Blunt

I have been told that I am extremely blunt when it comes to conversing with people to the point that I can hurt people's feelings. This trait of mine does put me in a position where I have to apologize for my words at times. However, it also makes people come up to me and open up to me for honest advice and opinions because they know I won't sugarcoat anything and will say it as it is, so I guess being blunt does have a redeeming quality to it. Its just that personally I have suffered a lot of criticism (not the constructive kind) so I have turned into a critic myself. I'm very hard on myself which makes me hard on others as well. I also feel as if I don't have as much empathy as I used to because my heart has hardened quite a bit over the years due to considerable amounts of trauma so whenever I'm kind to somebody or good to somebody I feel surprised by myself like oh, I didn't know I was capable of that. So yeah. This is my biggest flaw I guess. Once realization hits and I feel like I've really hurt somebody because they become silent all of a sudden, it really makes me think twice about behaving that way so I make a conscious effort not to be blunt when talking to them the next time around and to take their feelings into account.