We’ve all, I believe, been hurt.

Who was it who said, “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional”?

I am going through much pain at this moment. It is difficult to concentrate on my everyday life. My mind keeps going back to the injustices I feel. Very difficult to shake off. I know it will ease. I’ve been through it before.

Looking through the Internet to find some help, I have and I want to share it with you. Just in case there’s someone out there tormenting themselves and blaming themselves, even though you honestly blame someone else.

1. Define your pain.
The first step toward finding happiness after having been hurt is to understand why you were hurt, to get to the root of everything that makes the memories hard.

2. Express that pain.
There’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to communicate how you feel to the person who hurt you; and if you can, there’s no guarantee they’ll respond how you want them to. Say what you need to say anyway. Write in your journal. Write a letter and burn it. Get it all out.

3. Try to stay in the present.
Reliving the past can be addictive. It gives you the opportunity to do it again and respond differently—to fight back instead of submitting, to speak your mind instead of silencing yourself. It also allows you to possibly understand better. What happened? Where did you go wrong? What should you have done?

4. Stop telling the story.
It may seem like another way to understand what happened, or maybe it feels helpful to hear someone say you didn’t do anything wrong and you don’t deserve to hurt. In all reality this just keeps you stuck right where you are: living your life around a memory and giving it power to control you.

5. Forgive yourself.
You can either punish yourself and submit to misery, or forgive yourself and create the possibility of happiness. It comes down to whether you decide to dwell or move on. Which do you choose: anger with yourself and prolonged pain, or forgiveness and the potential for peace?

6. Stop playing the blame/victim game.
The only way to experience happiness is to take responsibility for creating it, whether other people made it easy for you or not. You’re not responsible for what happened to you in the past but you’re responsible for your attitude now. Why let someone who hurt you in the past have power over your present?

7. Don’t let the pain become your identity.
If everything you do and all your relationships center around something that hurt you, it will be harder to move on. You may even come to appreciate what that identity gives you: attention, the illusion of understanding, or the warmth of compassion, for example.

8. Reconnect with who you were before the pain.
If you want to feel and be peaceful and happy, start by identifying what that looks like—what you think about, what you feel, what you do, how you interact with people. Odds are this process will remind you both how you want to be and how you don’t want to be.

9. Focus on things that bring you joy in the moment.
Don’t think about the totality of the rest of your days. That’s a massive burden to carry—haven’t you hurt enough? Just focus on now, and allow yourself a little peace. You’ll be surprised how easily “nows” can add up when you focus on them as they come.

10. Share that joy with other people.
You can share a meal, a movie, a moment and give yourself a break from your anger or sadness. You don’t have to carry it through every moment of your day. Don’t worry—if you feel you need to remember it, you’ll still be able to recall it later. But as you allow yourself pockets of peace, shared with people you love, you may find you need that story a lot less.

SOURCE: https://tinybuddha.com/blog/10-happiness-tips-for-people-who-have-been-hurt/

The above is a much edited down version so if you like what you’ve read click on the web link and read it all. The writer is Lori Deschene

Her last gem of advice is: “Everyone deserves to feel happy. Everyone deserves a little peace. One more thing we all have in common: we can only provide those things for ourselves.”