“Hurt people hurt people” is much quoted since it became a meme in the late 1950s. It is sometimes critiqued, if not dismissed, as a statement of arrogance or undeserved superiority because it is felt those who observe that hurt people who hurt others are, in effect, separating themselves from hurting people while at the same time putting them down. But the truth, as I see it, is that all of us are hurt. Everyone, yes everyone, has been wounded somewhere and in some way along the line. he wound may be emotional, psychological, spiritual or physical. Some of these wounds are deep and seemingly unreachable.Some wounds go back decades; others go back to last week.Some wounds are shallower and can be easily bandaged. Some may be in the process of healing, but then a hurt person comes along and says or does something that rips the bandage off.
We live in a culture that puts a premium on not being hurt. We are encouraged to present ourselves as solid and strong. That we not only hide our bandages, but in many cases deny them altogether. It is disturbingly ironic to me that the most public person in the world who repeatedly claims that his strength, brilliance, self-regard and competence renders him impervious to any sort of woundedness is, to my mind, one of the most wounded people I can remember. He is endlessly acting that woundedness out. And while we may not know what has caused Donald Trump’s wounds (although there is no end of psychological and political speculation as to their source), so many of us do know that he is not only hurting people, but he seems to take delight in it.
Given Mr. Trump’s ubiquity on every media platform and the fact that his persona has somehow seeped into everyone’s psyche (narcissists have a unique ability to do that to both supporters and adversaries), there is the danger that his woundedness – which he is less and less able to disguise — can trigger our own. His rage, particularly as it comes out in his daily blizzard of posts; and his fear, which is reflected in the many wild and desperate ways he tries to buy off various constituencies with lies and false promises, can be contagious. His words and actions remind me of moments when I am in a new place and trying to find a password to get on the internet. To my mind, Trump can be compared to an electronic device which, when getting near to another “pairable” device, i.e. you or me, his password is shared whether we want to accept it or not. Once activated, our wounds can reopen or our scabs get torn off, and we become more hurt and are more prone to hurting others.
There are two important steps we can take to stand up to this woundedness contagion, which Trump is a master at spreading, but they need to be taken in a particular sequence. First, we need to recognize our own hurt, where it comes from, and how affects our mind and heart. This helps us in distinguishing between Trump’s wounds and our own. Claiming our own vulnerability is not an act of weakness but can be an engine of strength. I remember Old Testament scholar and theologian Walter Bureggeman (1933-2025) saying in a lecture that while he honored the ancient ritual of confessing his sins in worship, he also wanted to be given space to confess his rage, his fear, his fatigue, his sense of hopelessness. In short, to confess his woundedness, his pain, his confusion. To recognize our hurts enables us to better explore how they operate in our lives. To claim or confess our pain makes it less likely to act that pain out in hurtful ways.
We become more effective in standing up to President Trump and his army of wounding warriors if we can come to terms with our own woundedness. I remember hearing the Rev. William Sloan Coffin (1924-2006), who was a well-known social justice warrior in his day, lament his observation that so many involved in the anti-war movement in the late 1960s didn’t want to win. Instead, Coffin said, they were unself-aware; their protests were displaced anger from some earlier experience that didn’t have anything to with their opposition to the Viietnam war. And it rendered their witness less effective.
Our woundedness is an integral part of who we are. Instead of ignoring or denying those wounds and the vulnerability that they produce, we need to honor them. Confess them. And tenderly treat them, which enables us to be more effective at creating distance between Trump’s woundedness and our own. Once we have taken the first step of claiming/confessing/acknowledging our rage, fear, fatigue, and hopelessness, we then become freer to resist, reject – and ultimately disempower the contagion that Mr. Trump and others are hell bent in spreading. We are then more ready to take the needed steps of rediscovering hope, repairing wounds, and restoring democracy. We become empowered and are more hopeful. Instead of acting out our woundedness – and being conscripted into the army of hurt people hurting people, we become actors of hope, reconciliation and transformation.
