Chapter Three — The Inner Sea — Emotions, Hurts and Behavior

I want you to return for a moment to the inner sea we imagined in the previous chapters.

Imagine the dark waters, their quiet movement, and the balance that exists within them.

Now imagine that someone throws a stone into the water.

The moment the stone strikes the water, waves are created. They spread in all directions, move away from the point of impact, and change the quiet movement that was there before.

That is how I also imagine the influence of an emotional hurt upon us.

Someone says something insulting to us. Someone treats us with contempt, shouts at us, or makes us feel worthless.

The event itself can last only a few moments, but the feeling it leaves inside us may last much longer.

We keep thinking about what was said, replay the conversation, remember the words, and feel that same hurt again.

In my theory, I imagine this hurt as a shell of darkness that entered our inner sea.

And when we keep holding on to the hurt, the waves do not subside.

Sometimes we even create new waves every time we return in our thoughts to that same event.

But what happens when the hurts repeat themselves?

Think of a child who grows up in an environment where he hears, again and again, criticism, insults or shouting.

Each time, a new hurt is created.

Within my image, each time another shell of darkness enters his inner world.

Over the years he may grow used to living inside this movement, until perhaps he no longer remembers how he felt before the hurts began.

He grows up and becomes an adult.

He may be very sensitive to every remark. He may respond with anger even when there was no intention to hurt him. He may find it hard to trust others, or feel a need to defend himself all the time.

And he may also develop entirely different ways of coping with what he went through.

Every person responds differently to his life experiences.

But what interests me is the possibility that a certain behavior, which repeats itself over years, is not necessarily the behavior we would have chosen for ourselves had we not gone through those hurts.

I think of a person who is irritated by almost everything.

He wakes up in the morning and is already impatient. A small word can anger him, and every disagreement quickly becomes an argument.

Over time, the people around him begin to know him as an angry person.

And perhaps he himself already believes that this is simply who he is.

But was he always this way?

Is it possible that at some point in his life he began responding with anger in order to protect himself, and slowly this response became a habit?

In my theory, I imagine the shells of darkness that accumulated inside him as something that keeps stirring waves in his inner sea.

And the more these waves repeat themselves, the more he grows used to living within them.

Here, in my eyes, an important question arises.

Do we really behave the way we want to behave, or do we sometimes keep responding to hurts that already took place long ago?

I believe that in order to begin changing a behavior, we first of all need to identify it.

Not to make do with saying "that's how I am," but to ask ourselves when we began responding this way.

Were we always impatient?

Were we always hurt by every remark?

Did we always feel a need to strike back at someone who hurt us?

And if not, what changed along the way?

Sometimes the answers can lead us to early experiences that we still remember.

Words that were said to us in childhood.

Situations in which we felt helpless.

Hurts that we did not know how to cope with at that time.

I want you to close your eyes for a moment.

Think of one behavior of yours that you would like to change.

Perhaps you are quick to anger. Perhaps you are easily hurt. Perhaps you respond impatiently, or find it hard to calm down after an argument.

Now try to remember when you began responding this way.

Do not rush to find an answer.

Only try to observe yourselves.

If an old hurt rises in your memory, you may place a hand on your heart, breathe slowly, and remind yourselves:

"It was not my fault. This shell of darkness does not belong to me."

These words do not change what already happened, but in my eyes they can be a beginning of a change in the way we relate to that experience.

Because even if we cannot change the past, we can learn to change our responses in the present.

I think that sometimes we allow people who hurt us in the past to go on influencing our behavior even years later.

They are no longer beside us, but we still respond out of that same hurt.

And so, without noticing, we may become the person our difficult experiences shaped, instead of remaining true to the person we want to be.

I do not think it is possible to prevent ourselves from feeling pain, fear or anger. These are natural emotions, and they are part of life.

But I do believe we can learn to choose what to do with these emotions.

Not every insult obliges us to insult back.

Not every shout obliges us to shout.

And not every hurt needs to become a behavior that accompanies us for years.

I return to the inner sea.

Imagine that the waves begin to calm.

The stone that fell into the water is no longer falling again and again. The movement still exists, but it is changing.

That is how I imagine our possibility to begin changing the responses we have grown used to.

Not to erase what was, but to stop allowing it to direct our every response.

In the next chapter I want to focus on the way we can practice this change consciously, day after day, until we begin to feel that we are the ones who choose how to respond.

Because we cannot always choose what will enter our lives, but we can learn to choose how we respond to it.

© 2026 Nurit Rozenblat. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or distributed without the author's prior written permission.