The Pain Principle

Hurting people hurt people and are easily hurt by them





Early in my career, I accepted an invitation to lead a church. It was a wonderful opportunity, and it was in a nice town. It was an exciting time for Margaret and me.



MY NEW PEN PAL



I had been at the church only ten days when I received a piece of mail from Tom, a member of the congregation. I opened it up, began reading, and soon discovered that it was a typed transcript of the sermon I had delivered on my first Sunday. I was amazed—and flattered—that someone had taken the time to capture every word I had said. And then I looked more carefully. The pages were covered with comments. Tom had red-penned every grammatical mistake, corrected every misspoken word, and pointed out anything he thought was a factual error.

I thought it was odd, but I didn’t worry too much about it. I know I’m not perfect, and I’m aware that I sometimes make mistakes when I speak. But I have a healthy self-image, so I didn’t let it bother me. But then the next week, another envelope arrived in the mail from Tom. Once again, the message I had preached the previous Sunday had been transcribed. And once again, every tiny mistake was marked in red ink. That’s when I figured I’d better meet Tom and find out what was bothering him.

The next Sunday after delivering the sermon message, I asked someone to point out Tom to me. I walked over to him, stuck out my hand, and said, “Hi, I’m John Maxwell.”

At first Tom just stared at me. Finally he said, “Hello, Pastor.” And that’s when I realized he wasn’t going to shake my hand. Then he turned on his heel and walked away.

Sure enough, a couple of days later, guess what I received in the mail? Another envelope from Tom. I started calling them his “love letters.” I got one every week with his in-depth critique. Would you care to guess how long I received Tom’s love letters? Seven years! During that time, he never voluntarily shook my hand. I tried to connect with him, but he wanted little to do with me. In only one subject could I get him to engage in conversation with me. Our kids were adopted, and so were his, so he’d talk to me about them. But he wouldn’t warm up.



WHAT LIES BENEATH



Then one day I had lunch with a veteran pastor. I told him about Tom, the weekly love letters I received, and my inability to win Tom over. My pastor friend looked at me and said, “You know, John, hurting people hurt people.” That statement really connected for me. ‘Whenever someone says or does something hurtful,” he continued, “you need to go beneath the surface.”

I looked at Tom in a new way after that. I began searching for the cause of his pain, and I tried again to connect with him. Finally one day when I was trying to get him to engage, he made a statement that more than hinted at the problem. He said, “Never trust a pastor.” I later came to find out that Tom had once served as a board member at a church and had been mistreated by the pastor. He decided from then on that pastors were bad news and couldn’t be trusted.

After I understood the problem, I was able to work on winning Tom’s trust. It took a lot of effort, but by the time I left Lancaster to accept another leadership position, Tom had gotten over his mistrust of me. We became friends. And not only was he willing to shake my hand, but he’d give me a great big bear hug. By then, he had long since given up sending me love letters.



SOME PAIN, NO GAIN



To really understand the Pain Principle and have it help you in dealing with others, you need to keep in mind four truths:



1. There Are Many Hurting People



It doesn’t take a psychiatrist to see that many people are hurting today. Columnist Ann Landers asserted that one in four Americans is imbalanced. (She added that we should look at our three closest friends, and if they seem okay, it means we’re the one!)

Of course, the fact that many people are hurting is not a new phenomenon. In the nineteenth century, philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer compared the human race to porcupines huddled together on a bitter cold winter night:



The colder it gets outside, the more we huddle together for warmth; but the closer we get to one another, the more we hurt one another with our sharp quills. And in the lonely night of earth’s winter eventually we begin to drift apart and wander out on our own and freeze to death in our loneliness.



Schopenhauer was quite a pessimist. Unlike him, I believe there is hope for everyone. But at the same time we can’t be naive about people. A tremendous number of individuals are nursing deep hurts.



2. Those Hurting People Often Hurt People



German poet Herman Hesse wrote, ‘If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.” I agree with his viewpoint. When hurting people lash out, it is in response to what’s happening inside them more than what’s happening around them. They feel or believe something negative within themselves. The problem is that people who don’t believe in themselves will never succeed, and they will also keep those around them from succeeding.

Early in my pastoral career, I did a lot of counseling, a responsibility I eventually gave to staff members because I didn’t have the temperament for it. But over the years I counseled enough hurting couples to observe that their interaction usually followed a pattern. Emotionally one spouse would “throw up,” and then the other one would clean up. I saw it happen again and again. And always the individual in the most pain did the most damage to the other person.



3. Those Hurting People Are Often Hurt by People



Not only do hurting people hurt others, but they are also easily hurt by others. My friend Kevin Myers illustrates it this way. If someone has a splinter in his finger and he allows it to remain there, his finger becomes swollen and infected. Then if another person barely brushes against it, the individual howls with pain and says, ‘You hurt me!” But the reality is that the problem isn’t with the person who innocently bumped the finger. It’s with the person who has the splinter but has neglected to address the injury.

Emotional pain works in a similar way. Hurting people overreact, over exaggerate, and overprotect. They also over influence. By that I mean they control the relationship. That was the case with Tom. The old wound was his unresolved conflict with a previous pastor. He had never removed the “splinter” so that it could heal. And because he was hurting, he prevented our relationship from growing for seven years. That’s always the way: relationships are held back by the less healthy person.

As you interact with others, remember this: anytime a person’s response is larger than the issue at hand, the response is almost always about something else.



4. Those Hurting People Often Hurt Themselves



In an old comedy routine, a know-it-all is fond of lecturing his friend at the station where they wait to take the commuter train each morning. And every time the know-it-all talks, he pokes his friend in the chest with his finger. That, of course, doesn’t sit well with the other man. So he finally determines that he’s going to put a stop to it.

The next day on the way to the station, he meets a third friend and says, ‘I’m so tired of that know-it-all lecturing me and poking me in the chest. Today I’m going to get ‘im.”

“How are you going to do that?” his buddy asks.

The first man opens his coat to re­veal three sticks of dynamite strapped to his chest. “Today when he pokes me, he says with a smile, “he’s going to blow his hand off.”

Hurting people are often like that. They may hurt others, but the ones they hurt deepest and most often are themselves. Poet George Herbert declared, “He who cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself.”



DEALING WITH HURTING PEOPLE



Author Glenn Clark advises, “If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness, and tears.” People who have not gotten past their hurt have a hard time doing that. As a result, they act and react differently from healthy people.



Healthy people are... Hurting people are...



more willing to change. less willing to change.

more willing to admit failure. less willing to admit failure.

more willing to discuss issues. less willing to discuss issues.

more willing to learn from others. less willing to learn from others.

more willing to do something about the problem. less willing to do something about the problem.

able to travel light. carrying a lot of baggage.



If you find yourself dealing with a hurting person, which we all must do from time to time, then I advise that you do the following:



Don’t Take It Personally



Hurting people are going to find offense when none is given. When you know that you’ve done nothing wrong, remember that it’s not what others say about you; it’s what you believe about yourself. You can apologize for their pain and feel compassion for their state, but you should try not to take it personally. That can be difficult—even for a person with a healthy self-image—but it’s worth the effort.



Look Beyond the Person for the Problem



Just as I did with Tom, you would do well to try to look past the person and his hurtful actions and try to see what’s causing him pain. Even if you can’t discover the source of the problem, this plan will help you to approach the person with greater compassion.



Look Beyond the Situation



Have you ever had to make a bad-news phone call and dreaded it, not so much because of the news you had to deliver but because you were dreading the response from the person on the other end of the line? Just last week, my wife and I had to make such a call. The weekend had been planned, but at the last minute things changed. We had to call a friend who would be negatively affected by the change. We hated to make the call, not because the news was that bad, but because the person is not always emotionally strong and would react badly.

In such cases, try not to focus on the situation. Just remember that it’s not what happens to you; it’s what happens in you that matters. Try to rise above the emotional turmoil that the other person may create.



Do Not Add to Their Hurt



The natural inclination for many people is to meet fire with fire, pain with pain. But striking back at a hurting person is like kicking a man while he’s down. Statesman Sir Francis Bacon said, “This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.” If someone lashes out at you, the best thing to do is to forgive him and move on.



Help Them Find Help



The kindest thing you can do for hurting people is to try to get them help. Some people don’t want to deal with their issues, and you certainly can’t force them to receive help. But you can always choose to extend your hand. It may take a long time, as it did with Tom, but even very bitter people have been known to come around.



WHAT IF YOU’RE THE ONE WHO’S HURTING?



At the beginning of this chapter, the question was asked: Do I hurt people, or am I too easily hurt by them? If you answered yes, then you need to answer a second question: Am I prepared to work through my issues and get beyond my pain? Here’s the key. Most people just want a quick fix, something to give them some relief in the moment. That’s why some choose to lash out; it makes them feel better temporarily. Others use alcohol, food, sex, or something else to lessen the pain. But as my friend Kevin Myers says, “If you want to become well, you need more than a fix. You need to become fit.”

People who seek emotional fitness don’t look for momentary relief. They search for what’s right. How can you tell what kind of person you are? People searching for a fix stop working at resolving a problem as soon as the pain or pressure is relieved. People seeking fitness continue doing what’s right and improving themselves even when the discomfort goes away.

Delving into your old hurts and emotional issues often takes the help of a professional counselor and can he a messy proposition, but it’s worth it. I recently read a story that provides a good analogy for what it’s like. In March 1995, the New England Pipe Cleaning Company of Watertown, Connecticut, was working under the streets of Revere, Massachusetts, to clean out a ten-inch sewer line. The workers found many of the usual items that clog those kinds of pipes. However, they also discovered many other things: sixty-one rings, vintage coins, and silverware. The bad news is that the workers had to do an unpleasant job. The good news is that they were allowed to keep the valuable things they discovered in the process.

If your relational capacity is all clogged up,” you, too, may have to do some digging to make things right. And you may have to deal with some pretty nasty stuff. But the reward is that you may discover some treasures that you didn’t know existed. And at the end of your hard work, you can develop a healthy capacity for relationships.