How to Love People Who Create Upset in Your Life

How to Love People Who Create Upset in Your Life

It’s hard to live with people who hurt you and not just in the physical sense. After the upset has come and gone, we carry their hurtful words and actions around with us. But instead of it being a stylish handbag, it feels more like a ball and chain.

It’s hard to love people who create not only upsets in our life, but the repeated pain that comes with it. But we can’t enjoy our lives if we can’t love. And while loving people who hurt you is probably the last thing you want to do, keep reading. You just might have a change of heart.

It’s Okay to Resist

When you first read this blog post title, how did you feel? Did you resist the idea? Don’t worry, there’s no right or wrong answer. And if you’re feeling some resistance now, guess what?

You’re allowed to.

That’s right, you’re allowed to not want to love someone who creates upset in your life. I’m not going to tell you to just “let it go” and “roll with the punches.” Why? Because that’s disingenuous and not how we heal.

If resistance is there, it’s there for a reason. So, acknowledge it and view it as an important message. The question is, what is it trying to tell you? Let’s find out.

Why We Withhold Love

Usually, we don’t want to love people who hurt us for the following reasons:

  • If I love them, I’m saying, “What you did is okay.”
  • If I love them, it shows that I don’t respect myself.
  • By not loving them, I make it clear that I know what they did was wrong, and I’m not going to let them off the hook.
  • By not loving them, I’m standing up for myself.
  • By not loving them, I justify myself and prove them wrong.

In other words, we think that by withholding love, we’re communicating a powerful, legal message: You broke the law, and now you’re going to be punished.

So, it’s understandable why loving people who upset you is hard. After all, they did transgress you, and they did cross a boundary they shouldn’t have crossed.

However, the mistake we make is thinking that by upholding “the law” and withholding our love, we’re doing the right thing.

We Suffer if We Don’t Love

Sure, the concept of love seems wrong and unfair. But do you want to know what is even more wrong and unfair to you? The feelings of anger, aggression and bitterness that you will carry instead.

These feelings don’t go away. Not until we address them. So, where do they go? They remain within us and they fester. They sap our energy. They create emotional and physical disturbances. And, quite frankly, they make us miserable.

When you withhold love, you actually give hurtful people even more power over you. Yes, they introduced the pain, but you keep going back for seconds.

You are worthy of more than this, dear heart.

What it Really Means to Love People Who Hurt Us

Now, before we continue, let’s make one thing clear. Loving people who hurt you is not the same as being a pushover or being a sissy.

We use the word “love” a lot. Actually, let me rephrase that, we over-use it. And it usually replaces the word “like.” So, it’s easy to resist loving people who hurt you. For many, it’s like saying, “I like you.”

But the amazing thing about love is that you can love someone even if you don’t like them. And you don’t have to start liking someone first before you start loving them.

Here’s what love is:

  • Loving someone else is something you do for yourself maybe even more than you do it for them.
  • Loving someone else raises your energy and makes you feel better, not the other way around.
  • Loving someone allows you to create boundaries because you love yourself first.
  • Loving someone lets you move on so your negative emotions don’t eat away at you.
  • Loving someone doesn’t mean things have to go back to how they were before.
  • Loving someone doesn’t mean you’re going to be best friends now or ever.

When you choose love over hate or resentment, you choose power and strength, not weakness.

Start by Loving Yourself

Before we can start to love others especially the people who have hurt us we have to be able to whole-heartedly love ourselves. At our core, we are love. What we want is love. And what we are meant to give and receive is love.

Unfortunately, when we receive so much un-love from others, we close ourselves off to love completely and this includes the love we give to ourselves.

But do you see how unfair this is?

When other people don’t treat you with love, you stop loving yourself. They hurt you once, but then you continue to hurt yourself again and again. Their abuse makes you abuse yourself.

So, before you can start to love people who create upset in your life, you have to start loving yourself. Once you do, you will not depend on their love to make you feel whole and beautiful.

You already are those things, and you no longer need their permission to believe that and be that.

  • Self-love says: I am worthy. I am whole. I am beautiful.
  • Self-love says: What happened to me does not define me. I define me.
  • Self-love says: I do not deserve the upset/abuse I received, and I can create healing and healthy relationships.

Once we cultivate self-love, we can extend our love to others.

How to Love People Who Create Upset in Your Life

Entertain the idea that you are better off giving love, not hate. Consider that loving others, rather than resenting them, will create a better life experience for you.

If you’re not sure how to make this happen, spend some time with the following ideas.

People who create upset are in pain.

Think of the person who created the last upset in your life. Now, entertain the possibility that they are in pain. Their pain could be from an immediate and easy-to-identify cause, like stress, relationship troubles or work worries.

Or, their pain could be deep-seated from childhood trauma or abusive relationships. Their pain begets more pain, and you were the recipient. Now, we are not excusing what they did. We’re also not saying that what they did was okay.

Because here’s the deal. When someone hurts us, we look at it in very black and white terms: You hurt Me. You did this to Me.

But can we be a little more sophisticated in our thinking? Can we see that within this event, there was so much more playing out so much that has nothing to do with you?

This thinking allows us to be compassionate with others.

Are you attracting this upset?

Most people will bristle at that question. What do you mean? Of course I’m not attracting this upset!

But here’s what I mean.

Even if we think we’re the ones in the driver’s seat, the truth is, our subconscious mind is influencing over 90% of our waking thought. And if this powerful system is running on false beliefs, we will attract experiences that confirm these beliefs often to our disappointment. 

For example, we can attract upsets if our subconscious mind runs on limiting and false beliefs, like:

  • I am not lovable.
  • I don’t deserve to be treated well.
  • I don’t deserve to be happy.
  • I deserve what I get.

As long as our subconscious mind runs on these ideas, we will attract experiences to confirm them.

However, when we can start to see that there is so much more going on than “just” someone hurting us, we can also see our role in the situation.

Now, I’m not saying that this upset/abuse is your fault. It’s not. But now that you know your subconscious mind may have something to do with it, you can do something about it.

We are playing in a universe that works with the Law of Attraction. So, we have the power to attract positive experiences or negative ones.

This thinking allows us to be compassionate with ourselves.

Love is natural.

Sure, resenting someone may feel “right.” And being angry at someone and acting out your anger might seem justified. But negative emotions don’t uplift us. They only drag us down.

We’re not comfortable with these emotions. They’re not our natural state. This means, we are meant to feel something else something better.

Make the choice that you want to create more experiences of love in your life. Allow yourself this possibility, not because you’ve “earned it” or “deserve it” but because love is your natural state of being.

Your love is already right there within you. So, begin to engage with it so you can love yourself and others again.

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