Emotionally injured people

Emotionally injured people are typically extremely judgmental toward others. They manage their pain by magnifying the faults of others and minimizing their own. They don't understand that the anger others have provoked in them is the same anger they are now provoking in others. Satan has used their pain to blind them to the hurt they inflict on those around them. As a result, wounded people often justify wounding others as retaliation for their injury. They never find the healing they need because they are not looking for it; they have another agenda and that is to take out their hurt on others, and they do so with both conscious and unconscious tactics.

What the bitter, offended person is saying is this: "My hurt is so deep, the offense done to me is so great that nothing I do can be as bad as what has been done to me." So he therefore believes he has the right to hurt others. All hope of seeing himself for what he is, has vanished. He denies his bitterness when he can and justifies it when it is pointed out. To forgive, he believes, would be to trivialize the offense, so the wound is carefully nurtured and kept fresh day after day.

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Erwin W. Lutzer, When You’ve Been Wronged: Moving from Bitterness to Forgiveness (Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2007).