Inner Bully
In the world we live in, there are so many things happening all around us that we have very little control of, especially when it comes to major world events. People can be left feeling helpless and hopeless. Events and situations can polarize us against one another.
On a smaller scale, we can’t control what others do and say in our own backyards. We can’t force our community, neighbors, friends, and even family members to think and behave in the way we would like them to. The only thing we have a guarantee of controlling is…you guessed it…yourself!
We are responsible for our own thoughts. We choose how our voices are used. We accept our truths based on our experiences. We are capable of giving ourselves what we need to survive and thrive.
We are also human, however, and sometimes we want to receive love, acceptance, respect from others. We are perfectly able to give ourselves these things, but many of us don’t because we have come into the belief that it must come from outside of us in order to have meaning.
If you are from my generation and older, you were told that giving love, acceptance, and respect to yourself made you conceited. Full of yourself and giving yourself importance that you did not earn or are worthy of. This led to millions of people believing it was better to give than to receive, especially women who put their own well-being, goals, and dreams on the backburner to make sure everyone else is taken care of.
So, if someone was to validate your worth, then it means you’re finally worthy, right? That’s what you tell yourself, anyway, because you have given away the responsibility for your own worth and self-esteem without even realizing you have done so. Someone else gets to say the things you should have been saying to yourself the entire time. Somehow, we’ve come into the belief that it’s the responsibility of others to build you up and keep you lifted.
What happens when the compliments and validation stop coming, however? What if they never came at all? What if you grew up with absolutely no validation of anything other than the negative: you’re too naughty, you’re too sensitive, you’re too fat, nobody likes a crybaby, no one is ever going to love you, you’re too stupid, you’re never going to amount to anything. What does that do to us psychologically, physically, and spiritually?
When we don’t get positive validation in the way we’re expecting from the people we most admire and respect, or even from our peers in general, we can come into the belief that we are unworthy, unlovable, somehow defective, and unable to truly be happy in life.
It starts with repetitive words, actions, or behaviors. These evoke a feeling, which then settles into the subconscious. If it’s allowed to remain in the subconscious for too long, that experience—whether it is positive or negative—will become your subconscious’ truth. Once it has a truth or belief, it will fight to keep it. The subconscious thrives on homeostasis…what it knows. It’s what keeps balance.
Can you imagine what our poor minds would look and feel like if they are constantly being pulled in all directions with no sense of order or stability? It would be a world of chaos. Therefore, your subconscious will seek out other experiences to keep that belief alive…that is until a newer, healthier behavior is introduced that will eventually become your subconscious’ new truth.
While the current belief is still alive and kicking, however, it can snowball even more. We might start acting out those false assumptions about ourselves. Forget the mean or hurtful things other have said to you. No one can ever be as big of a bully as you are—or can be to yourself—in the way you berate yourself, repeating all the things you’ve come to take on as your truth. With each and every critique, negative thought, or self-deprecation, you twist the knife further and further.
You may describe yourself to others using unflattering words. Restrict or limit yourself from what you can give to yourself because you feel you don’t deserve good or happiness. Withhold and withdraw to keep yourself from connections and the world around you because you believe you don’t matter anyway. Maybe you “joke” about yourself in a self-deprecating way as a defense mechanism—because you assume that others already see you in a lesser light and so you’re going to “beat” them to the punch. You reason that maybe it won’t sting or hurt as bad if it comes from yourself. You learn to laugh at yourself to hide the pain.
I’ve been guilty of all of these things MANY times in my life. How do you think I know so much about this subject? I’m the queen of defense mechanisms. And I was usually met with confused looks by those who love and care about me when I implemented one of them—which always resulted in me tearing myself down.
They would say with either sadness or incredulousness in their voices, “Why do you talk about yourself like that?”
Well, for one, there’s a reward in it whether we realize it or not. It’s good in the moment to hear that someone doesn’t see you in the way you just described yourself. But...here we are again, in the vicious cycle of seeking validation from others that you’re a pretty awesome person.
Did you really have to bully or beat yourself to a pulp just to get to that point? Tear yourself down just to hear a kind word from another?
Sometimes your behaviors will backfire. Lord help your self-esteem and self-worth if you use those defense mechanisms and someone actually AGREES with your beliefs about yourself. That can send you tail-spinning into a space that will be hard to climb out of after. Not only did they parrot your inner beliefs about yourself, but they cemented it even further with their seeming validation.
Pulling from my metaphorical case files, one example of this happened to me while stationed at Shaw Air Force Base, South Carolina in 1996. I was very heavy for my five-foot, two-inch frame. I knew I was obese. I beat myself up over it every single day. I had recently been through a diet clinic called Physicians Weight Loss, and despite following the diet without fail and making every single meeting...I was not losing the weight the others were. I felt like a failure and my self-talk became especially brutal.
Everyone could obviously see that I was obese, but I made it a point to bring it up in many different ways throughout the day and make fun of myself to spare myself from the hurt others might inflict upon me. If I was putting myself down, then perhaps it wouldn’t hurt as bad if others rejected me or made comments. My desire to protect myself, however, had the opposite effect. This “defense mechanism” was damaging. I became my own worst enemy. I was teaching others—who didn’t have my best interests at heart—how to treat me.
But I didn’t see it that way, at the time.
One day, I was out on a walk around the neighborhood with a friend I’ll call “Lupe.” Lupe claimed she was trying to lose weight and wanted me to join her. Since she was already thin, I suspected she was just trying to get me to exercise. I went with her anyway. Half way through our walk we were talking about a friend of ours who had just been diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes. I expressed how I felt bad for her.
Lupe shrugged and said, “Well, what did she expect? The girl weighs over 200 pounds! She pretty much had it coming.”
Stunned at her lack of empathy, I said, “Well, I’m 193.” I waited to see if she was going to say I was going to deserve getting diabetes, too.
She stopped walking, looked me up and down, and said, “You really weigh that much?”
I nodded.
She started walking again and told me, “Well, you don’t look it. You must wear it well.”
I didn’t know what she meant by that, but I took it that she was saying that I looked skinnier. Oh, good! She hadn’t made a rude comment about me like she did our friend. That made me feel better about myself.
Then I opened my mouth again and said, “Yeah, I know I’m really fat. I keep trying and trying to lose it but I just can’t get anything to work. I feel like such a failure.”
I just couldn’t leave well enough alone. That good feeling was about to disappear as fast as it came. But I guess I was looking for more sort of off-handed “kind” words even though I had just witnessed less than kind behavior from Lupe. I was rolling the dice and gambling in my quest for validation. Self-sabotage goes hand in hand with all this.
And Lady Luck was not with me. Lupe snorted and said, “Well, no offense, Chris. But if I ever get that big, just shoot me. I couldn’t live with myself if I was that fat.”
I laughed and lied through my teeth when I said I saw her point.
When I walked through my front door, I locked it behind me with tears streaming down my cheeks. I watched from my window as she went back into her house. I hurried past Rob who was in the living room with the kids and ran up the stairs. Locking myself in the bathroom, I finally let out the big gasping sobs that had been hurting my chest from holding them in.
What happened to my metaphorical cajones?! There was a time when I would have given Lupe a verbal smackdown and then promptly ended our friendship. Where was that Chris when I needed her? The Chris who didn’t take shit from anyone and would defend the defenseless—aka our other friend—to the death?
If this was to happen today, I would have said to myself, “I think it’s time for me to get new friends! Bye, girl!” But in hindsight, I realize I kept Lupe around to continue to validate what I thought was the truth about myself at the time. I needed someone outside of myself to blame for my failures.
In truth, Lupe is not the ogre in this story. I am the one who instigated this entire mess. I am the one who opened the opportunity. I had been teaching her how to treat me. I had put myself in a position to hear my inner thoughts be said aloud by another. Lupe was my scapegoat. I could shift the blame to her about how horrible I felt about myself. After all, no one ever wants to admit that they are treating themselves far worse than their biggest enemy.
It stuck with me for over two decades after that incident before I could finally let her words go. TWENTY years. Can you imagine what I could have accomplished with 20 years of positive self-talk and belief in myself?
When I was in my teens and early 20s, I sincerely believed I would not make it to 30. It was just a feeling and belief I carried within myself.
God, however, seemed to look at the mental file cabinet I was stuffing with all these events and sticky situations, and foresaw the hundreds of additional file cabinets I was going to acquire over the years, and said, “You’re not going anywhere. Not until you sort through all this mess and figure it all out! You either figure it out now, or you’re going to come back in your next life and deal with the same caca over and over again until you finally master it.”
Great. But figuring it all out, I am. I’m still a work in progress trying to undo decades of self-inflicted damage, but I have the awareness now and the tools under my belt to stop myself and course-correct. Compliments still make me uncomfortable, but I smile and say thank you now instead of trying to deflect kind words with self-deprecating words. When I type out a post for social media, I stop, read it, and then adjust anything that may show me falling back into hold habits when describing myself.
And I’m also being more cognizant about how I talk about others. I used to be the queen at sarcasm and cut downs because that had become my persona. I thought I was being funny. When people are laughing, they’re not rejecting. But after really paying attention to what those descriptions and words do to others, I see their pain even when they are laughing. It’s a familiar pain. A pain that I never want others to experience. The last thing I want to do is take my unhealthy habit and push it onto someone else. They don’t deserve that.
So what are these tools? Self-love and self-respect.
· Speaking kindly about yourself. Need extra help with this? Join me for Meditation Monday. On March 10, 2025, I released a meditation called “Dear Me.” We go through a meditation that will help get you back on track with treating yourself with love and respect. You can view it on my YouTube channel: @christinemichellewrites or here on my website in the Video Library section.
· Not laughing when others cut you down. Instead, say, “What did you mean by that?” When confronting, you’re teaching them how to treat you. If you don’t confront, you’re also teaching them how to treat you…but not in the way you deserve.
· When you start to have an unkind or self-defeating thought about yourself, course correct. Think about something that you like about yourself and something you’ve accomplished or have been successful with.
· Forgive yourself.
· Don’t be afraid to look in the mirror and smile at yourself. Better yet, tell you that you love you.
· Journal. When we speak words out into the world, we don’t see them. So we do not get the full impact of how ugly some of the things we say really are. The written word, however, blares back at you like a giant billboard. Journaling will not only bring you back into awareness of the damage you may be inflicting, but can also be a venting source that allows you to get everything out that you may be holding inside of you. Believe it or not, journaling can help put things into perspective for you and help you sort out situations and feelings with everything laid out right in front of you.
· Talking with a therapist. These educated and trained professionals can help you with tools and clarity to get back to respecting yourself and loving who you are.
· Surrounding yourself with people who align with your progress towards self-love and self-respect. If the people you had been surrounding yourself with do not respect you or treat you with love and kindness, perhaps it’s time to find those who will. You need people who extend their hands to help you up the mountain you are climbing, not those who wish to kick you back down it.
You’re pretty awesome. Look at the odds you defied to even be here on this Earth from the moment of conception to the age you are now. Are you happy with the way things are right now? You have the power to change them. Do you want the rest of your years to look differently? Then you have to do differently in order for your world to look differently.
Do you have the ability to accomplish these things? Yes! Baby steps will eventually get you there. Remember the subconscious and its fight to keep things the same? Baby steps and repetitive behavior are how you will overcome this. If you try to do one huge sweeping change, your mind is going to fight back and sabotage to maintain the status quo. One step at a time and consistency, however, will allow changes to enter the subconscious without feeling threatening.
And eventually, these newer, healthier habits will become your new truths, beliefs, and knowns. Then the magic happens: your subconscious will fight to keep these positive changes and seek out things in your daily life to validate what it has come to believe as true.
Welcome back to the real you who is no longer held hostage by the biggest bully ever.