Can you feel hurt without actually being harmed?
And is there a difference between hurt and harm?
This is a conversation that we’ve been having in our Patreon facebook group (exclusive for our Patreon supporters; you can join for as little as $5 a month!), and I thought I’d raise it here too.
Joanna Sawatsky (my co-author) told me a few years ago how, during her period of infertility, she found attending baby showers at church really difficult. But she had to understand, “that mom is not being pregnant AT me.” It wasn’t about her.
She was allowed to find it hurtful at the same time as realizing that no one was actually harming her.
I simply can’t listen to the song It Is Well with My Soul, because we played it at my son’s funeral. I can’t do it. This weekend, while I was sorting baby clothes at my younger daughter’s house, it played on her phone and she started singing. I asked her to skip the song, and she apologized because she had forgotten my trigger.
I felt hurt, but she hadn’t harmed me.
Often we use the words “this harmed me” when what we really mean is “I felt hurt when…”
In both hurt and harm you may feel distress and grief, but in only one case was this intentional, and potentially in only one case are there serious repercussions.
Sometimes we can feel really, really bad when no one has actually harmed us. It doesn’t change the fact of the feeling, which is legitimate and often based in something else very real (and often past harm). But I find this a distinction that is helpful, personally, so that I don’t react in anger with people who aren’t actively harming me, even if I’m hurt.
Harm is about three components: Proximity, intent, and results.
1. Proximity can cause hurt to become harm.
People who are close to you should care if you feel hurt.
Let’s imagine that my daughter hadn’t turned the song off, and had said, “Mom, you’re being ridiculous, and it’s my house, and I like this song.”
That would harm me. She’s someone close in proximity to me, who does owe me (as I owe her) compassion and empathy. When you’re close with someone, they should care about your triggers and how you are feeling, and if they are doing something that hurts you, even if it’s not intentional and even if it’s not objectively bad, that should matter to them.
If it doesn’t matter to them, they are now communicating something entirely different from the original trigger. They are saying, “your feelings are so inconsequential to me that I won’t change something that is in my power to change, because to me, my convenience trumps your grief.”
That has now crossed into the realm of harm.
And I think this is highly related to proximity. Your spouse, kids, siblings, parents, best friends–they should know your triggers and care about them, rather than minimize them. They should show empathy and compassion. If, on the other hand, I believed that praise team leaders at a church of 1000 had the responsibility to not play hymns that triggered me, that, I think, would be different. If a church had a way for people to report what songs triggered them, so they could be notified beforehand, that may be wonderful, but it’s also a lot to ask. And a church playing a song that you find triggering may cause hurt, but it hasn’t been harmful. It’s reminded you of something painful, but it hasn’t done more harm.
I think we should all work to be as compassionate to those around us as possible. But often we just have no way of knowing how something will land, and we all also have to be responsible for our own stuff.
2. Intent can also turn hurt into harm
When someone knows your triggers, and deliberately pushes them, that’s harm.
When someone knows that something does demonstrable harm, and ignores that data and keeps doing it anyway, that’s harm.
When an author knows that their book is associated with harmful outcomes, but refuses to take that book back, update it, or speak out against it, then that author is now complicit in harm in multiple ways.
3. Results also distinguishes hurt from harm
This is tricky but important to measure clearly
Here’s how Henry Cloud and John Townsend from the book Boundaries explain it:
Here’s the distinction: while hurt is the experience of something painful, it may not be damaging. But harm is different. Harm creates significant problems in the three primary areas of life: withdrawal from other relationships; personal decline; diminished performance…When problems happen in a relationship, keep pushing through hurt, as long as you are committed to the relationship. But pay attention to when things cross the line into harm.
So not all hurt is harm–but it can become harm.
Let’s say that Joanna had felt really, really triggered when her church held baby showers, and she had insisted that the church was doing harm to her and every infertile woman by holding baby showers. And let’s say that the church continued to hold baby showers.
Joanna could make the case that the church is harming her. But is it really?
Yes, Joanna feels sad every time there is a baby shower, and feels as if the church is marginalizing her and doesn’t care about her. But there is no intention to harm her, and she isn’t actually experiencing long-term results that are impeding her relationships, her personal mental health, or her performance in other activities. Even if she becomes depressed, it is not the presence of the baby showers that is doing that, but rather her own pain at her infertility, which has now been pressed in a fresh way.
Of course it would be kind for churches, when they issue invitations and announcements about baby showers, to have a disclaimer like, “we recognize that this event may be difficult for those walking through infertility, and want people to know there is no obligation to attend. Please take care of yourself.” It is always kind to accommodate people’s triggers as much as possible, and anticipate them as much as possible. But triggering someone, on the whole, is not actually causing harm.
I know this is tricky, but I saw a great conversation on Twitter about this, and I think this example may clarify.
My parents were abusive.
As adults, my brothers and I all established different boundaries for them. My youngest brother lived at home for longer than my middle brother and me. He continues to talk to and see my parents regularly and keeps in close contact with them even now that he’s independent. Middle Brother cut them off completely and has no contact with them whatsoever. I’m in between. I see them every couple of months and for holidays/birthdays we’ll exchange gifts. They have the same visibility into my social media as the general public. All three of us kids keep in touch with each other.
Despite the fact that we each have different boundaries for when, how often, and how much information we share with our parents, none of us is abusive to the other by having different boundaries. We’ve communicated our boundaries to each other, none of us is obligated to join any other kid’s visit with our parents, and we don’t talk about our siblings with our parents. Each of us manages our relationship with them independently.
It sometimes hurts to see Youngest Brother have opportunities and be able to take risks that I never had and never could because I decided that my mental health was more important in the long run than either allowing my parents to hold coercive strings over me or giving them a clear narrative for our mutual friends where I was manipulating them by taking their money and gifts but not being part of the family in any other way. I know it hurts my sister-in-law to not have the relationship she’d hoped for with her in-laws.
Youngest Brother isn’t harming or abusing me by having different boundaries. Mine aren’t compromised by his.
I feel hurt sometimes because our actual abusers— my parents— forced us to make tradeoffs no teen should have to consider and permanently harmed each of us in life-altering ways. I’m not harming Middle Brother or SIL by still talking with our parents. They have a great life and chose different tradeoffs than I or Youngest Brother. Feeling emotionally pained by it is also okay! It’s normal!
Emotional resiliency means recognizing that “Pain when X” doesn’t necessarily mean “Pain caused by X.”
Sometimes X is just a catalyst, neither good nor bad for you, and deeper analysis is required to identify the root cause of your pain and whether lashing out, tolerance, or acceptance is the best response.
Freedom from abuse doesn’t mean freedom from emotional pain. It doesn’t mean freedom from being in some kind of community with people who have different boundaries than you. Being in community means that inevitably, these kinds of conflicts will happen and we’ll feel things in response! Freedom from abuse means freedom from other people’s boundaries having influence or impact on yours.
I thought that was so well put. Not all emotional pain stems from harm done.
On the other hand, some things do objectively cause harm, and we can measure them.
That’s what The Great Sex Rescue project (and the She Deserves Better project) are all about! We’ve measured the harm caused by certain evangelical teachings on sex and marriage, so that we know, for instance, that teaching girls that they are at least partially responsible for keeping boys from sinning results in a 68% higher chance of marrying an abuser.
That teaching does demonstrable harm–as do teachings like all men struggle with lust, or a woman is obligated to give her husband sex when he wants it. Or teachings like “abuse is not a valid cause for divorce” (as Focus on the Family holds). When you believe the marriage takes precedence over the safety of the people in that marriage, you do harm to them.
"A groundbreaking look into what true, sacred biblical sexuality is intended to be. A must-read." - Rachael Denhollander
What if you're NOT the problem with your sex life?
What if the messages that you've been taught have messed things up--and what if there's a way to escape these toxic teachings?
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It’s important to distinguish between hurt and harm.
It’s possible to err too far on the side of trying to diminish all hurt–like refusing to hold any baby showers or acknowledge any babies in the congregation. We might try to protect someone from hurt that we actually cause harm to others–by refusing to recognize people’s milestones; by ostracizing or treating unkindly certain people or groups who trigger others.
But it’s also possible to err too far on the side of ignoring harm, refusing to look at how our actions are impacting others, especially those we love.
I hope we can start thinking more about the distinction between hurt and harm, because it affects church life, family life, and more. Let’s treat each other with empathy and compassion for our hurts, while also realizing that we need to take responsibility for our own stuff!
How would you distinguish between hurt and harm? Do you see people claiming harm when it’s merely hurt? Do you see people causing harm and ignoring it? Let’s talk in the comments!
Being a total word nerd, I’ve just been down a rabbit hole looking at the differences between ‘hurt’ and ‘harm’. It seems like in most cases, ‘hurt’ is very temporary and something you recover from quickly and it doesn’t necessarily cause you any damage, while harm is damage that is permanent or semi-permanent.
And while it’s not possible to be hurt without realising it, it is possible to be harmed without realising it. I think it’s also possible to harm others without realising it. I’m thinking of all those who have recommended or taught unhelpful messages in the past which harmed those who received it, but they truly believed the information they were sharing was good and healthy.
An important distinction. Because women say to church teachings, “This causes harm” and the church likes to respond with, “No, YOU’RE causing harm by pointing out harm.”
No.
It may hurt to hear that you have harmed someone, especially if that wasn’t your intent. But that is not the same as causing you harm, and they are not interchangeable. It is straight up DARVO to say otherwise.
10000%
At the same church where I had to remind myself that no one was being pregnant at me a number of other women had also gone through infertility. My experience was quite short and lasted a bit more than a year – other ladies had years and years of infertility and some were unable to conceive at all.
And so every time the church did baby dedications or did any other similar day the church would have a slide up for the whole time reminding congregants that the flowers on the piano symbolized understanding of and solidarity with the pain of those undergoing infertility, loss, and an unmet desire for children.
A few years later, when I was on a volunteer leadership team, I asked that they change the policy. The slide about remembrance was great. But I suggested that in be in a slideshow alongside family pictures of the people dedicating their kiddos. Even though we were super involved in the church sometimes I wouldn’t know a family and it was nice to put faces to names. And then the focus would be on remembering the hurting and celebrating the precious littles.
The church happily switched over. Super simple change but i really thought it made a world of difference.
I also want to add that while for *me* in my short period of infertility going to Mother’s Day at church and going to baby showers was very important to me, that isn’t a value judgement or a statement of what people should do. So much love to those who walk the difficult road and different people will have understandably different needs. That’s totally ok. ❤️
I love your suggestion about the change to the slide show! It made me wonder though – did the church actually ASK anyone who was struggling with infertility or child loss what they would find helpful before making the initial decision?
I was talking to a minister from a local church this year, and she commented how they always give all the ladies in the congregation a flower on Mother’s Day because it is inclusive for those for whom it is a painful day and is comforting for them. (This is a lady who has several children of her own with whom she has a good relationship). I asked her if she had asked those affected within her congregation how they felt about this and she looked totally shocked. “No, we just do it.” I’ve had this response every single time I have asked this question of any minister, and none of them has EVER asked the women in the church who are struggling with baby loss or infertility how they feel about it. Or those from abusive homes or who lost their mothers young who also find it a hard day. Personally, I find it’s the worst moment in any mother’s day service, and I now sit somewhere where I can leave unobtrusively when they start handing out the flowers. If I’m finding it a tough day, being handed a wilting daffodil as a sign of ‘universal motherhood’ is not going to make me feel better.
I wonder how many times we are hurting when we think we are helping.
I’m not a mother, I was handed the flower every year, and it was always done as we all walked into the sanctuary. Whenever I pointed out I was not a mother, I was still encouraged to take one. And I just wanted to scream, “Why???? It’s for MOTHER’S DAY, and I am not now and never will be a mother.”
No one ever asked me how I felt about being forced to receive a flower, but I was supposed to, what? Put on some show of gratitude? Because “it’s the thought that counts”? What thought? There was no thought whatsoever given to the significant fraction of the congregation. We were far from the only infertile couple; there were at least a dozen more. The flower thing just felt like a condescending “Oh, I guess we should appreciate moms, so what’s something that’s cheap and takes the least amount of work?”
(Oh, and by the way, church, thanks SO MUCH for rubbing it in my face that I failed at one of the two things that you think are a woman’s highest calling. You can now go back to ignoring how not everyone fits your nice little mold. 🙄🤬 )
My OH gets some real pushback for not acknowledging Mother’s Day in his services except for a brief prayer at the start – which also remembers those who find it a hard day. But his take is that it is a painful day for many, that those for whom it is a celebration are likely celebrating outside of the church service anyway so don’t need a major focus on it within church, and that since it is, in its current form, a secular event, it doesn’t need to (and shouldn’t) form a major part of the church service anyway.
The response is usually “oh but we think the little bunches of flowers are so sweet, and it can be such a lovely service and surely those who find it hard can put up with it just for one day a year or just not come?” Which translates as ‘my pleasure is more important than your pain.’
A few years back, I asked all my church going female friends how they felt about Mother’s Day. I don’t know if my social circle is representative of the wider church, but I found only a couple who actually liked Mother’s Day services, and they said they would be fine not having one since they were celebrating with family after anyway. The huge majority found it a painful day, either through baby loss or infertility, or through grief at never having found a partner to have a family with, having lost a mother, having had an abusive or distant mother, being an adopted or foster child… And that’s before we start on the men who also find it a hard day.
I love your husband’s approach! I agree. I think it’s very difficult for single women, too, and it sets the stage that church is for married couples.
I love that approach as well.
I have an abusive mom. 14 years of infertility. A miscarriage. I find it a hard day despite having a wonderful child- and I know how lucky I am to have that when so many don’t that want to.
I also wonder how hard it is on unwed mothers. In many places, they are still looked down upon. What about the women who chose to keep a child of rape? I wonder how the “don’t be a stumbling block to others” may apply to these situations (forcing a “celebration” on those hurting)?
So good. I’ve been working through this with some of my triggers but it’s helpful to have more words for it.
It also explains why I was so taken aback when I met with the women’s director at my old church to discuss how abuse was handled from the pulpit. She wanted to “care” for me because I sounded like I had been “hurt.” I was taken aback because I hadn’t been personally hurt, I was trying to keep other women from harm. Ultimately that church never could understand the distinction. They kept apologizing for hurting my feelings without ever acknowledging or changing their harmful teaching.
Meanwhile my therapist is now aware that the phrase “respect your husband” is triggering to me and she is promising not to use it anymore 🤣
Oh, that thing about the church from the pulpit–I’ve heard that so many times! It makes me so upset. When we’re harming someone, it matters. And sometimes I’M not the one who is hurt, but I’m still upset because I know you’re doing harm. Why don’t people understand this?
Why on earth can’t people understand that you can speak up about someone else’s hurt without having to have been hurt yourself?
Perhaps it’s because if they insist on apologizing to you then they don’t have to acknowledge the hurt they have done to the one you’re speaking up for?
I truly appreciate this post. I think a lot of people don’t want to feel the hurts. In some ways, while we are in ignoance of the harms we don’t mind them as much because we don’t necessarily feel them. But we find it uncomfortable to feel the hurts.
I also think a lot of people lash out when a hurt they have prompted is pointed out to them (like you mentioning the song to your daughter) and instead of responding compassionately, they react from a place of shame. Shame is less comfortable to many of us than is anger, so we transfer our aroused state of shame to anger and blame the one who was initially hurting, thus causing harm. I’ve had family, church people, etc. do this and the harm ends up much worse than the initial hurt- but there are still some cases where I think it is worth pointing out.
On the flip side- when a hurt is pointed out and someone responds kindly, that can be so healing in and of itself. <3
I think deciphering the language is important. People often misconstrue words and meaning and so breaking this down is critical.
Last night I got home from a 2 month whirl wind project I have been on for my job. The project has kept me away from home 95% of the time including some weekends and has been a big stressor for me. What I was working on was not a part of my normal job duties. Being away from home like that is not how my family is set up and it is a huge trigger for me as well. Now that I am back home and back to the normal grind my least favorite part of my job is driving to the office which is 1 hour 45 mins each way and starring at a computer for 8 hours.(I do this at least once a week but sometimes more). My daughter asked me a double edge sword question. Would you rather either or to which I responded – you are asking me if I want to be away from my family for a job duty thats not a normal part of my job or if I still hate driving ~4 hours and starring at a computer for 8 hours. My wife jumped in and told me to just suck it up. It really pissed me off. I did not respond well. Before you know it the entire family was arguing over what took place. It was awful. We even skipped prayer over dinner as no one was in the mood after that. Yes – I was hurt. I was hurt because what I have been through for my job was really hard. My company and my family are very aware. I felt hurt, However, was I harmed? No I was not. In fact the responses by me and my kids were actually harmful to my wife/their mother. It was all of us against her saying nasty things. Why do I tell you this? Well – I think it applies to the post today. I think we often feel hurt by things that have happened to us and respond by actually harming others with our responses. Its a tipping of the scale in the wrong direction. It appears to me that the message over the last couple days is to balance the equation. Yes we agree that certain messages are harmful. How we respond to that is important. The 2 wrongs dont make a right message. Meaning if you harm me (or think you harmed me) its ok if I harm you…
NOT
What if something someone says to you turns out to be a trigger? (But they don’t know it?)
I’m a single, childless woman who has never been married or really dated much. Many times, my singleness has made me feel like a freak. I feel like I’m constantly lacking, in some significant way. At times I have wondered if there’s something wrong with me. When I look back at the guys I’ve liked through the years, they have always liked someone else. My oh-so-single life has never really been commented on very much by my family, but if the question of whether I have a boyfriend has come up, people have laughed. I don’t know what’s funny about it. I guess the idea of me having a man in my life is hysterically funny for some reason.
The first and only guy I ever dated ended after a few months in January this year. I never wanted the break up to happen. It was the day after, and I felt terrible. I hadn’t slept all night and I didn’t feel like seeing or talking to anyone, but unfortunately I had an appointment with a member of my extended family, and I couldn’t get out of it, because it had been planned for a week, and he was coming from out of town. I’d grown up calling this person ‘uncle’ but we weren’t related. I hadn’t told him about the break up but another relative had. I was sitting in his car while he was driving, and he casually asked me about it. Then he said “He’ll find someone else, you know. Young guy like that.”. I couldn’t deal with this on top of everything else, and I was so numb, and empty and drained at this point, that I I didn’t even have the energy to ask him what he meant by it. So I filed it away and didn’t think about it. But after I’d recovered, his words came back to me again, and I couldn’t shake them off this time. What did he mean, ‘HE’LL find someone else’? Was he implying that *I* wouldn’t?? And what did he mean by ‘A young guy like that’? Was he implying that I was to blame somehow, that I was too old? Didn’t he realize how difficult this was for me? Didn’t he know how much pain I was in? He used to be a pastor! He had experience in pastoral counseling! I told a close relative about it, but she just said, “Oh, men say stupid things they don’t mean sometimes, and they’re not perfect”. Then she told me a story about when she was hurt by what someone in the church said to her when she lost her husband. Was I overreacting? But I can’t think of why someone would say that to you, unless they wanted to hurt you. Am I right, or…am I being overly sensitive? Too emotional?
Maybe I could have shaken it off if my life was different. But it was as if someone had spoken out loud what I had always been afraid of: that I wasn’t good enough. What if he’s right? My ex probably will meet someone else. But what will I do if I don’t? I’m scared I’m going to go through life wanting something I can’t have, and feeling like I don’t belong.
It sounds like he showed you no consideration whatsoever. But be had some to spare for a stranger.
It’s possible he just spoke without thinking. It sounds like something someone would say just to say SOMETHING. It shouldn’t happen, but it does. I am truly sorry for the effect it had on you. That was obviously a very difficult thing for you.
And as for all those questions and the self-talk, I feel like you are having a very hard time, and this stranger is very concerned! Have you considered searching out a good therapist to help you work through your questions so you can find answers and make decisions about how you want to live YOUR life? It is always good to have someone who can just listen, and offer constructive responses. Much blessing, I hope you can find good answers.
I think there are multiple instances of hurt in your story. There’s the pain of being single. Then the pain of a breakup. Then your ‘uncle’ saying something insensitive and hurtful. And then your close relative dismissing the insensitivity and hurt you experienced from your ‘uncle’s’ comment.
Personally, if I was in a similar circumstance, I would find the dismissal from the close relative the most acutely painful, because in that case I would be specifically asking for reassurance/comfort (even if it wasn’t verbally explicit), only to get the exact opposite. Invalidation of expressed pain hurts me more than ignorance of inflicting pain. But both hurt.
I’m sorry people haven’t been listening to your pain or been considerate of it. You’re not being too overly-sensitive. (Over-sensitivity is a myth. If it hurts it hurts. If it’s too much for the other person, that says things about their capacity, it doesn’t mean you’re over-reacting.)
I’m so sorry for all the pain you are going through right now. Do you have any friends or family members you can trust to be sympathetic and helpful? Maybe spend more time with them and less with those who come out with outrageously tactless remarks like your ‘uncle’s’.
I think the best way of dealing with these kinds of people is to challenge them, but it’s not easy when you are the one who is hurting. But if you are ever at a point when you feel able to do so, maybe a simple “Can you tell me why the idea of me finding a partner is so funny?” when people laugh might make them stop and think. Or “why are you so worried about how a stranger MIGHT be feeling when I’ve just told you how upset I AM feeling?”
I used to get ridiculed and criticised a lot in the past for various things, and the thing I found most helpful was to focus on my identity in Christ. Especially before mixing with people I knew might be unkind or tactless, I’d pick a Bible verse that spoke truth about who I was, and I would focus on that as I went into that meeting. The strange thing was that as I focussed on how Jesus sees me, not only did unkind remarks have less power to upset me, but I also found I got them less often. Subconsciously, people seem to recognise the person they can ‘get away with’ bullying. And once I started viewing myself as God’s child, co-heir with Jesus, royal, holy, loved, precious, belonging to God, created by Him for a purpose etc, it transmitted to how I behaved and the bullying started to dry up.
This was really helpful for me today, to give me language for something I’m going through. I’m gonna ramble and tell a story unrelated to marriage and church stuff. I’m in the middle of watching an indie TV show made by artists I care about who are usually really good with trigger warnings and such, but this particular show indicated it was one thing with the trailer and advertising, and then ended up showing some body horror and other things that are personal triggers for me. I’ve been wrestling with my reactions, but this article has given me more precise language to describe what I’ve been feeling.
I was hurt by this show, because it triggered some trauma-related stuff in me. But the show was not aiming to harm me.
However there is also room for discussion about the production company’s approach to marketing and their responsibility to mitigate harm (if you are showing certain heavy topics on screen, it is the decent thing to do to provide adequate warning via Content Warnings, Ratings and/or accurately representing genre). The company is listening to people’s feedback (many have said there wasn’t adequate warning for the specific triggers) and so in that way they aren’t perpetuating harm, even though many of the viewers were hurt.
I’m glad you found it helpful!