Q+A – Not Everything That Hurts Is Harmful
Not Everything That Hurts Is Harmful
In this Q and A episode, we dive deep into the intricate world of recovery, focusing on a crucial distinction: not everything that hurts is harmful. Join us as we explore the delicate balance between facing discomfort and avoiding lasting damage, all while learning the art of delivering potentially hurtful information with empathy and care.
Tune in to learn about:
Understanding the Difference: We unravel the nuances between hurt and harm, helping you recognize when it’s necessary to confront pain and when it’s time to protect yourself from true harm.
The Right Formula: Discover the secret recipe for delivering potentially hurtful information with finesse. We provide actionable strategies for effectively communicating difficult truths without causing unnecessary suffering
Building Empathy: We discuss the importance of empathy in relationships and how understanding the difference between hurt and harm can improve your connections with others.
Join us for an enlightening and compassionate conversation that will empower you to face life’s challenges with courage and wisdom. Whether you’re on a journey of personal recovery or seeking to improve your relationships, this episode has something valuable to offer. Don’t miss it!
To find other similar episodes by topic, click here.
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Episode Transcript
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You are listening to The Courage to Change: A Recovery Podcast. We are a community of recovering people who have overcome the odds and found the courage to change. Each week we share stories of recovery from substance abuse, eating disorders, grief and loss, childhood trauma and other life-changing experiences. Come join us no matter where you are on your recovery journey.
Hello, beautiful people. Welcome to The Courage to Change: A Recovery Podcast. My name is Ashley Loeb Blassingame, and I am your host. And today we have a Q&A.
Scott Drochelman:
Q&A.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Q&A.
Scott Drochelman:
Q&A. It sounds like the, I think we’ve done that before, but it sounds like, do you remember the movie theater where you did that?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yes.
Scott Drochelman:
What was it that they whispered?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I don’t remember. Wasn’t it something about turning off your phone?
Scott Drochelman:
It’s like Wehrenberg. Wehrenberg. It’s Wehrenberg. Did you have those? Did you have theaters?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I don’t think. I don’t think so.
Scott Drochelman:
Everywhere I’ve lived we had Wehrenberg Theatres-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You’ve lived a lot of places.
Scott Drochelman:
… And so they would say Wehrenberg, and they’d go “Wehrenberg. Wehrenberg. Wehrenberg.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Wehrenberg. They’re trying to really get across that Dolby Sony sound system.
Scott Drochelman:
And then you’d go on the ride.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Scott Drochelman:
Do you remember the ride on the film strip? Did you do that?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No.
Scott Drochelman:
In your movie watching experience?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No.
Scott Drochelman:
Were you watching any movies, or were you just doing drugs?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I was. Do you know how many times I’ve watched Blow? I mean, I watched a lot of movies.
Scott Drochelman:
That’s a great movie.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Great movie. Yeah. I watched movies, but my husband has seen every movie that has ever existed and that is not me.
Scott Drochelman:
What were you doing, reading, you square?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, I’ve read a shit-ton, which is a technical term, a shit-ton of books.
Scott Drochelman:
I’m hoping to learn to read someday.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Any day now.
Scott Drochelman:
Any day now it’s going to come to me. I put it in order.
Me and my son are on the same track.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, that first grade reading level.
Scott Drochelman:
That’s good.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You’re learning short and long vowels.
Scott Drochelman:
Yeah. Say that again. I learned about vowels. I don’t know that they can be short or long.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, some say their names, some don’t.
Scott Drochelman:
Interesting. Okay. I mean that’s exactly what we’re talking about today.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Exactly.
Scott Drochelman:
The Q&A for today is not everything that hurts is harmful. This came from a conversation that you and I were having. Catch us up, get us into this conversation that we were talking about.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. So I was reading about something adjacent to mental health and recovery that talked about that. There was a sense in the thing I was reading that said it might hurt, but not everything that hurts is harmful. And it was talking about how there’s a distinct difference between being hurt and being harmed. And for me, I don’t know about you. When I consider, when I think of being hurt, I really would in other contexts say that was harmful to me. Right? When I think about being hurt, it feels harmful.
And when I read this and thought about what they were talking about in terms of really pulling apart those two definitions, I thought it was a really important piece of how we deal with recovery, how we deal with boundaries, and how a lot of parents deal with adult or teenager who is struggling with addiction, which is that there are going to be a lot of things that we do, especially as parents, but even as spouses and friends, setting boundaries, giving hard truths, et cetera, taking space that feel hurtful, and yet that does not mean they’re harmful. I think most of us really try to avoid doing things that are harmful, but if we think that everything that hurts someone or ourselves is harmful, then we’re going to avoid things like setting boundaries, telling our truth, et cetera. Parsing through those two definitions I think is really a helpful thing to use in our day-to-day life.
Scott Drochelman:
Can you kind of give us an example of a time where maybe somebody was doing something that felt hurtful, but it was maybe for the best and it wasn’t truly harmful for you?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, I can give a few examples. One example I like because I use it now and it’s just kind of a silly example. In early sobriety I called my sponsor, and I had hooked up with these two guys and it turned out they were cousins. That didn’t go well. And they were from a very tight-knit Persian community, and I did not know anything about this community, so I complicated my life. That’s the short version. And so I was trying to do this, first of all, I was trying to do this dance of subterfuge, of lying and trying to get away with it and I don’t know, blah, blah, blah and all this shit. So I call my sponsor, I’m like, “I’m in this sticky situation, no pun intended.”
Scott Drochelman:
Oh boy.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And what do I do? Blah, blah, blah. And I’m telling her all the details, right? All the well he said this and she said that and she said, “I want to stop you.” She said, “I don’t need all the details of this story.” And I was so hurt. What the fuck? You don’t need all the details? You’re my sponsor. You got to hear this. How are you going to guide me in this debacle that I have created if you aren’t going to hear all the details of who said what, when, how? And she said, “I don’t need to hear all these details.” She basically said, “Are you going to be an honest person or not? Is this a normal consequence of the behavior that you were exhibiting?” And laid it out for me and why this silly situation was significant was twofold. Number one, she told me that all the details didn’t matter. I had never considered that sometimes, actually oftentimes all the tiny bullshit details that we go back and forth with don’t matter, it comes down to principles and how we behave in our life and our attitudes and morals.
This is what I do. This is who I am, this is how I show up, and most of the details don’t matter. That was a lesson for me. It was also a lesson for me in someone putting a boundary of I don’t want to hear all that. That was kind of embarrassing and hurtful. And then the other piece was that I wanted to avoid looking like a hoe and people being mad at me. I wanted to avoid that because that hurt and that was embarrassing and whatever, but that’s what my behavior had been. If I wanted to be this person who was honest and sober and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, I needed to show up as the person that I want to be using those values and morals.
All of it was very painful. It hurt, but none of it was harmful. It was incredibly important for me. I have the ability to talk my way and explain my way into anything or out of anything, and she wasn’t going to have that. And she set that boundary with me, which most people won’t do. And so it was a very powerful thing and something I use today, and it taught me that if I’m going to behave in a certain way, which is okay, I’m allowed to do that, but I need to show up, I need to expect and accept the consequences of those behaviors. That’s what the honest piece is. You’re allowed to do that. You’re allowed to hook up with a bunch of people and them all be mad at you and whatever, but you have to face those consequences. So if you don’t like that feeling, then you need to stop doing that.
And my solution was always to find some way to hide or deceive or whatever, which would always complicate things. The boundaries that people can set with you can be, they feel hurt. Hey, I can’t hang out with you when you act this way. Hey, I’m not willing to engage with you if you’re going to engage in talking badly about so-and-so, or whatever it is. All of these things, they can hurt, but they aren’t harmful. Telling your nervous system, teaching your nervous system the difference is extraordinarily helpful in managing stress.
Scott Drochelman:
That’s cool, but I don’t need all those details. If you could just…
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Tou-fucking-che. Touche.
Scott Drochelman:
No. What I was going to say is, sometimes the person who’s delivering this, there’s often a hiding under this umbrella of I’m just blunt, or they just need to know the truth at all costs. I’m just being honest about what’s going on. Was there anything in the packaging from that conversation or other ones that you feel like are instructional for the times where maybe we do have to hurt the person or provide a hurtful experience so that it can be instructional or helpful or whatever, fill in the blank.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yes. So there is a formula for how to know before you speak, you ask yourself is what you’re going to say, true, kind, necessary or helpful. There’s a speaker who I love who’s called it the scalpel of truth with the anesthetic of love. Are you coming from a place of love? Are you coming from a place of humility and humanity? Is what you’re saying necessary? Is it helpful to that person? Is it true? And kind can be kindness towards a dying animal that’s going to die, it can be helping it end its life faster to avoid pain. Kindness looks different than being nice. It’s not the same thing. I can be kind to you and you can experience it as painful. My kindness to you might be to tell you the truth that no one else is going to tell you because it’s true and it’s necessary and it’ll help you. And that may be the kindness thing that I can do for you.
And a lot of people will say, “I’m blunt,” and that’s impulse control. A lot of people will just blurt out and tell people at anything or unload their feelings onto people. And that’s selfish, because it’s not always necessary to tell everybody what you think, and it certainly isn’t helpful. I hear it when people are like, “I’m going to go and tell my partner that I cheated on them,” and all the different ways and so on and so forth. And it’s like, okay, so are you doing that to unload your guilt? Is that helpful to that person? Is it necessary? What are your motives behind it? How is that going to help your partner? And sometimes the answer is yes, and many times it’s no. But I think that people using the formula is a true kind necessary and helpful is a really great way to start to monitor your quote unquote blunt truths.
Scott Drochelman:
Have you had the other side of the coin? Have you had conversations that people felt like they were just truthful and honest, but it did harm you in some way? And what was different about that experience?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, I had a boyfriend who, he was sober. We were both early sobriety and he started drinking and trying to make it work like a normal person kind of deal, trying to make his drinking work, which ultimately it didn’t. And then decided to share with me what he didn’t like about my body and that he felt like my hips were too wide and I was probably too, his words, I was probably too fat to be attracted to, but he really, really liked me. And he said, he was like, “Yeah, I feel like Shallow Hal right now.” And anybody who’ve seen that movie knows how awful a thing to say. And of course, I was also very thin at the time. This was a period of, I was like 20. At the time there were a bunch of things that had gone on, and so my self-esteem was in the dumps, and part of why my self-esteem was in the dumps was because I stayed after that he said that. He also told me which girls in my friend group he would prefer, and it was really, really painful.
And for whatever reason, I think because my self-esteem just took an absolute dive, I stayed in the relationship. And to his credit, to his credit, so two things. Number one, I stayed in this relationship. I should have left. Number two was to his credit that when he did get sober years later, he came and made a formal amends to me, a formal amends process and has expressed various things that he has done in order to make things right or whatever. So he was drinking, he was in his addiction, whatever. That was harmful to me. It came from this degradation, these truth bombs, if you will, of my self-esteem, and that effect caused me to put myself in situations that I would never put up with.
Stay tuned to hear more in just a moment.
Hi everybody. Ashley here. As many of you know, I got sober at 19 after going to many treatment centers. And years later when my aunt passed away as a result of her addiction, my father and I and our business partner, Iain Crabb, started a telehealth company in 2010 called Lionrock Recovery. We started with a PowerPoint and a dream hoping to help people overcome barriers to treatment like affordability, accessibility, and privacy, which we were able to create in this program that we started. Today, Lionrock Recovery, our little PowerPoint treats people all over the world. We have over 200 clinicians and it’s an amazing program. We have an intensive outpatient program that has so many different time tracks to fit into people’s schedules and specialties like Professionals Group, LGBTQIA, Trauma, and many, many more.
We are able to help people anywhere in the world with any schedule, and all of it can be done privately. This is our dream come true, and Lionrock Recovery is available to any of you who have family members who are struggling, or if you’re struggling and you need to talk to somebody, our admissions team is there around the clock for a free phone call. Also a live chat on the website. There’s so much there that we’ve worked so hard to bring to you. Please check it out, LionrockRecovery.com, or you can call the 800 number, (800) 258-6550. Thank you so much.
Scott Drochelman:
So officially, don’t do any of those things. If that’s any part of your conversation with someone, strategy, let’s go ahead and go the complete opposite direction.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. The point being is, he felt that he was telling me the truth. I knew him enough to know, I saw in him that he felt very conflicted, that he very much cared for me and also that sexually he was looking for something else, his type or whatever, and he felt the need to share that with me, but that he also wanted to stay in the relationship with me comparing these situations, and so I, wanting to be in the relationship stayed, and that’s a truth bomb, if you will. I’m going to tell you the truth about how I feel and how I feel about your body, and that’s the kind of thing that’s harmful. Whereas had he told me the truth, which was, “Look, I really care for you, but we are not compatible sexually for me, and I can’t continue to be in a relationship where we’re not sexually compatible.” That would’ve been painful and it would’ve also not been harmful. It would’ve been a truth that’s still kind, that’s necessary, and that’s helpful because it helps him leave the relationship.
Scott Drochelman:
What would be some of the indicators that maybe a conversation that might hurt needs to happen or is on the horizon?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, big ones are, I can’t support your drinking and what that looks like, or I will only support your recovery, and what that looks like is if you’re drinking, I’m not going to hang out. I’m not going to hang around. I’m not going to be there. I’m not telling you you can’t drink. I’m not trying to be mean to you or punish you, but I will only support your recovery. For the other person that’s going to feel hurtful. Maybe you’re saying things to your child like, “Hey, if you are using drugs and alcohol, you can’t live here. We can figure something out, but you can’t live in this house.” That’s going to be very hurtful to them, but again, harmful, that is the type of thing that is true, kind, necessary, and helpful. Boundaries can be very painful for everyone, and it doesn’t mean that they are harmful.
In fact, not setting the boundary is more harmful. You’re hurting either way. Whatever that boundary is you’re not setting, guess what? You’re hurting either way. So not setting the boundary is harmful. Setting the boundary is hurtful, and so if you are thinking about how to talk to someone, what to say, what the parameters for your truth are going to be, again, I bring you back to is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary? Is it helpful? If you use that as a way to measure the truths that you say or the things you reveal or how you speak to people, I guarantee that your relationships will improve. If you have specific questions about this conversation, please feel free to email us, Podcast@Lionrock.Life. Podcast@Lionrock.Life. Email us. We will respond. Reach out to us on our Instagram, CourageToChange_podcast. We would love, love, love to hear from you. Talk to people all the time. I answer Scott answers, and I hope you have a fantastic week. Thank you for listening. We so appreciate it, and we’ll see you next time.
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