Hi lovelies,
It was your typical Tuesday in the life of an influencer. I was sitting at a fancy blogger brunch, surrounded by the familiar faces of my writer, editor, and blogger friends and acquaintances. As we pushed around the food on our plates and sipped on Rosé, I noticed the mumblings of a conversation between, Nina* and Jane*.
Nina, “Yeah, the Kardashian’s made curves cool, but that trend is so over.” She then turns, laughs, points to me and says, “Haha, I mean, Candy has the biggest ass here!” My mouth went dry when the meaning of what she said had sunk in. Was she making fun of my body? Was she low-key calling me fat? Was she trying to make the others girl laugh at my expense? Was she exerting her position as the Alpha at the table? Is this was body-shaming felt like? It was clear that the answer was, ‘Yes to all of the above.’
I suppose she had expected the rest of the table to erupt into laughter with her, but when her mean-spirited dig was met with silence, she responded, “Oh, I mean, I wish my butt was bigger!” This back-handed follow-up comment really solidified her mean girl status.
My friend Eva* looked at me and mouthed, “Are you okay?” I nodded that I was but that was a lie. Even though the other girls didn’t join in on making fun of my shape, I felt a hot wave of shame wash all over my body. I bit my lower lip in an effort to stifle the tears that were threatening to break free from my eyes.
Here I was, an accomplished content creator surrounded by my industry peers at a professional event being reduced to feeling like a 12 year old girl in the cafeteria lunchroom that no one wanted to sit with. Weren’t we as adults, and especially as women, supposed to be evolved enough to not take pleasure in inflicting emotional and physical pain on others? Weren’t we supposed to know that bringing someone else down doesn’t bring ourselves up? Apparently not.
When I got back home after the brunch, I started to think about the roots of adult bullying and what was causing another accomplished woman to feel the need to belittle another accomplished woman in the presence of others. But more importantly, I thought of tangible ways to ensure that I never became like her. That I never projected my own pain, hurt, and insecurities onto other people as a way to temporarily elevate my own feeling of being less than. After all, ‘hurt people, hurt people.’
So in an effort to repurpose the pain, shame, and embarrassment that I felt that day, I’ve pulled together a few key insights on how not to become an adult bully.
Identify your own triggers and get some perspective
Getting clear on who you are and what makes you tick is imperative to harnessing your true strength and inner peace. When you’re able to be self-aware enough to know what areas in your life you still need to heal, then you’re able to identify when those triggers are being activated and address them with grace, love, and compassion, rather than lashing out at the nearest target.
Usually people bully other people because something about that person or experience triggers a pre-existing insecurity or wound within that person. Until we are able to heal our own wounds, we’ll keep wounding others. Actively working on your own self-awareness can be scary, tough, and at-times exhausting, but healing your wounds and taking back your power to choose differently when triggered is the work that we must do in order to become whole, healed, and healthy human beings.
Key Exercise: Mindfully notice when you feel shame, embarrassment, anger, resentment, and any negative feelings. Then journal about what was said, what happened, and what memories were brought up from past trauma that triggered those same emotions. Getting clear on the correlations between past trauma and present triggers will help you mature and grow emotionally. This way, you’re able to check yourself and moderate yourself, rather than project your own pain onto others.
Practice gratitude
I know, I know. Gratitude has been a wellness buzzword for the past few years, but there’s a reason for that. When you are full of gratitude for what you have and for what is on its way to you, you cannot simultaneously hold space for jealousy, envy, or feeling less than, which is another root cause of bullying.
We tend to want to tear other people down because we feel that there isn’t enough love, praise, money, attention, friendship, or whatever, to go around, so we want to make sure that we get it which means someone else has to go without. The feeling of scarcity or the feeling of being less than is a root cause of this faulty mentality which leads to the destructive behavior that manifests itself as bullying.
Getting clear on the fact that who you are is enough, that you have intrinsic value and meaning, is the first step to healing the faulty mentality that you have to compete with others for love, attention, affection, friendship, and success. It’s the first step to focusing on our own life in a healthy way so that you no longer feel the need to bring others down in a false attempt to elevate your own ego.
Key Exercise: Forget about having ‘an attitude of gratitude’ actually practice and implement a lifestyle of gratitude into your daily routine. This means going beyond keeping a gratitude journal, but to changing the way you think, speak, and act both to yourself and others through the lens of gratitude.
See below for a few tangible examples:
Old way: “I’m sorry I was late, I’m always running behind.”
Gratitude way: “Thank you for waiting for me.”
Old way: “I never have enough time to stop and fully take in what’s going on around me.”
Gratitude way: “I always have enough time. I’m thankful for all of the abundance around me, from the trees, the birds, the sun, and everything else in -between.”
Old way: “There’s only room for one person like me in my workplace/friendship group/etc.”
Gratitude way: “I’m thankful for surrounding myself with people who accept and include me as I am and I love doing the same for others.”
Old way: “Nothing ever works out for me. I have such terrible luck.”
Gratitude way: “Everything is always working out for me. All that comes to pass is for my greatest good. I consciously create my own luck.”
Old way: “Who does she think she is? I’ll show her!”
Gratitude way: “I love seeing other women own their power in a clear and confident way. I’m grateful for the opportunity to learn from her and do the same.”
It is my sincere hope that you found value in my story and in my insights. If so, please comment and share.
*Names changed to protect both the innocent and the guilty.
