We all have someone who has hurt us.

It might be a friend. It might be a family member. It might be a boyfriend, girlfriend, or ex. It might be someone we look up to.

It's easier than you might think to bottle up everything you're feeling about this person, whether it's anger, resentment, sadness, hurt, or betrayal. And if the worst thing has happened, they have hurt you and you still can't be mad at them, it's easy to bottle that up too. But how does that help us?

Bottling up your feelings and stuffing them far down inside you, where you hope no-one will ever have to find them, has a secret agenda. You might not even know it at the time. But half the time, we aren't afraid that other people will judge us for how we're feeling, we're afraid of how we ourselves are feeling.

Feelings aren't logical, like so much in the world. They can't be "solved" like a math problem, they can't be forgotten like the information in the pages of your history book, they can't be pushed down, bottled up, not recognized, and expected to go away on their own.

Working through our emotions and feelings can be painful, and I'm no psychologist, but maybe that's why we choose to try to ignore them. We're afraid of what we might feel inside if we recognize and actually process how we truly feel towards a certain person.

Let it out. That doesn't mean you "solve" all of your emotional problems that've built up over your lifetime, it means you take baby-steps. You recognize how you have been hurt, you allow yourself to think about it, to forgive. If we never think about the events that cause us to be more guarded, cautious, afraid, or angry, emotionally we're going to be stuck in one place for a long time.

Letting it out doesn't mean you have to let go, it's just a step forward. It's a step foreword out of the inner workings of your mind, to get past overthinking. It's a step forward from making yourself ignore how you feel. It's a step forward from being afraid of yourself, your emotions, and the way others have made you feel.

Cry. I know, most people don't like to cry. It's hard to feel like you're letting go of all of the strength you've built up, and become completely vulnerable again. Because chances are, that's why you think you got hurt in the first place. But crying is amazing for you, and it's so much better than keeping all your feelings wound up in a tight ball inside you. It's a physical release of all of the frustration, sadness, and anger that you've been ignoring for so long, and it's a sign that you're moving forward. You want to heal yourself right?

Well that starts with recognizing that you've been hurt.