When You Often Feel Hurt by Something Said - This Might Be Why

Ships don’t sink because of the water around them. They sink because of the water they let in…

I was sitting on a terrace when a friend of mine walked up. Even from a distance, I could see it in her face. She was trying to smile, trying to show that she was happy to see me, but anyone could see something wasn’t right. Her sadness was visible long before she spoke. I asked her gently if she was okay, but before I could even finish the question, a tear had already formed. She stammered, “It’s awful at work. I have such nasty colleagues.”

This video is created with the help of AI so I can share this in languages I don’t speak natively.

I looked at her with quiet understanding as she continued. “I get nothing but criticism all day long, even though I’m running myself into the ground. I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up.”

I nodded and asked where all that criticism was coming from. She told me she had forgotten to put an appointment in her director’s calendar, and the client had shown up for nothing. Her director had told her that because of this, they might lose the client - and that she really needed to be more careful and alert with scheduling.

Then she added, “But I’ve been working there for two years and I’ve never forgotten anything before. Why did he have to be so angry?”

And that’s when I realised - without knowing it, she had punctured her own ship. It wasn’t what her director had said that was hurting her. It was what she believed he meant by it. The story she told herself about the moment. The weight she gave it.

What she didn’t realise is that I happen to know her director well. He’s genuinely one of the kindest people I’ve met - incapable of delivering anger or cruelty, even when it would be justified. That’s simply not how he operates.

But she didn’t hear what he said. She heard her own version of it. She experienced not his words, but her own interpretation of those words. Her nervous system filled in the blanks - assigning tone, judgment, intention - all based on her own internal lens.

That’s the danger. That’s the leak. It’s not the outside world that drowns us - it’s the story we tell ourselves about what that world means. Especially when we don’t stop to ask if that story is even true.

And when the ship is your own, those stories can sink you faster than any storm ever could.

We all live in the perception of our own reality - and most of the time, that perception has very little to do with what’s actually real. I don’t mean this in any spiritual or mystical way, and I’m not going to bring in quantum physics. This is much simpler. More human. More grounded.

Take something as ordinary as a pen. A nice yellow pen. Let’s say I hold it up and ask you what it is. What would you say? Exactly - a pen. Clear as day. Hard to argue with. So you might assume that your version of reality - what you see in that moment - must be the reality. Unshakable truth.

But now, imagine showing that same yellow pen to a dangerous inmate in a high-security prison. What do you think they might say if I asked them the same question? A weapon. Something to defend with. Or attack. Now picture someone with an itch on their back — the kind of spot you just can’t quite reach. To them, that same pen becomes a back scratcher.

And they’re all right. Of course, it’s still a pen. But it’s also a potential weapon, a makeshift tool, a creative instrument, a piece of plastic, or even a precious object used to write the most beautiful love poem someone’s ever received. It’s all of that - depending on who’s holding it, and what they need in the moment.

Language works the same way. Words, tone, even silence - they all mean something slightly different to each of us. When my friend’s director told her she needed to be more attentive next time, what did that really mean?

Does it mean she’s not allowed to make mistakes ever again? That she’s incapable? That she always does everything wrong? Or maybe it just means he’s disappointed that the client might walk away. The truth is - we don’t know. I don’t know. She doesn’t know. And neither do you.

And yet, she feels heartbroken. Why?

Because she thinks she does know.

And that assumption — that moment where perception becomes “truth” without being questioned — is where most of our emotional pain begins. Not from what happens. But from what we believe it means.

But how do you know what someone actually means when they say something? Isn’t it sometimes obvious? If someone says, “You’re stupid,” surely they mean exactly that… right?

Well — not necessarily.

Because what does stupid mean, really? Are they talking about you as a person, or about something you did? Do they mean stupid like someone with an IQ of 50, or stupid like someone who was momentarily distracted or forgot something? Or maybe the word stupid just slipped out, and what they actually meant was careless, uninformed, or inexperienced. The truth is - we don’t know. We never really do. And that’s exactly why it helps to ask.

Not because we’ll suddenly know everything the other person meant, but because we’ll know a little more. Enough to shift the tone. Enough to prevent our own assumptions from taking over the entire conversation.

Because when you fill in the blanks on your own - when you trust your version of the moment without checking in - you open the door to unnecessary pain. That’s what happens when we let our perception become fact. It’s like letting water pour into the hull during a storm. And in the middle of a conflict - especially a tense one - that can cause damage that didn’t need to happen at all.

And let’s be honest: no one sets out to sink their own ship. But that’s exactly what we do when we assume instead of asking. When we react instead of clarifying. And when we believe the first version of the story our mind writes - instead of pausing long enough to ask, “Wait… is that what they really meant?”