How to Stop Fixating on Someone who Hurt You
Advice column #19
I’m fixated with someone who hurt me, and everything they do. How can I get over it if I’m still angry with them?
Letting go of anger when someone hurt you is hard, even when that person’s apologized to you.
It’s not enough for someone to simply say, “I’m sorry I hurt you.”
We want to be sure that they know why what they did hurt us. We want our pain to be meaningfully acknowledged. To some extent, it feels like the only way for the cosmic scales to be balanced is for them to feel our pain at the precise intensity we felt it.
To me, this is what the story of Narcissus is really about. It’s not about the dangers of self-absorption, rather, it’s about just how complicated our desire for our pain to be understood is.