How to Confront Someone Who Has Hurt You

When someone has hurt us, we will carry that pain until we can find a way to forgive the other person. We may think we are retaliating for wrongs done to us if we refused to forgive, but holding that grudge hurts us far more than the other person. Forgiveness is a process, though, and not an easy one. An important step toward forgiveness can be to confront someone who's hurt you. This is never easy—and there's no guarantee confrontation will lead to restoration. But sometimes we need to take this step for our own healing.

In their excellent book Break Through: When to Give In, How to Push Back, Dr. Tim Clinton and Pat Springle offer advice based on experience of counseling people in unhealthy, codependent relationships. “Confronting someone who has hurt us is a very difficult and threatening task. When we actually walk into the room and see the person's face, we may become confused, shut down emotionally, or become violently angry,” they write. Follow the steps below that Clinton and Springle recommend when confronting someone who has hurt you (this process comes from the pages of their book Break Through).