I’m tired, guys. Tired of spending my entire life trying to get the world to accept me. Tired of dedicating my career to educating people about my true disabled experience, only to be reminded —DAILY, by hundred of thousands of people — that I’m still widely regarded as a ‘vegetable’ that would be better off dead.
Shane Burcaw
But who is disabled in their humanity? It is the haters with the most egregious disability. I think that a large motivation behind bullying is often that the tormentor ultimately feels like crap about themselves inside because someone else tormented them first. The bully agreed with their tormentor that they were indeed worthless and now they project that rage and shame they feel at themselves onto others as a coping mechanism. Many bullies have not been adequately taught how to see the worth in themselves so now they share the lessons they have learned about heartache by bringing further heartache to others.
“When you begin to see that your enemy is suffering, that is the beginning of insight.”
– Thich Nhat Hahn in Peace Is Every Step: The Parh of Mindfulness in Everyday Life
Whether we are the bully, the bullied, or the bystanders, so many of us seem to fundamentally not know how to be kind to ourselves. We do not have sufficient boundaries within ourselves where we determine whether we believe a truth with every element of our being and no one is to tell us otherwise. Instead, we tell ourselves some positive things now and then but we ultimately resign ourselves to the fact that this will not do us much good.
What you believe about yourself is important. It changes everything. Your perspectives, your plans, what you think is possible, how well you can be kind to yourself and others, so many accomplishments, and the fundamental experience of being alive depends upon how you perceive yourself.
What would you think if your favorite celebrity spent the day with you and shared all sorts of good qualities that they saw in you and told you how much those qualities inspired them? You would most likely remember those words forever and celebrate those qualities in yourself and pour more positive energy into being a leader in your life regarding.
I certainly appreciate external validation. Someone I look up to nearly as much as my favorite hero told me he believed I had a gift when it came to my writing. I barely expected this person to notice me, much less make such a decisive compliment. And now I keep the positive qualities he was recognizing more strongly in mind and consider it a responsibility to use my gift wisely. And this is good. And connection is a very positive thing. But we also need to be our own support. We need to be able to decide about ourselves that we are good enough and that we do not agree with the vicious determinations that bullies have made about us.
We need to enable ourselves to be kind to others by being kind to ourselves. I believe there needs to be a greater public awareness of the importance of internal kindness. Patterns of trauma have gone on long enough and now is the time to know freedom through kindness. Begin by being kind to yourself. You have an inherent worth that nothing can destroy. You have gifts and qualities of great value to yourself and others. It is okay to think positive thoughts about yourself. You are not Less Than. Your bullies only knew their own pain and never for a moment knew who you are in a genuine way. You are good. You’ve got this!
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
