Tiny Buddha

Tag: hurtful

  • Standing Up for Yourself Doesn’t Make You Any Less Kind

    Standing Up for Yourself Doesn’t Make You Any Less Kind

    “Being a good person doesn’t mean being a doormat… You can be kind, giving, and full of love, but that doesn’t mean you have to accept disrespect or allow your boundaries to be crossed.” ~Unknown

    I can still vividly remember sitting in my seventh-grade classroom, forcing a laugh as my classmates made jokes at my expense. My cheeks would burn red, but I’d smile along, desperately wanting to belong. For years, I mistook my silence for kindness, my nervous laughter for good nature. I didn’t realize that by laughing at myself, I was slowly chipping away at my own self-worth.

    Growing up, I was the “nice kid”—the one who never caused trouble, never talked back, and always tried to keep the peace. When someone would make a cutting remark about my appearance or mock the way I spoke, I’d respond with a practiced smile and a halfhearted chuckle. I thought this made me mature, diplomatic even. “Just brush it off,” my mother would say. “They’re only joking.” But deep inside, each laugh felt like a small betrayal of myself.

    The pattern continued well into my teenage years. In every social circle, I became the designated “good sport”—the one who could take any joke, no matter how sharp its edges. I wore this label like a badge of honor, never realizing it was actually a shield I was hiding behind. My inability to stand up for myself wasn’t kindness; it was fear dressed up as politeness.

    The turning point came during my first year of college. During a group project, a teammate made a particularly cruel joke about my work ethic. As usual, I started to laugh, but something inside me snapped.

    Years of suppressed feelings bubbled to the surface, and for the first time, I heard how hollow my laughter sounded. In that moment, I realized I wasn’t being nice—I was being complicit in my own diminishment.

    This revelation led me down a path of self-discovery and personal growth. Through therapy, self-help books, and countless conversations with trusted friends, I began to understand the difference between being kind and being a doormat. I learned that standing up for yourself doesn’t make you mean or confrontational—it makes you self-respecting.

    Here are the vital lessons I learned along my journey:

    The first step was the hardest: acknowledging that my laughter was a defense mechanism, not a sign of resilience. I had to accept that it’s okay to not find hurtful comments funny. Real strength isn’t in laughing off insults; it’s in acknowledging when something hurts and addressing it directly.

    I started practicing simple phrases in front of the mirror: “I don’t find that funny,” “That comment was inappropriate,” or simply, “Please don’t speak to me that way.” At first, these words felt foreign on my tongue, but gradually, they became part of my vocabulary. I learned that confrontation doesn’t have to be aggressive—it can be calm, dignified, and firm.

    The most surprising discovery was how many people respected me more when I started setting boundaries. Those who truly cared about me adjusted their behavior. Those who didn’t, well, they showed their true colors, and I learned that not every relationship needs to be preserved at the cost of your self-respect.

    Today, I still consider myself a kind person, but my kindness no longer comes at the expense of my dignity. I’ve learned that true niceness isn’t about accepting poor treatment; it’s about treating others—and yourself—with respect.

    When someone makes a hurtful comment now, I no longer reach for laughter as a shield. Instead, I stand tall in my truth and speak up with compassion and clarity.

    To those who recognize themselves in my story—those who laugh when they want to cry, who smile when they want to scream—I want you to know that your feelings matter. Your discomfort is valid. Your voice deserves to be heard. Being nice doesn’t mean being silent, and standing up for yourself doesn’t make you any less kind.

    The journey from forced laughter to authentic self-expression isn’t easy. It’s filled with uncomfortable moments and challenging conversations. But with each small act of standing up for yourself, you rebuild your self-worth piece by piece. You learn that the strongest form of kindness is the kind you show yourself.

    Remember: You can be both nice and strong, both kind and assertive. The real magic happens when you find that balance—when you can face the world with a genuine smile, knowing you’ll never again laugh at the expense of your own dignity.

  • Break the Cycle: How to Stop Hurting Others When You Were Mistreated

    Break the Cycle: How to Stop Hurting Others When You Were Mistreated

    “What’s broken can be mended. What hurts can be healed. And no matter how dark it gets, the sun is going to rise again.” ~Unknown

    I grew up with difficult and hurtful parents who spoke critically, with the intent to demean.

    Each word of sarcasm, each thinly veiled joke or put-down undercut my self-esteem. Each knocked me down a rung in life and kept me from my potential.

    Rampant comparisons to other Indian kids succeeding academically, attacks of my mediocre performance at school, and harsh language were my mother’s weapons of choice.

    When someone attacks your self-esteem repeatedly, you feel beat down. It feels like you were meant to fly, but your own family is making you drown.

    Then, your natural tendency might be to do to others what someone has done to you.

    My tendencies were to judge and compare others in my mind, to taunt and verbally attack them. It was fitting then, I guess, that my career path led me to becoming a lawyer, now an ex-lawyer.

    As I got into the habits of sabotaging and hurting others, I never thought much about it. I just assumed that because my parents had talked to me harshly and treated me badly, I had the license to do the same to others.

    Others could handle the pain because I had. Others could endure a verbal lashing because I had. Others could handle emotional abuse because I had.

    You, too, might have grown up in a household that wounded you deeply. You might have never been able to leave the shadow of the pain and suffering you experienced. And you might have learned to treat people as others once treated you.

    I’ve come to believe that just because others hurt us, that doesn’t mean we have to continue the cycle of abuse.

    You don’t have to fall into your natural, default behaviors. You can change. You can choose different actions and make different decisions. You can break the cycle of negativity, criticism, and abuse.

    Here are six steps to heal the pain you felt and end the cycle of hurt.

    1. Work on forgiving those who hurt you.

    This may be much more easily said than done, but forgiveness is the key to healing. If you can’t forgive today, at least set the intention to forgive. It doesn’t matter how tragic or traumatic your past was; you must forgive for yourself. You’ll feel like a heavy weight has been lifted from your shoulders. You will be able to breathe much more easily.

    It helps to put your abuser’s behavior in perspective so you can see their actions in a different light.

    Try to understand what influenced their behaviors and characteristics. For example, with my parents, they were likely raised in a similar way. Also, culturally, parents in Asia tend to be direct and hold you to high standards because they want you to succeed in life. Their intentions may have been ultimately good, but the way they went about parenting was misguided.

    Look at them through a lens of gratefulness. What could you appreciate about them, in spite of the pain they caused? Is there anything you can appreciate about the pain? I owe my sense of compassion, which is the foundation of my work, to my parents. Because of how I was hurt growing up, I now do work that reduces suffering and helps people find peace.

    Look at them through a perspective of love. If you saw them through a loving prism, how would you explain their actions and behavior?

    2. Work on your own healing.

    Instead of burning in anger and hatred, focus on what you need for your emotional and mental health.

    Assess the damage they’ve caused, look at the impact their behavior has had on your life, and determine what you must heal.

    Visit a counselor if necessary. Find coping mechanisms. Write about your hurt. Open yourself to a spiritual practice. Seek the tools that can help you heal your emotional wounds.

    Cultivate love for yourself. Speak to yourself gently. Let go of your high demands and expectations of yourself. Notice if how you treat yourself is similar to how the people who hurt you in the past treated you.

    3. Look for alternative role models.

    Watch your behavior and notice what you do when others hurt or anger you. How do you react when others push your buttons?

    If you don’t know how to respond or react differently from the people who raised you, look for alternative role models. Seek people with positive and emotionally healthy ways of responding to personal situations.
    Study them. Take notes. Notice how they handle trying circumstances. Model their behavior in your own interpersonal relationships.

    4. Learn positive and empowering behavior.

    If you were taught destructive and dysfunctional ways of being and speaking, opt for alternative ways. Hold back on hurtful words, convey your needs with softer language, and respect other people’s boundaries. Practice listening intently instead of responding rashly to what others say to you.

    Recently, someone told me that I couldn’t park my car in a particular part of a lot and had to park much further back and walk. The area I had parked in was for the vendors of the event I was attending.

    My first reaction was to fight back, use the parking lot rules against them, ask for the manager, and make a big scene about how unjust it was for me to have to move my car a couple blocks away where there was clearly space right there.

    Then I noticed the person was wearing a volunteer badge and had an overwhelmed expression on his face. I opted not to do what my defacto behavior was and instead chose understanding. I tried to see that he was doing the best he could and was just looking out for the vendors, who were critical to a successful event.

    Even if this person was wrong and even if it was unfair, I could still make his day a little less stressful and more pleasant. I could avoid arguing, making a scene, or verbally attacking someone who was trying their best to serve others.

    5. Focus on your reactions instead of the behavior of others.

    You can’t control others’ reactions, but you can learn to notice, change, and improve your own.

    Look for triggers and other behavior that provokes you. Notice your immediate reaction when people treat you badly, disrespect you, or lash out against you.

    Instead of immediately engaging with this behavior, withdraw, reflect, analyze, and take a thoughtful next step.

    This is what I had to do when I was talking to a woman I had recently met, who was not a fan of the type of writing I do.

    I found her remarks dismissive and non-supportive, and felt like lashing out. I wanted to attack her in some way or put down some part of her life that she valued, but after several days and after much calming down, I focused on my reaction. I let the anger simmer, re-evaluated her simple preference for fiction writing, and came to the conclusion that different people have different reading preferences.

    I was still hurt and told her so without demeaning or attacking her in return. I was able to communicate that I was hurt, which she apologized for, without hurting her. A win!

    6. Spread your light.

    Remind yourself that even if you grew up with challenging people and the darkness of human behavior, you get to choose how you treat others and show up in the world.

    You can operate by the default of hurting others—or, worse, seek revenge—and mimic the harmful and negative habits you witnessed growing up, or you can actively take different steps and make different choices.

    You can bring yourself out of the darkness of bad behavior, cruelty, abuse, and negligent child rearing. You can go out in the world choosing love and spreading your light of compassion and understanding.

    You can be the conduit who transforms pain into healing, not only for yourself but for everyone around you. You can show others who are hurting that forgiveness, understanding, love, and compassion are possible even after you’ve been hurt. And in doing so, you can help make the world a less hurtful place.

  • What Creates Abusive People and How to Release Your Anger

    What Creates Abusive People and How to Release Your Anger

    Peaceful Man

    “The biggest problem for humanity, not only on a global level, but even for individuals, is misunderstanding.” ~Rinpoche

    Through the course of the relationship he was dishonest, emotionally manipulative, and unkind. It was subtle at first—do we really sign up for this on the dating application? But the acts wound their way through like a slow vine that eventually kills a tree. When it ended, he handled it atrociously.

    It took me many months to process it all, facing things I had suppressed in denial. When the shock wore off, I had a desire to let him know how he traumatized me—to outline all the ways in which he made me uncomfortable and how unbelievable and disgusting his behavior was.

    I wanted to punish him.

    I wanted him to understand that his actions—secrecy, meanness, disregard—were simply not the way you treat someone you supposedly love, someone that cares for and supports you.

    I knew I had my own issues to work out around why I chose to stay in this kind of dynamic, but I somehow thought a really good apology on his part would at least validate my experience and hike me back up onto the pedestal on which I deserved to stand.

    I wanted to believe that somehow my words would enlighten him—that understanding my experience would affect and change him for the better.

    And I tried! My goal honestly wasn’t to get all prison gangster on him. I just wanted my pain recognized; to feel regarded and important.

    I wrote a few letters that I thought diplomatically captured my hurt and positioned him perfectly to validate me and apologize. That apology would never come. In fact, when he did respond, it was in the form of anger, denial, projecting or minimizing. 

    When engaging him didn’t work, I turned inward. I created little pieces of art that depicted him with a huge ego and small…other parts. (I did not send those. One mature point for me there.)

    In time I accepted that the recognition and apology were clearly not going to happen.

    But the anger kept surfacing, and it was getting annoying. I had read volumes on the notion that “the behavior of others is about them, not you.” Logically I understood this, but I remained stuck in a purgatory. I couldn’t fully connect to and let go of the hugely distracting resentment.

    Then a curious thing happened. As I began to learn the deeper roots of why a person mistreats another, the anger dissipated.

    This didn’t require an individually detailed personal history to construe. They were facts that can be generally applicable to anyone that displays habitually abusive or destructive behaviors. They came through lots of therapy and research as I sought understanding I would never receive from him.

    It is this:

    When a healthy person behaves in a way that hurts others, they take responsibility for that action and make amends.

    I was dealing with an unhealthy person.

    There are people who, because of an abusive childhood (emotionally, physically, or otherwise), navigating their way with a narcissistic or extremely controlling parent, or suffering other emotional trauma, developed protective mechanisms early on to avoid dealing with the shame and violation they experienced.

    These mechanisms can start in the form of an inflated sense of self, denial, or even a secret life. They are ways to create “emotionally safe” conditions that allow them to experience freedom, “love,” or accomplishment in a way they didn’t have access to through healthy means.

    Emotional stability was the most immediate, basic human need. But they had to learn to achieve it at a time when core values—such as respect, honesty, and empathy—may have not been fully developed.

    When this person fails to deal with their pain and anger into adulthood, they never outgrow their early emotional survival skills. As these mechanisms take on an increasingly functional role, values that the person eventually came to understand (or claim to adhere to) become secondary to protecting their emotional safety.

    These methods weld to their identity: they can live without the values but not without the relief their emotional protections provide. They develop into practices such as criticism, disconnection, projection (applying their transgressions or perceived shortcomings—whatever they don’t want to own about themselves—onto their victims), lying, and addictive behaviors.

    What a healthy person considers a normal relationship negotiation or expression of personal needs, or even when life demands the basics of responsibility of regard for others, the unhealthy person perceives a threat to their vulnerable sense of self and unleashes their behaviors to maintain the emotional “safe place.”

    Their abusive techniques essentially produce short term (false) feelings of success, confidence, or acceptance that feel uplifting and comfortable, especially when the alternative is to face a reality that is filled with perceived failure. 

    In my experience, there was often no discernable threat when my ex displayed inconsiderate, bizarre, or hurtful behaviors.

    For example, if his sense of self was feeling particularly low—despite my adoration and support—that may have meant him blatantly ignoring me in a social situation to drink and flirt with other women. He often met requests to accommodate my schedule or needs with indignation. Playing with my son started to turn antagonistic to the point where I’d have to intervene.

    Mere days after we ended our relationship, he claimed he had become “emotionally connected” to a new lover. A couple of weeks later he purposely paraded her in front of me and my children, yet completely ignored us. I couldn’t fathom what I, much less innocent children, had done to deserve that.

    Even long before this absurd “new lover parade,” trying to have open, mature dialogue about the effects of his behavior, even in the most non-threatening way, resulted in projection, disconnection, or playing the victim.

    There they were: the mechanisms to cushion himself from the emotional pain associated with having to take responsibility for his behavior (that he most likely regretted or felt ashamed of already).

    The crazy-making boomerangs hurled at me made me realize the relationship would never grow into the beauty I had envisioned for myself, and if I stayed in, I would have to live with only erratically and unreliably receiving the things that were important to me: honesty, respect, commitment, kindness, empathy.

    And that’s when a giant light bulb shone on my anger. His mechanisms for achieving emotional “stability” occurred in direct conflict with some of my deepest core values.

    Anger is not a primary emotion; it is created to avoid core hurt feelings such as being disregarded, devalued, or rejected. And I felt all of those things every time my values were trampled.

    Anger isn’t a measurement of something negative in your life; it’s a signal to reaffirm your own boundaries and values. 

    With emotionally unhealthy people, we’re not talking about mild immaturity or self-centeredness—we’re talking full-scale inability and unwillingness to recognize responsibility for their actions. And almost anyone is subject to the pie-flinging.

    The slightest thing that he could translate into a question of his principles, responsibility, or regard for others resulted in anything from stonewalling to an aggressive verbal assault. I observed it wasn’t just me: it was his siblings, parents, the mother of his children—anyone he felt was “locked in” to him enough to have to swallow his behavior.

    When I could finally understand that his motivation wasn’t to devalue me—that his destructive decision-making processes existed long before I came along—the adage “Don’t take anything personally” finally, fully came to life for me.

    I was able to dissociate from the anger and focus on the more critical issue: regaining control of my life and all the wonderfulness of me. He was stuck in his own tornado, but I had a choice to live differently.

    There are still moments where a tiny part of me wonders “Why won’t he change?” Because the fact is, he could. We are all capable of extraordinary growth. He chooses the comfort of the known; though disappointed, I can now accept that the disregard, disrespect, and uncompassionate behavior I experienced weren’t a matter of my value or importance.

    I never thought it could be possible, but the love I feel now being alone with just my kids and my friends is more fulfilling and inspiring than having a partner I couldn’t trust to live by the values of basic human kindness when life gets challenging.

    Understanding allows me to hold a prayer for peace for him in my heart, while I live my own life of opportunity from a place of strength and joy.

    Peaceful man image via Shutterstock