Humans are fragile beings. They can get hurt in different ways. The physical aspect is just the grossest one. Think about the mind: the mental and emotional sides.
When our pride gets hurt, we experience a sense of loss and inadequacy, which may eventually lead to behavioural imbalances.
Because we identify with multiple aspects that are actually not the authentic and original part of ourselves, we mislead ourselves and experience unbalances that are actually based on unreal facts.
Pride is nothing more than the role our society pushes us to play. The father, the sister, and the profession you identify with are a few of the masks we put on every time we decide to interpret that role. An easy way out of such a negative spiral would be to break the link we create between our real selves and these artificial roles.
For instance, if I like driving the car, whenever I take public transportation, I will probably feel sorrow. Because I identify myself so much as the driver, in control of my private vehicle, whenever a different scenario turns up, I suffer.
We create an associative link between an action or behaviour and the image we have of ourselves. The more we experience such behaviour, the more strongly attached we become to that image or label.
The more I drive my car, the more I think of myself as a driver of cars and not something else. Unless I learn how to detach myself from that self-image that has been created due to the circumstances, I will experience pain when travelling without the car. The reality is that we are not our car, even when we use it quite a lot.
The fragility can be compensated for with some sincere distance. How can I prevent myself from fully identifying with a particular behaviour? Imagining yourself in the opposite scenario may start working. Experiencing different perspectives without repeating the same one compulsively may help. Being creative is a nice solution.
The same detachment can be used to deal with our emotions. Trying to separate yourself from the emotions you experience may lead to less stress. It may help to not think of emotions as negative or positive but rather as inner signals that tell us where we are more attached and where we are not.
Too much attachment to anything may lead to a loss of self-awareness. Listening to our emotions is important to understand what is causing them. Our reactions to strong emotions will eventually be milder if we try to understand. That’s because we will reach a solution by thinking and reasoning about it. Using our own brain.
Being human is a fact, remaining human is hard work.