Are you often offended by others? These nasty people! However, it may also be a little bit up to you …
In which situations and which statements we feel offended is very individual. For example, if someone told me that I have a terrible German accent when I speak English, I would say "Ei no sät" and laugh about it. However, when a friend recently told me that she sometimes lacks a sense of purpose in her work (in corporate communications) and that she dreams now and then of being a doctor and saving lives, because that alone makes sense It hit me and even offended me – it wasn't even about me.
In fact, we only ever hurt ourselves
In the case of an offense, it often doesn't matter whether someone attacks us or not, because we are mostly responsible to a large extent for feeling offended. Like other emotions, the feeling of hurt arises from our interpretation of our perception: When we hear or experience something that we interpret as an attack on our self-worth, or through which we see our values and beliefs threatened or cast into doubt, we feel hit and feel violent emotions. We "stagger", as the psychologist and entrepreneur puts it in the podcast "Betreutes Feeling" with Atze Schröder, because we have just taken a blow in our mental solar plexus – and that with our own fist.
Offenses only hit us at weak points
But now comes the really important thing: Just as we don't stumble a boxer if we aim at his well-toned buttocks or abs, we will never feel offended when it comes to things that are unimportant to us, or ours Strengths that we are sure of. If, on the other hand, we see our insecurities, weak points, sore points and most important values under attack, an offense hits us hard – and makes us stagger.
In this respect, hurts usually show us our insecurities and those who have many of them and have strong doubts about themselves and their life are usually much more easily and more often hurt than someone who is by and large certain of their strengths, priorities and decisions . Everyone has sore spots, but there shouldn't be so many that we stumble through life.
As for the statement made by my friend who offended me, I have a theory as to which of my insecurities or values was triggered by it. But to open the barrel now, to think about the meaning of life, would probably not only make me stagger – and without any offense.