Before you vote, please bear in mind what the question is not.
I am not asking if you ever hurt people’s feelings by accident.
I am not asking if you ever deliberately other’s feelings.
I am not asking if certain forms of speech should be banned because they have the potential to hurt sensitive persons.
I am asking how likely you are to be distressed if you realize you have said something that hurts the feelings of another person.
No need to wait for a poll, as there isn’t one.
Yes, and I am much more distressed and guilty than is reasonable in most cases. Ah, social anxiety.
I still cringe emotionally at the memories of relatively minor tactless things I said years and years ago… the person I said them to probably doesn’t even remember. I also hate rejecting men romantically, though that’s pretty irrational.
It depends on the person. There are some people who are so ultra senstive that it’s impossible not to hurt their feelings. When I accidentally say something that hurts someone else’s feelings and I can see how it could have been avoided - then I apologize and usually feel bad for a period of time.
I try very hard to be polite and respectful. If I say something hurtful it does bother me. I try to apologize and hope the person understands it wasn’t personal.
I need to be more careful about sending thank you cards. Visiting people in the hospital. Things like that are so important and I’m just rubbish at it.
I ditto what rhubarbarin said.
Like Moonlitherial said, it depends on the person.
I know someone whose feelings I seem to “hurt” every time I say something that disagrees with what she thinks or feels. I don’t feel bad at all any more. I think some people enjoy having their feelings hurt. Other than that, if I do say something that accidentally hurts someone’s feelings, I apologize, but I don’t dwell on it. I don’t go on feeling bad for ages or anything.
Yes, b/c I don’t like to hurt other people’s feelings
Yes. I torture myself over unintended slights for years. I can still recount hurtful foot-in-the-mouth things I said in high school.
Yes, it bothers me to unintentionally hurt someone else’s feelings.
Yea, same here.
I’m much the same way. I’ve had panic attacks before over thinking I might have hurt someone’s feelings. I’ve gotten better recently thanks to a lot of effort, but unintentionally hurting someone’s feelings still agonizes me to a certain degree. Seeing someone else unintentionally hurt a person’s feelings makes me cringe, too.
It depends on my relationship to the person. I know it sounds messed up, but if I don’t like the person I really don’t care. Unless if was someone I was close to, I wouldn’t really care. Going by the situation, I didn’t mean offense. So, it wouldn’t bother me and I’d probably forget it.
I think it depends on how offended they are and how important it was that I said what I said the way I said it. I can’t get too upset when I offend someone when I did everything reasonably possible to forestall giving offense. And there are some things that I just don’t think it okay to get offended about. I don’t want to voice them here, as it would likely offend some people.
If someone is going to flip out just because I said, “You look nice today”, then I’m probably not going to be feel anything except contempt. But if I tell a joke involving a dead cat, and someone sadly says their cat just died, I will feel bad. Even if I think they were being a wet blanket (how am I supposed to know your cat died?!), I would feel guilty for causing bad feelings.
About two weeks ago I got angry at a co-worker and didn’t try to hide it. It had a negative effect on her–enough for her to tell me afterwards that she told her boyfriend about it and he had to cheer her up. I apologized and bought her a donut to make up for it. But to be honest? I wasn’t sorry at all. I had reacted to her being a twit, and though I didn’t call her a twit, she needed to face the consequences of that kind of behavior so that it would stop. I didn’t intend to hurt her, but I’m not going to swallow my emotions just so that everyone is happy all the time either.
It bothers me when I hurt someone’s feelings. If I put my foot in my mouth, I feel stupid as well as feeling bad.
Absolutely, it bothers me. Anything that allows the possibility of any other human being being hurt by me, or disappointed in me bothers me to an extent that most likely isn’t healthy.
Yes, it bothers me.
Yes it does. One thing about it that particularly bothers me is that the other person might have thought I was being intentionally hurtful. Related to that is the idea that I would be seen as a thoughtless person. I really try to be careful about what I say, but I’m not always aware of how someone else might take a thing, and sometimes things just come out wrong. It feels a little shameful when I see that one of those has happened.
It doesn’t bother me to intentionally hurt someone’s feelings if the reason is right. Unintentional doesn’t even cause a blip in the line.
And unfortunately, there are people who use it as a weapon.