"The Hook" and Staying With You

Gentle Steps to Unhook Yourself When Hurt

Hello ♡,

Last week I shared with you a little about my experience with a consultant. I’ve never actually worked with anyone to grow my audience, but the reasons I didn’t work with this guy included his aggressive behavior and name calling…We started talking in last week’s newsletter about how I found myself listening to his vitriol in spite of my better judgement…I think of this process as getting ensnared in “The Hook.”

The Hook is what gets us to listen, not necessarily the content. Merriam-Webster defines a hook as, “a selling point or marketing scheme.” People often define it as the first part of a paragraph or book that tries to grab your attention. A hook is also something that is curved, and meant to catch - it ensnares you.

Experiences sometimes have a hook for us - and the more potent and pointed the hook for our individual stories, the more we will listen become ensnared by its mean curve. The more flesh a hook has to sink into, or grab, in the form of our pre-existing narratives, the more we will be caught by it.

And, it often doesn’t help when people tell us: “Who cares what they think?!” “Who cares what anyone thinks,” is a big mantra out in the world. That’s often the only model we’re shown to protect our hearts, but it’s unrealistic. We like to say, “who cares,” but most of us know in our bones it doesn’t work.

So what do we do? I find 2 things help: Identifying the pre-existing narrative that got hooked by the hurtful experience, and staying with yourself.

Identifying the narrative that got hooked:

Photo by Maël BALLAND on Unsplash

It’s not eliminating the hook that helps us wrangle ourselves out of that pain, it is illuminating the spots it catches. It’s naming out loud, to another, or to ourselves, what narrative this hook attached to. The specificity with which we name the pain the hook latched onto is what helps us unhook ourselves from the names we were called, or the hurt we experienced. We can’t stop the pain others cause, but we can listen closely for old narratives it touched. Identifying the pain it hooked into is how you find the way to pull that hook out and throw it back.

And that is just what I did with this consultant, and I hope this framework can help you when you need to do the same.

Stay With Yourself:

Photo by Giulia Bertelli on Unsplash

Finally, one of the ways to help if you get hooked is to refuse to turn on yourself too. Don’t agree with the hurtful experience, don’t abandon yourself. Staying with yourself feels like having your own back, and can sound like this:

Here’s what I’m not going to do…

I’m not going to reject myself when I get rejected.

I’m not going to leave myself when I feel left.

I’m not going to turn on myself when I get hurt.

I’m not going to betray myself when I feel betrayed.

Like that friend who holds your hand, or wraps their arm around you when you’re hurting until it’s over. When in pain, comfort and stay with you, name what old wounds, worries, or narratives got hooked. And don’t leave your own side. It’s the combination of accurate understanding of what you’re feeling, and loving attending to your pain that can help you weather the unwanted painful encounters we face.

With you,

Monica

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♡If you are new here, thank you for being here! 🫶🏼 I have written more about the grief of watching what is happening from afar in Israel and Gaza here, here, and here. As I said in one of the newsletters, I am terribly uninterested in my thoughts about all of it, I am just in deep grief with you. I do what I know how to do, which is to help give language to pain.

♡Book News - There isn’t anything I can share today. But, if you are into praying - would you pray for me and this book process? I will fill you in, but for now I would humbly and genuinely ask for your prayers.