt. This societal value system is exactly why it is so difficult to take the first step toward healing.

From Victimhood to Agency

The first step to healing is acknowledging you’ve been hurt. It doesn’t seem that complicated, but as mentioned above, our culture doesn’t support this. There’s two main points I make in this post that I hope people are able to take away with them and this is the first one:

There’s a crucial difference between being a victim and living in victimhood.

Victimhood: Keeps people stuck, every problem is external, and they constantly complain about the same problems repeatedly without the willingness to do the messy work of change.

Agency: I think of agency as knowing you’re the author of your own story in control of the narrative versus feeling like a character in a story written about you. It’s acknowledging you were a victim, but refusing to stay there. A healed person honors their pain but won’t be defined by it. They confront themselves, and through that, they transform their suffering into purpose. Their story becomes about connection and support of others, not about sulking and complaining.

This transformation requires embracing vulnerability—the very thing our culture does not reward. 

This TED Talk is a look further into how the power of personal agency lies in learning to "locate the doors hidden within you" and by embracing vulnerability and taking action, which can "unlock inconceivable kinds of freedom.”

The Healing Journey: Confronting the Shame Shivers

Healing is not warm, cozy, soft, and fuzzy. It’s raw, uncomfortable, and sometimes miserable. It forces you to sit with all the feelings you’ve avoided. It requires vulnerability and humility. Awareness brings grief before peace. (Ok, maybe there’s going to be three takeaways.) Here’s the second:

Growth is directly tied to how much truth we can handle about ourselves.

This is the messy, introspective work that breaks the cycle of hurt. To move forward, we must ask the hard questions:

• Am I living my truth or am I living a lie?

  
  

• Do my actions align with my words?

  
  

• What role do I play in strained relationships?

  
  

• What emotions do I keep running from?

Recently, I heard the term “shame shivers”—a perfect description of revisiting moments you’d rather bury. Confronting shame is a large part of what makes healing so uncomfortable. It’s tempting to push it away, but avoidance makes life heavier. Shame and resentment are toxic! Burying them doesn’t make them disappear. Which leads us to the third core takeaway:

If nothing changes, nothing changes.

Not Everyone Claps For Growth

Change is threatening when we’re not ready for it. People stuck in their own destructive patterns may resist your healing. Sometimes it feels like they’re trying to derail you. This isn’t usually intentional malice, it’s self-preservation. Ahhh shoot! Maybe four takeaways: 

Vulnerability makes people uncomfortable. Their natural defense mechanisms kick in forcing them to brush off your vulnerability and hide their own with jokes, changing the subject, or dodging the issue. They're projecting their fear of being exposed and their commitment to staying in survival mode onto you.

The healing process teaches us to recognize cues our nervous system is sending us and reminds us to pause, process, reflect, and respond instead of instantly reacting. You’ll start to notice the signs your body is sending you when you truly feel safe with someone, if they're draining your energy, or if you're sacrificing your own needs and absorbing the energy of and for others. So, this means some relationships will fade away and that's okay. It can feel uncomfortable at first, but healing also helps you realize that reality and potential are two different things. You can't force anyone into healing.

The Masks I Hid Behind

People dismiss others’ experiences because they can’t face their own pain. I know this because I’ve done it too. The personal facades I’ve hidden behind (and still occasionally fall back into) look like:

Toxic positivity: Shutting down others’ sadness with “good vibes only.”

Perpetual fixing: Avoiding inner chaos by trying to solve everyone else’s problems.

Constant busyness: Staying "too busy" with school, work, and social events to acknowledge my grief, anxiety, and resentment. Convincing myself that taking time for rest and solitude was "selfish."

Perfectionism: Obsessing about flawless execution in work and school to compensate for being criticized.

Professional Status-Seeking: Chasing titles and paychecks believing it would lead to "success" and fulfillment.

Additional facades you may be guilty of or see in others:

Perpetual Control: People who desperately try to control. Control other people or obsessing over things like cleanliness/organization to avoid confronting internal chaos.

Material Status-Seeking: Focused on acquiring and displaying expensive possessions (homes, cars, designer goods), often beyond one’s means, risking debt and instability in order to fill an internal void.

Social Status-Seeking: Centered on curating an image of exclusivity and superiority, through name-dropping, elite activities often leading to shallow or isolating relationships.

Power-Seeking: Driven by the need to dominate others, exploiting authority or bending rules under the belief that influence makes them “untouchable,” often resulting in corruption or eventual downfall.

This documentary is about Alex Rodriguez's path to healing. It's an excellent example of how we create facades to hide our deepest insecurities. He opens up about how his transformation to dismantle his destructive patterns included the uncomfortable work of therapy. It forced him to face shame, own his story, and start the process of healing.

Giving Yourself Grace

Dysfunction becomes clearer as you heal and once you see it, you can’t unsee it. It’s a bit unsettling because you wonder how you couldn’t see how much dysfunction you were tolerating and exhibiting sooner when it seems so obvious now. The stories you created to protect yourself start to unravel. Awareness is what helps you build your new baseline. A baseline that no longer runs on approval. That’s the beginning of real healing.

When your body leaves survival mode, you’ll start to recognize patterns

and you’ll begin to observe instead of absorb.

Forgive yourself for what you tolerated while living in survival mode. One of my favorite mantras I often repeat to myself when I feel like I wasted precious time, missed wonderful opportunities, didn't recognize my destructive behaviors, sacrificed my wants and needs, or let people dictate my life making me a character in the story THEY wanted is:

You did the best you could with what you had at the time.

Remember the shame mentioned earlier? You cannot shame your way into healthy patterns.

Survival Mode vs. Healing Mode

Avoidance behaviors are just symptoms of a deeper, fundamental choice: survival or healing.

Survival Mode (Deflecting, Minimizing, Dismissing) focuses on protecting the self and deflecting responsibility, leading to unresolved pain.

• Control: Believing the issue is “out there” and protecting the image of “having it together.”

  
  

• Projection: When a person unconsciously attributes their own unacceptable thoughts, feelings, or impulses to someone else to avoid painful self awareness. An example of this would be if someone says “you’re too sensitive” or “can’t you take a joke” after making a comment that was clearly hurtful or insensitive. They’re projecting the blame for their own poor behavior onto the listener’s lack of "sense of humor." 

Healing Mode (Naming Cycles, Honoring Stories, Creating Safe Spaces) involves choosing humility and agency, transforming suffering into connection and purpose.

• Responsibility: Facing the hard emotions and transforming them. Choosing humility, owning mistakes, and focusing on what you can change—you.

  
  

• Authenticity: Acknowledging your reality, maybe even sharing it, so suffering becomes shared insight.

My Why

I spent years in survival mode, carrying scars from bullying and a psychologically, emotionally, and physically abusive relationship when I was younger. The hurt and the shame I carried made me wary, and when I witnessed cruelty, manipulation, hurtful behavior, my first instinct was to shut down or lash out usually by stooping to their level. Even now, when I muster the courage to speak up against cruelty, injustice, or unethical behaviors, it’s hard to shake the feeling of sounding self-righteous. I try to remain cognizant that the sting of that feeling is often a projection from those still stuck in survival mode. 

In more recent years, my pain was due to witnessing my mom’s battle with cancer and how relentless cancer can be to some people. There are images that will haunt me forever. Then came the pain from relief she was no longer suffering mixed with the intense grief that she was gone.

Those of us who have made the decision to share some of our stories and lessons have chosen agency over victimhood, so others don't feel as alone as we once did. We strive to show kindness, or at least civility, because we know what it feels like to be on the receiving end of cruelty and/or injustice. I want to give people hope. I'm not a professional, but I want you to know there are resources out there with the tools to support and guide you. I can attest that real peace and joy cannot be achieved through avoidance and staying in survival mode. Real peace and joy can be achieved through acknowledging, owning, and transforming your pain.

Which Will You Be?

So, yes, hurt people sometimes hurt people. But that’s not the only truth. Hurt people can help people too. The choice is ours: we can grow out of victimhood and into agency. I know healing isn’t pretty. It’s not something most people want to hear about, and it's definitely not social media worthy. It is, I believe, the only path to peace and the path to real, deep connection.

When you’re face-to-face with your own pain, you have a choice: stay in the defensive comfort of survival mode or use your hard earned scars as a roadmap toward peace—for yourself and for others.