Advocating for Our Inner Self When Bullied (whether by Others or Ourselves)

I have a client who faced some objectively Very Difficult circumstances as a child.  Whenever I am drawn to invoking the early years of his life, when he was Little Johnny, he reacts with a level of numbness and resistance that is unprecedented in my experience.  He, “I don’t like when you talk like that.” “What good does digging up my past do?”  And more than these kinds of statements, I can see in his body and behavior that he has erected a nearly impregnable shield to feelings of fellowship with or sympathy for his younger self.

(We all do this at some level, don’t we?  I am certain that this adaptation of numbness felt as though it was necessary for him to survive his early years.  Indeed, some of us may flinch at even the invocation of our childhoods by the utterance above of the phrase, “Little Johnny.”  I know there would have been times in my life this would have reflexively resulted in a spasm of discomfort and rejection in me.  If you, while reading this, notice any such feelings of discomfort, you may well ask yourself if you also have developed a defense against feeling feelings about your childhood.  If so, therapy can help.)

We can feel for our younger selves and we can advocate for ourselves, with our adult strengths and understandings present, as we work with historical situations of wounding.  We can imagine some of the painful scenes of childhood and rework them.  

Perhaps you can imagine a painful scene of childhood … with a parent, with bullying behavior by peers.  One simple example to evoke the upset of childhood might be imagining a peer calling to a classmate, “Hey, Fatty!”  Doesn’t that hurt to even think about?  And now, let’s bring an adult sense of self to the scene.  We can all come to the defense of our Little Johnny in whatever circumstance(s) we were subjected to and now, as adults, we can stand in the scene with our young self and say some version of something like the following.

“Your cruelty is about you. You will not make me feel bad about myself.  I like myself.” 

We can and do heal. And while this statement could not possibly have been accessible for most of us as children, lacking an adult sense of self, this kind of statement IS available for any of us as adults now.

I asked John if he could try supporting himself by saying, “I like myself! You can’t make me not like myself!” He hesitated, for sure. Yet, he was willing to try saying this. The first time, as would be expected, was wooden and unconvincing. He tried again, gaining more strength and conviction. By the third time he said it with strong feeling, with determination, with admirable and healing self-support.

John and I sat for what felt like quite a bit of time, in quietness and respect for what he had just done for himself. Then, almost as a duet so it seemed to me, I thought about and then wanted to ask John, “Who is the worst bully in your life now?”  He answered immediately, as though he too had been thinking along similar lines, “ME!”  And isn’t this true for all of us?  It is no longer the persons of our past, be they bullies or parents or any Others, that beset our sense of ourselves. Now, in adulthood, it is our introjected, internalized relationships and the ways we continue messages of our past in our current relationship to ourselves. 

So try it out.  Can you say to yourself, “Cruelty towards myself is now my own doing and it no longer suits me.”? “I will not feel bad about me. I like me!”? This is likely the ongoing work of a lifetime in our own relationships to ourselves. Best wishes if you choose to take it on.