How to hurt Someones Feelings
It Hurts To Hurt Someone | Maryann Jacobi Gray | TEDxUCLA
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[Applause]
[Music]
Apollo was among the most beautiful and
virtuous of all the gods
he was an amazing athlete he had the
gift of prophecy he was a poet and a
musician one of his favorite lovers was
immortal
a handsome prince named hyacinth one day
they were playing in the fields and
Apollo's discus veered off course and
hit hyacinth in the head
Apollo ran to him and tried to save him
but he couldn't and hyacinth died in his
arms well if a powerful God like Apollo
was unable to prevent a tragic accident
mere mortals like us have even less of a
chance it's a sad fact of the human
condition that despite the best of
intentions
sooner or later were likely to make a
mistake and someone will be hurt
physically or emotionally for the past
12 years
I've been studying what happens when we
unintentionally hurt each other as a
social psychologist I'm interested in
how these accidents disrupt our lives
and our relationships now most of the
time the damage that we caused is minor
and if we feel any guilt that's just a
good healthy signal to fix whatever it
is we messed up but sometimes the damage
we caused a severe sometimes it can't be
fixed
it hurts to hurt someone when we wound
another person without meaning to
whether those wounds are emotional or
physical we feel wounded as well
psychologists and clergy use the term
moral injury to describe the gist
stress that we feel when our behavior
fails to live up to our moral standards
and because most of us do fall short on
occasion most of us are familiar with
that churning combination of guilt and
shame and self condemnation with a big
hefty dose of defensiveness thrown in
the worst part of moral injury though is
the loneliness human beings have an
innate need to feel accepted and valued
and when we unintentionally hurt someone
that comfortable sense of belonging that
we mostly just take for granted slips
and instead we feel cut off from other
people and separate this lonely
alienation at worst can be nearly
immobilizing and it gets in the way of
making peace with the person we hurt the
wider community and ourselves forty-two
years ago I was a graduate student
living in the small town of Oxford Ohio
on a beautiful spring day not long after
the school's lit out for summer I was
driving down a country road a few miles
outside of town when an eight year old
boy named Brian darted into the street I
tried to swerve but I hit him and he
died before he reached the hospital I
spent most of that afternoon sitting
alone locked in the back of a police car
while the officers investigated after
several hours of that a woman came out
of one of the neighboring houses
convinced the police to open the car
door and she handed me a glass of cold
water and then a few minutes after that
I watched as she came out of her house a
second time and again approached the
officers and this time they let me get
out of the car and follow her back to
her house an old farmhouse where she sat
with me at her kitchen table because she
didn't want me to have to wait alone
anymore
as you could well imagine Brian's death
devastated his family and it traumatized
the community his classmates teachers
and other families in the area and his
death had a profound effect on my life
since that afternoon not a day has gone
by when I've not thought about Brian and
his family I thought about them on the
day I defended my doctoral dissertation
and on the day my father died I thought
about them as I drove over here this
morning I live with the memory of that
small broken body and I live with the
memory of his mother screams and I'll
always wonder if there's something I
could have done differently to avoid
hitting him now when I began this talk
you probably thought you were going to
hear a social scientist describing her
research but now you know my research is
based on my own experience and it's
deeply personal so take a few seconds
check in with yourself ask yourself how
you're feeling and how you're feeling
about me knowing what I've done there
might be sadness compassion maybe a bit
of anxiety there might be boredom or
even resentment that I'm voicing my
story on you whatever your reaction it's
likely that your attitude or feelings
toward me changed as a result of hearing
my story and it's that almost inevitable
shift even when it's driven more by
empathy than judgment that contributes
to the disconnection that people like me
people I sometimes call unintentional
perpetrators experience suddenly our
relationships just feel different well
fortunately very few of us will
accidentally kill someone but almost all
are really virtually all of us will
unintentionally hurt someone in some way
at some time
most commonly hurting their feelings and
this too could result in moral injury a
good example
comes from a personal essay by the
writer comedian and actress Amy Poehler
who described her experience when a
Saturday Night Live skit appeared to
mock people with disabilities that in
itself was bad enough but a few days
after the show aired
Amy discovered she had made fun of a
real person a young woman who struggled
for inclusion had inspired a TV movie at
the time and that young woman had seen
the skit well amy told herself that the
situation was unfortunate but she hadn't
intended to hurt anyone's feelings and
in her words she pretended it went away
she wrote I was afraid to put my hand on
my heart and here the tiny voice
whispering inside me saying that I had
screwed up Amy's situation and mine are
vastly different but we both fell short
of important moral standards we held for
ourselves and we both got caught up in
that toxic storm of guilt and shame and
disconnection alienation and
defensiveness and like so many other
people with moral injury we both tried
to ignore what was going on inside and
soldier on
so it took Amy five years before she was
able to reach out and apologize and even
though I thought about Brian all the
time I kept what happened a secret from
the world for about twenty years because
that's how long it took me to understand
that I couldn't really fully share my
caring and my abilities until I had also
shared my story so whether you're a
celebrity like Amy God like Apollo or a
middle-aged academic how do people
who've unintentionally hurt someone
resolved moral injury when I began
looking into this question some years
back I came up empty and to this day
there's a remarkable lack of resources
for those of us who become unintentional
perpetrators
recently this has started to change and
my own work points to three conditions
for regaining a sense of belonging and
connection the first of these is
accountability owning the damage that
we've done I was not legally culpable
for Brian's death but I was responsible
and I had to acknowledge that before I
could decide what to do about it
the second condition is compassion which
we received from others and also can
give to ourselves compassion means
recognizing the people who hurt someone
unintentionally are themselves in pain
and that pain is evidence of their
humanity and caring and the third
condition is community we're social
creatures we need peer support but even
more important than peer support is
giving back to community making
reparations making amends or doing our
best to make the world a better place
these three conditions of accountability
compassion and community are quite
straightforward but putting them into
practice can be quite challenging and
that's because of the way
unintentionally hurting someone disrupts
our relationships and not just with the
person we hurt but with our Friendship
Circle family community because we lose
a measure of trust that we're accepted
for who we are when we hurt somebody we
tend to withdraw or pull away from other
people we don't want to make them
uncomfortable
we might not feel deserving of support
we might feel hopeless about the
prospects of finding support and we
might be concerned about some form of
retaliation the separation goes always
the injured party the person that we
heard needs to prioritize his or her own
healing they need to do whatever is best
for them to recover from their emotional
or physical injury and other people
those who
witness what took place or hear about it
later or read about it they too might
pull away as you might have experienced
just a few minutes ago when I told you
about Brian these situations are
emotionally stirring so people are upset
they may be unclear on exactly what
happened or why it happened they're not
sure what to say or do and they might
feel angry with the perpetrator even
knowing they didn't set out to do harm
in addition these situations force us to
confront the fact that we have far less
control over ourselves our world and our
fate than most of us want to believe
that's a frightening realization so
frightening that it can be easier to
look away but I've learned that when we
turn away from people who
unintentionally hurt someone we're only
compounding the toll that mistakes an
accidents take and that diminishes all
of us it doesn't have to be that way
what if we choose to support people who
unintentionally
hurt someone that doesn't mean we have
to forgive them it doesn't mean we have
to deny our own feelings but what if we
simply acknowledge that they're hurting
or reminded them that they're still part
of the community a few days after my
accident I received a letter from a girl
about my own age we had never met but
she told me she grew up across the
street from Brian and in fact I had
waited in her house with her mother the
girl wrote she was sorry for everything
that happened and she invited me to go
roller skating with her one night at the
local community center I couldn't bring
myself to join her but I've never
forgotten that small act of kindness and
now when I look back on that letter I
see it met all three of the conditions
for redressing moral injury forthright
acknowledgement of the damage done an
expression of caring
concern and an invitation to participate
in community so I think that girl and
her mother intuitively understood how
much I needed to feel accepted despite
what I had done so the next time you see
me or somebody else has unintentionally
hurt someone I wonder what would happen
if instead of assuming they need their
space you reached for a moment of
connection what might occur if you just
ask them how they're doing or told them
you've been thinking of them you might
feel uncomfortable or ambivalent but one
thing I've learned is that the smallest
act of connection can make a very big
difference for a long time and if you
are feeling badly because you hurt
someone without meaning to well what if
you reached out as well we are all
connected even though it doesn't always
feel that way remember Apollo and
hyacinth Apollo blamed himself for
inflicting a fatal injury on his lover
so we held the dying hyacinth in his
arms and from his blood he created a
beautiful flower that we enjoy even
today like Apollo we have the choice to
create something beautiful from our
mistakes even our tragic mistakes but
Apollo was of God and he could do that
all by himself we're only human and we
need each other
thank you
[Applause]
