Thank you so much to everyone who participated in my first study. A partial summary of the results are below.

Participants

I was able to get 364 participants (341 women, 23 men) for the questionnaire asking participants to recall the hurtful events, and 399 participants (364 women, 35 men) for the questionnaire asking participants to read the hurtful stories. The mean age of these groups was 34.98 years for the first questionnaire, with a range from 19-66 years, and 33.89 years for the second questionnaire, with a range of 18-69 years. This is a very large and representative sample (except for the inevitable female bias), so it means that the results will be a useful indicator of how adult women process their hurtful experiences.

Reduction in hurt and comfort with relationships

In the questionnaire where participants were asked to recall hurtful events, you may remember being asked how much the event hurt at the time it occurred and how much it hurts now. The amount of hurt felt currently about the event was subtracted from the amount of hurt felt at the time, to give an indication of the reduction in hurt over time. A further set of results were generated from this reduction in hurt score, which are summarised below:

• Taking the time since the hurtful event into account, it was found that the closer the relationship, the greater the reduction in hurt over time.
  

• This seems to indicate that the closer the relationship was before the hurt, the easier it was for the victim of the hurtful event to let go of the hurt over time, provided they chose to stay in the relationship with the person who hurt them.
  

• Finally, certain differences between people in their comfort with relationships predict how well they let go of hurt over time.
  

• People who find it hard to trust that others would be there for them when they needed them found it difficult to let go of hurt over time, regardless of what relationship the hurt occurred within.
  

• Similarly, people who find it hard to get close to others also found it difficult to let go of hurt over time, but this was most pronounced in romantic relationships.
  

• These latter findings may indicate that people who do not feel comfortable in relationships find it difficult to trust others in relationships in the first place. If they do get close to others, especially at the level of intimacy implied in romantic relationships, then getting hurt may be too painful for them to handle, and may leave them feeling they cannot trust that person again.

There are a number of other results, however, I cannot display them here at this time as they would give away too much about my next study! However, if you have already completed the next study, or will not be participating in this study, please email if you wish to get some details about those results.

Further research

I am beginning to recruit for my next study, which will be looking at some of the above factors in more detail. I will begin testing on the 20th September 2010. Click here for more details.