Inner Bully

I had a patient recently come to session and relate that he had been remembering something that he “hadn’t thought about in years.” 

(These kind of moments perk up the ears. When we remember something vividly from our past, it often holds a meaning that we are now ready to more deeply understand.)

This patient of mine, a male, related an experience of being picked on by a girl when he was young.  He explained that it felt particularly galling that his abuser was “a girl.” 

My patient himself is a gentle, androgynous, “woke,” male. 

I wondered aloud if his emotional recollection of this long-suppressed memory might be saying something to him about himself?  Perhaps he is, in his adult life, now subject to being “picked on” by himself.

Hearing this musing he audibly gasped, “Wow.”   

We do hurt from overwhelming events from our childhood when we did not have the internal resources to advocate for ourselves, to adequately protect our core sense of self.  Now, as adults, we are vulnerable to treating ourselves with adopted introjects (in this case, an introjected self bully). 

The good news is we can increase our awareness of how we continue to do this to ourselves, and change — thought it may sometimes seem to happen slowly, though it may be at times excruciating — real change that leads to a different relationship with ourselves is possible. We are worth not bullying ourselves. And as we learn about how we bully ourselves, we can work at not bullying ourselves for being bullying to ourselves.