20: Healing from Bullying (Part 2): Embracing Self-Love & Self Acceptance.
The effects of bullying can manifest in our lives in all different ways. In this episode, I dive into the details of how I recently healed layers of my bully wound by looking at the effects of “mean girls” from my high school, and what it looked like for me to do the inner work around this trauma.
I also answer a question from someone with low self-esteem from childhood bullying, and someone who wants to move past caring what bullies from middle school thought of them.
In this episode, you will learn about:
Why bullying can have such lasting effects
Why healing from trauma is like pulling back the layers of an onion
An example of healing bullying and “mean girls” from my own life
Why it’s important to feel your feelings
Why you shouldn’t be afraid of your anger
How to heal low self-esteem
Why taking a social media break can help you during the healing process
How to heal from bullying
How to start loving your self and accepting yourself
Looking for more on healing from bullying?
Episode References:
Resource Round Up
Write your bully a letter, and then remove it from your house by either throwing it out, burying it, lighting it on fire, or finding another way to ceremonially remove it from your space.
Affirmations
Here are some affirmation meditations to try:
Create a morning or evening routine to practice self-love daily.
Take a social media break.
Connect with your inner child.
Take an inventory of your life.
*Listen to the episode for more specifics about each suggestion.
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
5:46 Teaching
26:10 Listener Question 1
41:53 Listener Question 2
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This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool called Otter. Please forgive any typos or errors.
Amanda Durocher 0:00
Welcome to New View Advice, a safe place for you to ask your most vulnerable questions about life, relationships, healing, and so much more. I'm your host, Amanda Durocher, and I believe our fears and traumas are often what holds us back from living life to the fullest. Join me here each week as I offer advice on how to move through whatever is holding you back from being your best self. Let's get started. Hello, beautiful soul. My name is Amanda Durocher. And this is newbie advice. Thank you for joining me for another episode. And if you're new here, this is a healing centered advice podcast. So this is a place where I answer questions and I offer guidance, as well as tools and resources on how to move through the healing journey. So this could be trauma, relationships, fears, hard feelings, whatever may be arising for you at this time, I am here to help and offer guidance. And also to create a safe space for you to ask these questions and to not feel so alone. I find that there's so much power in healing and community and to hearing other stories and knowing that you're not so alone. So welcome. So today's episode is about bullying. And this is a topic I've talked about before in Episode 15. But I decided to do a second episode around bullying because after that episode, I received more questions about bullying. And I've also continued to heal from bullying since that episode was released. So I had some memories come up in the past month around feeling like I was picked on and bullied that I've had to work through. So I decided to do another episode around bullying. Because I think that this is such an important topic. And I think everybody has different experiences with bullying. And it is a complex topic that we could talk about for multiple episodes. So for today's episode, I'm going to start with a few more lessons I've learned from bullying. And some of them might overlap with my last episode, but I do invite you to listen to that as well, because the content will be different. And the questions are definitely different today, which I'm really looking forward to exploring more around bullying and how traumatic bullying really is, it is such a trauma. And it can have such long lasting effects and it can really stay in our body. For a very long time. I've learned that in the past month I really explored being picked on in high school and some of the mean girls who I went to high school with the passive aggressiveness of the teenage girls I grew up with and how I was still living with some of the effects and some of the effects that caused me to really hate myself. And I had to sit with that and allow my inner child to come forward who had a lot of anger. And we can talk about that. But I have realized that so much of what we've experienced lives in layers in our body. And as we release layers, new layers arise. So as I mentioned, in my last episode, I had brought to my awareness and healed a lot around feeling like being raped was bullying. And then after healing that it allowed other layers of bullying to come up, but that layer had to be healed first. So you'll find on your healing journey. Sometimes there's a top layer that needs to be healed first. And then more layers can arise. But it's like digging through an onion, you got to peel back the layers and there's just can be a lot there. So I found with bullying, there's been a lot there for me to look at and to heal and to offer myself love and compassion. So today I'm going to talk about some healings I've had and how I did that healing around myself and this bullying with me and girls from my high school. And I'm going to answer two questions. One is from someone who has low self esteem and necessitated with them from being bullied in school for being the biggest kid in their school. And the second is from somebody who moved to a new school and middle school and had a really hard transition and felt very bullied. So I'm really looking forward to exploring these two new questions. And having this conversation with you today. I just quickly wanted to give a quick update that I will be doing a sober course this January. I'm super excited. It's a 30 day sober course. And I think it's actually going to start on January 3, but I'm really excited and we're going to explore our relationships with alcohol right in time for January. So this is for people who have been sober a long time people just starting their sober journeys people are sober curious, this is for anyone interested in healing their relationship with alcohol. There's no prerequisites. It's all about you becoming aware of why you drink why you drank any guilt you might feel shame what emotions arise. It's about healing your physical body and your relationship with alcohol, your mental thoughts and alcohol. Why you pick up a drink the thoughts that fly through your head before you pick up a drink when you used to pick up a drink, when you might crave a drink, the thoughts you have about drinking the thoughts you had when you drank and healing your emotional body. So how do you feel before and after you drink while you drink? Do you feel pressured in social situations so much to explore and also your spiritual connection with alcohol because oftentimes alcohol shuts off Our brain, it shuts off our connection to Source. And we're not as in tune with ourselves, because we're numbing out. So I want to explore all four of those things. And I'm really excited for this. Healing my relationship with alcohol has been one of the biggest gifts I've ever given myself, I can't even tell you the benefits I have had in the past year from going sober, and how much more I love myself. And I just want to offer that to anyone out there who's interested as well. So I just wanted to remind you of that, or to tell you that if you weren't aware of that, and signing up for that course, will be going live in the next month. So if you're interested in that, I invite you to sign up for my newsletter, which is on my website at www.newviewadvice.com, you can find a spot where you can sign up for my newsletter there. So I'm really looking forward to that. Thank you for allowing me to share that. And let's jump into today's episode.
Amanda Durocher [teaching] 5:49
Today, I wanted to spend a little time at the beginning talking about what I've been healing around bullying, and how this wound has continued to pop up in my life, and how I have healed that I wanted to give this example so that I can walk you through my process and my inner world. And so hopefully this can help you see my process for healing. So as I mentioned, in my last episode, on bullying, which is episode 15, I have been looking at the effects of bullying in my life since August. It's not that this has never popped up before. But I've really been diving deep into these wounds, I really feel like I had to clear out some trauma and some really heavy experiences before I could see these other layers. So I believe that healing from life is layers. So you get different layers, not everything will ever appear at once for you to heal your body is protecting you, your mind is protecting you. It wants you to go one layer at a time, and it wants to see you move through that and then another layer roll up here, your body never wants to overwhelm you because it's trying to keep you safe. So it's a safety mechanism. It's a defense mechanism. But it's a great thing. Because I really believe that if we got everything at once it could overwhelm us. And we could end up falling into a pit of despair, or even worse, and our bodies are trying to keep us safe. So we just have to look at the layers as they arise and not judge them. And you'll find as you go on your healing journey, that these layers get cleared quicker and more easily, the more healing you do, because you don't judge it and questioned it as much when something arises. So over the past month, I've really been looking at my critical thoughts. And when it comes to criticism that we tell ourselves so often, the critical thoughts we have is something that somebody has said to us throughout our life. So it's something that we internalized that was said directly, or it was said indirectly and we interpreted people's words to mean that. So for me, one of my big self critiques is always tell myself, I'm stupid, I'll find that thought popping in You're so stupid. And with this one, I'm not so sure anybody ever said you're stupid. But I interpreted what people said to me as the root of that being your stupid. So that's what I criticize myself with. So that's just one example. But over the past month, I have been looking at these critical thoughts. And what arrived for me were memories from high school of Mean Girls, and how that had such lifelong effects. The fact that I'm hearing them now, you know, over 10 years later, shows how much of an effect what these girls said to me, even though they never physically hurt me. And they didn't even always directly say anything, but how much that toxicity in that mean, girl language really had a large effect on me. So for me, I always look at the big picture. So this started with the memories of five girls rising. So it started with one and then it went to three and then two others appeared. So there was one in particular that I started with. And she to me was like the Regina George of my high school. So I don't know if other people felt that way. But that's how I internalized it that she was really like the queen bee and she was so mean. But she had that meanness that was very passive aggressive. So I remember watching Mean Girls and just feeling like oh my god, this is so true. Especially that scene when they're in the mall and they're at the fountain and Katie Lindsay Lohan's character compares girls in high school to animals by a watering hole, and how it's like eat or be eaten. I mean, that was the feeling I internalized throughout my body throughout high school. Now the bigger picture of this is that with all the trauma I experienced, so with the feelings I felt at home, and with my experiences with rape and sexual assault, that my body was already in a trauma body right so these experiences to me of these mean girls felt like it was going to shatter any sense of safety I had created so I felt so unsafe. And I consider these minerals to be a direct attack of my safety. Now, this is partially because of my trauma body, and partially because of how I felt as a teenage girl and really wanting to belong. So, for me, I look at the big picture, and I can see how this affected me so greatly because of my trauma. But that's my story, right? So somebody else could have been just as affected by me and girls in high school, because when they went home, they had a really critical mother. And they just everywhere they went, they felt like they were being criticized, or somebody could have gone to my high school or a different high school. And they don't think that people were that mean, because maybe they had a loving environment at home, right? Maybe they had really supportive parents, maybe they never experienced extreme trauma like I did. So the point here is that it's not about what these mean girls did or said, it's that I interpreted it as trauma. I internalized it. And I took their words as truth. And as wounds that I've been carrying around, and been repeating the words that they've said, or made me believe in my head. And so it doesn't matter how truthful This is to someone else, right? Like somebody from my high school could be like, those were the five nicest girls I've ever met. I'm not sure anyone would say that. But maybe someone would. And that's their experience. But this is my experience. So when we're healing from trauma, we're healing from our past. It's all about not judging it, and allowing your inner child to come forward or the part of you or the memories to come forward, and to not judge what arises. So I've been doing this for so long that when I sat with this, when I started to have these five girls arise, I had a lot of anger come through. So how I look at this is oftentimes when I need to look at something, I'll feel a feeling of irritability when I wake up. And so I'll go and I'll sit in meditation, and I take a lot of deep breaths, and then I settle in to a peaceful place, and I see what arises in my mind. And for me, I saw the images of these five girls. And words, they said to me came back, passive aggressive comments. You know, like those type of comments like, Oh, you're so brave for wearing that memories of them making me feel safe. And sort of coercing information out of me, and then repeating it, truthfully, or untruthfully, about what I said. And then I looked like the bad person in situations. There were two girls in particular that I was friends with, but I was terrified of I attracted friends I was afraid of because I felt like they protected me. So there was a part of me that felt like they were a shield to the world. But I would watch them make fun of people non stop, they would whisper behind people's backs, they would repeat what people said they would actually sometimes yell at people in the hallway. And I was terrified. And that stuck in my body. And the things they said I like took note of, because in high school, I was in such a traumatic place, which I think so many of us can be because it can feel so ever changing. Like the rules are always changing in high school. What's cool, one week isn't cool. The next week, you're friends with one person one week, you're not friends with them the next week, you know, like I felt like the politics were always changing. The rules were always changing. So I had to be analytically in my head. And for me, since I was right, my freshman year of high school, high school has been ingrained in my body. And it's like a trauma response to that it's just been something I've had to heal from because everything stuck because I had that big rape wound. And everything just got piled on top of that wound. So now that I've been looking at that wound and releasing such large layers, I'm able to look at these other parts of high school. So again, you don't have to have the rape wound for this to stick, it could be family life, it could just stick because these are very hurtful words. This is just my experience. So you might find that there's more wounds below your bullying wounds. But bullying is so traumatic and there doesn't even need to be another wound under it. Because words can be hurtful. I truly believe that words can be even more hurtful than physical wounds. I always think of that nursery rhyme like Sticks and stones may break my bones. but words can never hurt me, is so untrue. Word stick words are weapons that somebody says to us. And then we repeat it to ourselves over and over and over again. And that's where that self criticism can come from, is it can be what your mother said to your father, another relative somebody in school and their words you repeat to yourself, because oftentimes, we want to wound ourselves before someone else can wound us like that again. So we criticize ourselves over and over again. And these words that girls said in my high school, I have been repeating to myself over and over again, about the way I look about the way I talk about how you know I've really been healing from this too, because of my sobriety. I started drinking in high school, a little before high school if I'm honest, and what that meant for me in high school, right, like I was accepted into certain groups because I drank and it was cool to drink and this type of thing and I've had to like reel back all these beliefs I placed on drinking Because of how it affected me in high school, and the status it gave me and the friends I have, because I drank and the experiences I had. And that's been another layer that I've been peeling back and I've been looking at. And really what I've done is, when these memories arise, or these critical thoughts run through my head, I've been asking myself where these come from? So I've been trying to pick at them, right, so instead of attaching to it, I've been trying to be like, Oh, why am I saying that about myself? I say that to myself a lot, don't I, I've been trying to become more curious about my critical thoughts. It does not mean I'm not critical. This is something that I'm going to be healing from for a really long time. Because being self critical, it's really ingrained. So I know I'm out of alignment, the more critical I am with myself. But self criticism is something that I'm working through. So like I was saying, there were five girls, and each of them was ingrained in my mind with a different aspect of myself I had identified with which wasn't true. So one of them was about my looks. One of them was about drinking, and what it meant to be a drinker versus not a drinker. One of them was about what it meant to be accepted and cool. And how I walked on eggshells around this girl, because you never would know what you did to make her snap. So I constantly would change myself to try and show up how she would want. And the truth is now I see that there was no perfect way I could ask she just would be mean when she wanted and she wouldn't when she didn't want to. And there was nothing I was doing right or wrong. And then another one was about how I was just never cool enough. Oh my god, this girl made me feel like the biggest loser yet. She was my friend. I was the loser friend. And she made me feel like Oh, thank God, this girl chose me because she's gonna make me a better person. Codependency, shorter codependency, if you think somebody else is gonna make you better. That all comes from within. But we're not taught that, especially in high school. And the fifth girl just hated me. So we were not friends. She just hated me. And I would always hear things she said about me. And it was terrifying. And there were always passive aggressive comments. It was never like directly like, I hate you. But I just could tell she didn't like me because of the passive aggressiveness that she would say. So these were the five people I had to heal from, I had to look at, you know, there were things I thought I had looked at, but I realized I was holding on to all this anger and how I realized that was when I finally sat with the irritability. And I imagined myself in the high school. So my meditation brought me to my high school. And I was standing like in the lobby, and these five girls were surrounding me. And they're all saying things and memories were flying back, as they were saying horrible things to me that I have been saying to myself. And then my anger came up. And then I started saying horrible things in my thoughts. And I've learned not to judge this. So I just want to take a minute to talk about this. Because sometimes, our inner child has really horrible things they want to say to get out, it does not make you any less spiritual. It's more spiritual, if you can just sit with it, and take that step back and let those thoughts fly through. So after about three minutes of letting my inner child spew profanities, I mean, she was angry as hell. But the main thought that kept flying out of her mouth was you made me hate myself. And she was so angry that she let those five girls hate herself. And here I am, how many years later, over 10 years later, seeing how much I have been holding on to self hatred, because of high school. And what these five girls said to me throughout high school, and even as young as middle school was some of them. So for me, the first step is allowing this to come up, allowing yourself to sit with the feeling and the memories. And the emotion could be sadness, the emotion could be anger, the emotion could be uncomfortableness, the emotion could be anxiety, and you just allow it to come up. And just let those thoughts fly out. Let the anger out. It can be hard for people to just sit with their anger. So journaling is another great way. Write down all your angry thoughts. I hate you. I can't believe you let me hate myself. Why are you such a bitch? Like, just write it out? Those are some of the thoughts that were flying through my head. Some judgments would fly through like, damn, I shouldn't be saying this or like, No, she's not a bitch, you know? And it's like, no, just let your inner child say it, just let that part of you. That is healing that is finally ready to feel this, let it out. And with anger, you always think is going to last forever. But actually, if you let it flow, it doesn't last that long. So like I said, it was probably three minutes of just coursing anger through my body rage. And then I felt better. And then I was able to look at these five girls. And in my meditation, I saw myself walking and seeing each of them eye to eye and seeing them from a new light. They were just as insecure as I was. Some of them I know a bit about their home lives. And it was like, oh, yeah, I can see why that was the way you expressed the trauma you've been through. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. As women that in my town I really felt that women were taught to I go against women, I did not feel like when I went to high school or even in my hometown that women were taught to support women. That made me really sad. So I sat with that sadness. And I truly believe that when we are abused, that abuse has to go somewhere until we heal it. So ideally, that abuse would move through us and we'd heal it. But we're not taught that. And so many times we go straight into fight or flight when we're abused. So that abuse gets stuck. And abuse either gets extended outwards, or inwards. So my abuse response was to abuse myself. And that got worse and worse and worse. But other people like some of these girls, their abuse response was to take that abuse outwards, I'm abused, so I'm going to abuse someone else. I did the I'm abuse, I'm going to abuse myself. But that's what happens, the abuse goes somewhere. So that's why self critical thought someone else says to you often go inward, but you can also end up saying that to other people. At the beginning of my healing journey, I realized that some of the horrible things I said to myself, I would say to my partner, and oftentimes we can do that. And so I had to realize that I was taking out my own shit on him. That is what we realize we do with our partners. It's a very unfortunate thing. But that's part of the healing journey in relationship is learning that your partner is a mirror for you to look within. And that the more you accept yourself, the more you can accept your partner for who they are. So for me, as I mentioned, I sat with the memories. I allowed myself to feel what I call sacred rage, and allowing that to flow through me with no judgment. That's a sacred rage practice. We all have anger, it's a sacred feeling. It's sacred. So I invite you to start viewing your anger as holy, as a beautiful part of you. That is trying to tell you something, and tell you where your boundaries are, and tell you where you need to love yourself more. tell you where you need to accept yourself more and tell you where you need to heal, and where you need to knock that shit off. Anger is great for that. I invite you to look at your relationship with anger. So many of us are afraid of our own anger because of how people have treated us when they were angry, and they have hurt us. And their anger has hurt us. So we become afraid of our own anger. But if you can learn to be in relationship with your anger, your anger will lead you to those places you want to go. Your anger and your relationship with anger will tell you what you need to do, who you need to leave, who you need to communicate with, and where you need to love yourself. I used to have no control over my anger. My anger would make me more angry. I'd be angry that I was angry. I was until I became in relationship with that anger that my life blossomed. That was a huge step on my healing journey was creating the sacred rage practice and realizing that my anger is there to help me. A visual I get when it comes to anger is that my anger is a lioness. And when I tried to cage that lioness, she lashes out inappropriately, but when I let her roam free, SHE ROARS and SHE ROARS. And she knows what's best for her. She roams free. And she only uses that anger when it's necessary. But when she's caged up and suppressed, it lashes out at people inappropriately because it is bottled up or caged up. And that's not how a lion or lioness is supposed to live. But for me with the healing from bullying recently, there was a lot of anger that arose. And as I mentioned, I sat with it, I felt the anger. And then I was able to forgive because I was able to see each girl who came up for me, I was able to see them as the children they were when I was 14, they were 14. So these people I was so afraid of were just other children I was afraid of some of them, I have an idea of their home life. Some of them I don't. But I know that abuse, those criticisms, that superiority complex didn't come from nowhere. They were children who were affected by the parenting, the caregiving and the environments they grew up in. And I could have empathy for that. So I forgave them. And as I've mentioned so many times before my forgiveness practice is Hapa pono pono, which is a Hawaiian prayer. And so I look at the person I need to forgive. And I say, I'm sorry. It's usually I'm so sorry, I held on to this for so long. I'm so sorry. I held on to all these judgments around you. I'm so sorry. I held on all this anchor. Thank you. And you find a lesson from what you have experienced. And my lesson here was thank you for showing me away. I'm not gonna allow people to talk to me anymore. Thank you for showing me a boundary I will set moving forward. Thank you for giving me this experience to see this anger I was holding on to thank you. I forgive you. I forgive you. I forgive you. And I really forgive them. You can't rush forgiveness. So you may need to do this multiple times. I also say please forgive me Please forgive me for my role in this. I know I wasn't perfect. I know I put an expectation on you to tell me what to do, how to be how to act, please forgive me. And then I send love, I love you. You can say sending you love, I love you. But that's how I forgive. So I wanted to walk you through that. I hope that made sense. But for me, I do this all through meditation, it's been a practice for me. So it didn't come overnight that this would flow so easily. For a while it would take months to forgive, then it would take weeks, days a day. Now I can do it in one sitting. But it's a practice. It's all a practice, and it's become in tune with yourself. And depending on how much you've healed, if billings like that top layer that can take a really long time, because there can be so many layers attached to it. So don't feel like you have to rush through the process. Don't feel like you have to be fully healed. Don't feel like you need to rush through this, you'll feel the release as each layer releases. I just wanted to offer that practice to you and a little peek into my inner world. And if you have any questions on that, please reach out. I'd love to hear from you. And let's jump on into two questions.
Amanda Durocher [question 1] 26:10
Dear New View Advice, as the biggest kid in my school, little kids would push me around, and I wouldn't fight back because that's not who I am. But when pushed around too much, I would defend myself, then I was the one that got in trouble because I was the big kid. This left me with low self esteem, which stayed with me through high school and I still carry it with me as an adult. What's the best way to raise my self esteem? Thank you so much for this question. I think that this question is, unfortunately, a very relatable question. And I thank you for your vulnerability and your honesty with yourself. You have a lot of awareness around this. And that's the first step. So I am really grateful that you wrote this in. And I think that this is a great question. So thank you. First, I want to just say that I'm so sorry that you experienced this. I think that unfortunately, kids can be really, really cruel. I know that in my own life. What stuck unfortunately, wasn't the children who were kind it was the children who were really mean and really hurtful, and how their actions, as I've mentioned, still affect me today. And I think that conversations like this are so important, because the effects of bullying and the effects of being picked on and teased, made fun of the way people are cruel with their words, and also with their actions can have lasting effects. When people are cruel, it can be very traumatic, and especially for young children, because young children are often so innocent. And when we are children, our hearts are really open. And that's so beautiful. That's why children are so fun to be around and are so cute and inspiring in ways because they're so connected to their innocence and to their hearts. But when children are cruel to other children, that's when we start closing our hearts and we start building those defenses. And for you, it sounds like one of the defenses you've built is low self esteem. So it might not feel like a defense mechanism. But you have found a way to bring down your own self esteem before someone else will bring down your self esteem. So we're going to talk about that today. So I can relate to this. I had very low self esteem for a very, very long time. So your question, what's the best way to raise your self esteem? The best way to raise your self esteem is with self love. And that sounds like a very basic answer. But the truth is self love is the hardest thing you will do. Especially if you have such low self esteem. Learning to love yourself is not easy. I often say self love is the everything. And it makes it sound like okay, I'll just love myself today. No, no, no. Learning to love yourself is a committed practice is a spiritual practice is a lifelong practice. And so, to raise your self esteem, you're going to have to start practicing self love every day. Because you are a lovable being. You are a lovable person. And you have been programmed by the way you were treated by society, treated by your friends, possibly your family and your school system, that there was something wrong with you that because of your size, that you were the bully that you were to be feared, and that your size got you in trouble. And you saw how unfair this was. You saw how you were defending yourself. You saw how the perpetrators of the harm to you were made the victims. That's not fair. And that taught you to stay small to abuse yourself with low self esteem. My guess is that you've taken that abuse from your abusers and you started to abuse yourself. And my guess is you have some pretty negative self talk in there. And I'm so sorry for that. I am so sorry. I'm so sorry for anyone who has negative self talk. If there's anything that I want in this world, I just want everyone to know how level where they are. And I want you to know how lovable you are, you have such a big heart. And it's time for you to use that heart on yourself. So let's talk about a few ways that you can do that. So one, a practice that I have used in the past, that I find helpful, especially if meditation is difficult for you, I'm not sure if you meditate or not, but is to write letters to these people with everything you have to say, and releasing how they treated you, and how you're going to change moving forward, because you are letting this go. So I would pick one of these kids who pushed you around, or one memory, whatever pops into your mind first. So it could be a memory from high school, it could be a memory from when you were very young. I'm not sure how old you are when this started. And I want you to pick one of these kids. And I want you to write them a letter. So say this kid's name was Tommy, I want you to write Dear Tommy, it really hurt me what you said to me, or it really hurt me when you would call me XY and Z, and then push me or throw rocks at me. And then when I pushed back, you got me in trouble. That was really unfair. Allow yourself to stream of consciousness, whatever is on your mind. So whatever comes through, allow yourself to tune into that child, or that high school or that adult, whatever age this person, allow yourself to pick the person to start with, that is most on your mind. And you might feel like doing multiple of these letters in a day, you might feel like taking an hour and writing a lot of these letters. So I invite you to express to this person, everything you feel, get it all out. And then I invite you to if you are feeling better at the end, to write what you're going to do moving forward. So is that let this go? Is that forgive this person? Is that not tell yourself the things these people may have told you? You're big, you're fat, you're a loser. I don't know what the criticisms, they told you that now you're telling yourself are but my guess is there's a correlation between what you tell yourself and what was said to you as a child. So I invite you to connect with that correlation. And to let that go to let that negative thought go. And allow yourself to free yourself of this through this letter writing practice. And this may take multiple letters, you may want to write to this person for seven days, your first letter could be really sad, your second could be angry, but allow yourself to move through this through a letter writing practice. And I would invite you to when you're done with these letters, to either burn them to crinkle them up and rip them up and throw them in the trash outside of your house to take them out of your house. So find a way to remove them out of your house. I also invite you to bury them. When I write letters, I often bury them and I hand it over to Mother Earth. And I asked Mother Earth to take this pain and to free me of this pain. And I believe that Mother Earth says yes, I will take this from you. Thank you for allowing me to support you. So I invite you to release this from yourself. And I find that the intention of writing down how we're feeling and not stopping till it feels good to stop. And removing these letters from our home, allow us to really let part of this go, if not all of this go, depending on how deep this wound is. So I invite you to do that. And when you're writing your letters, I invite you to create a safe space. Maybe have a incense or essential oil diffuser, light a candle, create a quiet space, put your phone on airplane mode and create a sacred time. So a time dedicated to yourself for this practice, honor yourself. Give yourself the time for healing. It's not easy work. So oftentimes we ignore the work. So that's one way I invite you to release this and to be that self loving and self loving, to allow yourself to truly look out how you were treated, to allow yourself to feel your feelings through these letters. If the tears need to fall at the tears fall, if you're angry, let it out on the paper, maybe your pen is like stuck to the paper and it's like starting to rip because you're writing so hard because you're angry. Let it flow. I promise these feelings won't last forever. But when you intentionally release them, they will release but so many times these feelings bottle up and they feel never ending because we're not going back to the root. So the second thing I invite you to do as a self love practice is to start telling yourself daily, how much you love yourself. So low self esteem means you have a lot of negative self talk going on. So you need to flip what you say to yourself. And at first this might sound really fake. Whenever I'm looking at a critical thought I'm trying to change it, it feels really fake at first, it feels really fake to say that positive thing to myself, but you just have to keep doing it. And then it starts to sink in as a new belief and a new thought. So try this for 30 days, it's not like an overnight practice to change your self talk and to say positive things to yourself. So I invite you to every morning, pick a few affirmations, you want to say to yourself, I actually have an affirmation meditation. I'm not sure if I paid for it. If I paid for it, I can't link it. But if I didn't pay for it, I will link it in the show notes. But there's affirmation meditations, I'm sure on YouTube, I'll look for a few. But you need to start changing the way you speak to yourself. And again, this doesn't happen overnight. Okay, so people get really frustrated with affirmations. Because they're like, Well, I don't believe it, you have to literally ingrain this, in your subconscious is what I found. So you want to do the healing at the same time, and start saying affirmations to yourself. So I would invite you to write them on your mirrors, I have affirmations literally, I'm looking at a few right now posted all over my walls, because I'm a very self critical person. So I need to, I need reminders. And every morning, there's a view on my mirror that I say to myself, and I have a few body ones. So depending on your relationship with your body, I invite you to pick a few about how much you love your body, it can feel really fake at first. But I promise that the reinforcement over and over again, you will start to feel them. Some days you'll embody it and you'll be like, Yeah, I am sexy. That's one of mine. And you'll start to really feel that within yourself. And then there'll be other days, you're like, This isn't fucking true. And you'll get angry, but then touch into that feeling. Why is it so hard for me to tell myself, I love myself, let that anger flow through you. You know, I find the affirmation process can bring up feelings, the days we don't believe it, or the days that we should sit with ourselves and see why we're having a hard time believing that about ourselves. Because we are all lovable, we are all beautiful. Our body size, our body shape does not matter. Ignore all that messaging out in the world, that you need to be fixed. You are perfect the way you are. And I'm so sorry that society has lost itself. And it forgets to remind you of that you are perfect the way you are. You are lovable just as you are, you deserve all the happiness in the world, just as you are. So I invite you to think of some affirmations and pick self loved ones. I love myself, I am connected to spirit, I'm connected to source, connect back to that higher power. I'm not sure of your relationship with a higher power source, the universe God, all names of God are welcome here. And I invite you to connect with that God loves you. You are so loved you are not alone. This life is fleeting, we should spend it loving ourselves, not hating ourselves. The third thing I invite you to do is to create a self love routine. So a routine around connecting back to yourself. So low self esteem is a sign that you are disconnected from yourself. And that maybe you don't even feel like it's safe to connect with yourself. So I invite you to pick five minutes to an hour a day, in the morning or the evening to dedicate to connecting with you. I don't know what your life looks like, I don't know what your family life is like. But finding those five minutes in the morning or five minutes in the evening, or two an hour. Whatever feels doable to you. Don't overwhelm yourself, we don't stick with habits that are too large, and connect back to yourself. So this could be through meditation or through journaling. This could be saying those affirmations to yourself in this period. But I invite you to connect with yourself. Check in with yourself ground yourself. And you can do this through meditation, journaling or connecting back to your body through a practice like yoga, and ground into the present grounded into yourself and really connect with how you're feeling. Are you feeling anxious when you wake up? Or when you go to bed? Are you feeling depressed? Are you feeling insecure, connect with that part of you and just become curious, bringing that curiosity and I invite you to sit with those feelings that are arising. It can be so hard to connect with ourselves when we're feeling down. But your self esteem will grow. When you know you have your own back. So you need to develop a connection with yourself. Because truly what you're looking for is for you to love you. But you don't know how to do this right now. And I want you to every day. Start loving yourself. And as I mentioned it's through the affirmations through the healing through the just sitting with yourself. Get to know yourself. So many of us are so disconnected from ourselves that we don't really know how we're feeling. And so I want you to start cultivating a practice of self love and And like I said, That's meditation that's journaling. But that is dedicated time to yourself. During this time, put your phone on airplane mode disconnect from your phone. You know, I think that our phones elicit a lot of negative feelings. There's a lot of comparison on our phones, there's a lot of more negative self talk that happens from going on social media, which is why I think everybody should take social media breaks. Social media, that's another way we disconnect. Not only does it cause negative self talk, we disconnect from ourselves, we check out, I invite you to look at the other ways you check out from yourself. Do you have a habit of drinking? Smoking weed do you eat when you're upset? Do you watch endless amounts of Netflix? I don't know what your exits are. Your ways of checking out are but I invite you to become curious about those as well. What are your coping strategies? How are you checking out of the present moment when you feel that low self esteem? Do you disconnect from others? A lot of us do that too. When we get find ourselves depressed or feeling low, we don't reach out for help. So I invite you to become curious about the ways you've been disconnecting. And that can be a great, gentle prompt for that time when maybe you start connecting with yourself. So I just want to send a blessing to you and to anyone who relates to this question through the heart waves, that it is safe to let this go. It is safe to love yourself. It is safe to choose new in this next present moment. You are immensely powerful. You are immensely lovable. But the first step is you learning to love you. And you deserve that love. There's nothing wrong with you. You are a beautiful, beautiful person. sending you all my love today. Thank you for this question.
Amanda Durocher [question 2] 41:53
Dear New View Advice. When I was in middle school, I moved to a new town and started at a new school. I was chubby at the time and was made fun of for my weight and for being different. I was really insecure. And this transition was really hard for me. This was over 10 years ago, but I still think about these bullies and a part of me still wants to impress them, I find myself checking their social media and checking if they've checked mine. A part of me believes that if I prove I'm cool enough, then I'll finally be able to let go of how horrible they made me feel. But the older I get, I wonder if this is true. How can I move forward and let this go? Thank you so much for this question. I think that this is a great question. And I think a lot of people find themselves in a similar place, and finding themselves with social media still being consumed by people from their past, and wanting people from their past to see maybe that they're cool now or that they have their shit together or that they're doing. Okay. So thank you so much for this question. I think that this is a great conversation to have. So I want to start this question just by saying I'm so sorry, for the bullying you experienced. I'm so sorry for this difficult transition you went through, this must have been so hard to not only move to a new town, where you didn't know anybody started a new school at an older age, where you probably had a group of friends, from your original hometown. And to start over and to be not accepted. As children and teens. All we want is to be accepted. We want to have fun and to play. And part of that safety is to feel like we belong. And I'm really sorry, you moved to new school, and you didn't experience that. But instead you experienced bullying and emotional abuse and some trauma. So I'm really sorry about that. And I just want you to know that your experience is valid, and that you deserve to move forward. And that this obsession with how these people view you now is because of this unhealed trauma. So there's a part of you that still wants to be accepted, that still wants to be cool, that still wants to be viewed a certain way by these people. But the truth is who you're looking to accept you is yourself. When this happened, you probably didn't have your own back. And that's very common as children, we're not taught that innate connection with ourselves and how to really connect with ourselves. So we're looking for external validation. Everywhere we go. We're looking for our parents to validate us, our siblings, our extended family, our caregivers, our teachers, our schoolmates, and our friends. We're looking for external validation to make sure we belong. And you are still looking for this because you have not fully accepted yourself. So I want to give you some tips and some tools on how to move forward and that is going to be ways that you can accept yourself and let go of the past. So I think everything in the previous question applies to you. I think you can write letters to these bullies. I think a routine would work great for you to start connecting back to yourself. And I think some self accepting positive affirmations could work great to how much you except yourself how much you love yourself. But I'm also going to give you a few more things that I think could help you as well. So one, I mentioned this in my last episode, Episode 19, social media and comparison, I invite you to take a social media break. It sounds like you're obsessed with checking your social and their socials. And seeing if people are into your content if people think you look cool if people are impressed by the life you are putting out there. But from this question, you are catering your feed to look a certain way, but you are not happy inside, you would not be asking this question if you were fully fulfilled and self accepting. And that's okay. That's a lifelong journey. I sure know that I'm still working towards full self acceptance to, you know, I know I can be really hard on myself. And I find myself comparing myself to people all the time. And really, that's me looking to accept myself, I'm looking to stop comparing. And I invite you to take a break from social media, or to unfollow and mute these people. But I think that you need to start checking in. And with social media, you're checking out, you're checking on other people's lives, and also on how other people are viewing you, but you're not taking the time to sit with you and see how you feel about you. So I invite you to explore different ways to take breaks from social media, I invite you to try once a week, I invite you to try one time, I invite you to try for seven days or longer. As I mentioned, in my last episode, I did a two week break. And that was really helpful for me and helped me to reset some patterns around social media. So that's one recommendation. But that's not going to fix everything for you. Because I think it'll help you as you heal this to check out and not to constantly check on those people. I feel the same way about when people have breakups, I think that you should mute or unfollow the person you just broke up with. Because you don't need those constant reminders as you're going through your healing process. As you're healing from a breakup, you don't need to see what your ex is doing, you need to disconnect from them. And to figure out what your life is without them moving forward. It's the same with this sounds like these aren't your friends that you're worried about. It's people that you don't even see, you need to allow yourself to heal. And part of that would be allowing yourself to disconnect and to not see what they're up to just let them go. It's okay. You can even just mute if you're uncomfortable on following altogether. That's the beautiful thing about Instagram, at least you can mute. And on Facebook, you can unfollow. And there's all these ways that have been created that you can quote unquote, stay friends, but not have to see their content. And I think it would be really helpful on your healing journey to not put your wounds in your face, because that's what it is these people hurt you, you still want to impress them because they hurt you. Because as you said, a part of you believes that if you prove you're cool enough, then you'll finally let go, how horrible they treated you. And I think you're finding that it's not working, you still don't feel accepted, you still don't feel cool. And that's because you're looking to support you. And these people can't do that. So I invite you to take the break, or mute or find a way to have a healthier relationship with social media, I invite you to really reflect on that. And to heal from this, I invite you to start feeling your feelings, it is safe for you to feel your feelings around this. And I invite you to connect back with that version of you who moved to a new town and didn't find themselves belonging, I invite you to sit with them or journal with them. I have an inner child dialogue, practice that all connect to the shownotes that is on my website at WWW dot uvu advice.com. But that's a great way to connect with your inner child or to meditate. So to sit with them, invite them forward, view them outside of you. So view yourself at age 12 or whatever outside of you and sit with them, view them for how old they really were. What I find to along our healing journeys is that it's important for you to start seeing how young you really were. Right? This is over 10 years ago. Now. Now you have perspective. Oftentimes when we're in our those teen years, middle school team, we feel so old, we feel like we can get it all we feel like we just want to grow up. But now that you're so much older, I invite you to sit with yourself and to look at how young you really were, how innocent you really were, how messed up that actually was how that child you as a child did not deserve that treatment. And I invite you to allow yourself to be sad, to be angry, to cry, to connect back to those feelings because you were a child, you are a child. And this goes through the previous question to you were a child. Look at yourself in that way because that is the part of you that is hurt is the child within you and think about the experience you experience and think about it happening to a child you know, and how much that might enrage you. That happened to you as a child. Allow yourself to fully feel that maybe you have children and maybe you can see outside of you now a child that you would never want treated the way you were treated. Connect by Back to that, that's what inner child work is, it's getting out of the adult brain and seeing ourselves as the children we once were, and getting in tune with what we really experienced, and how that happened to a child, that didn't happen to you. Now, that happened to a child version of you. That's what we have to remember. And as children, we interpret things differently than we do now. So I invite you to really dive into that inner child work. So I mentioned meditation in the journaling practice, I invite you to be really kind and compassionate with yourself as you heal from this. And the third thing I recommend for you is that I invite you to take an inventory of your life. And what I mean by this is to look at what you do, and how much of it is for you. And how much is it is for other people. So because you are so consumed by how other people view you, I want you to take some time to look at the things you do the job you have your extracurricular activities, your hobbies, and what do you do for you? And what do you do for others, and write a list of this. So this could be I dress this way, because other people think it's cool. Or this could be I drive this car, so others will know I have money, or I drink in social situations, because everyone else is doing it, make an inventory list, and then get in touch with what you do for you. And invite you to do more of that. So you can be I love to play guitar, because I'm passionate about that. Or I have fun when I play guitar, or I love to color that's for me, I feel relaxed, or I love to exercise, I feel so much better after it. And I invite you to start taking inventory of the things you do for you and the things that you do for other people. And I invite you to implement more of the things for you, and start to exclude the things for other people, even social media, do you go on that app for you? Do you really feel better when you log in and out? Or is it an external thing. And when you're adding photos, stories, or whatever, videos on Tiktok, whatever apps you're on, is it for other people? Oh, I think people will think this was a cool or Oh, I can't wait to see how many people like this, or oh, how many people viewed my story, I invite you to get really clear on your life, and how much of it is what you want to be doing, and what feels good. And how much of it is for other people, there can be things that you feel like you just have to do like you might not love your job. But it's like I have to be in this job right now. This is how I pay my rent, that can even go in a third category of necessities. I have to go to the grocery store, you know, things like that. But I invite you to become really curious about everything you do throughout the week. And we get really honest with yourself. And I think that by writing these things down, you will get a lot of clarity on how much time you might be putting on external and how little you may be doing for you. So it's important that we're always doing a few things for ourselves. I know parents can have a really hard time with finding time for themselves. But even that five minutes in the morning, getting up early to drink that cup of coffee by yourself, or taking your evenings to reflect on your day or to exercise or even to take some time to unwind with a movie. It's important for us all to be finding times to recharge. So I hope something in this answer helped. I want you to know that what you're feeling is very common. I can still to this day find myself not posting things because I'm worried what people will think. And I'm slowly learning to let that go letting go of what other people think about me. But we are so programmed to care what everybody thinks about us that it takes time. So be patient and kind with yourself. So thank you so much for this question. And I'm sending you so much love today.
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of New View Advice. I wanted to do a quick resource roundup for today's resources around healing from bullying. And so today, some of the resources I recommended and the tips I recommend for healing from bullying would be one to write letters to your bullies. Write down everything you felt and release it in a ceremony or release it to the elements to fire water buried in the earth, rip it up and throw it in the wind. But take those letters and remove them from your home. So do the physical act of removing it from your space, too. I invite you to write positive affirmations about yourself. So many times when we're bullied, we become very self critical. And we internalize the things people said about us true or not. And we internalize and we start punishing ourselves. So I invite you to try and start flipping your internal script and start writing positive affirmations about yourself. And it could even just be I love myself and write that all over your house and really internalize that self love. Three, I invite you to create a routine where you connect back to yourself. And when we have low self esteem or we're insecure. We are looking to connect back with ourselves. I used to be a very, very insecure person. I used to have very low self esteem and the way I have healed This is by slowly learning to love myself. So by showing up to myself each day, in a loving way, and healing what arises, and learning that I love myself, and that there's nothing wrong with me. And how I did that was by really looking at the beliefs I was holding onto so tightly. And how these were oftentimes not true, or that I had held on to these for safety, and that I was now ready to let these go. So that routine will really help you. Because increasing your self esteem is a practice. For, I recommend that you take a social media break, I find that if we have been bullied, we can really compare ourselves to other people. So taking that social media detox, or unfollowing, anyone who makes you feel anything other than joy, get rid of it, get rid of it off your feed, cater your feed, to feel good when you go on these apps. If you can't disconnect, five, I invite you to dive into inner child work. And to really see yourself from these balloons and how old you really were. And six, I invite you to take an inventory of your life and really look at what you're doing for you and what you're doing for external validation. I think you may be surprised that you're doing more than you think, for external validation. And that doesn't feel good. Right? So how do you connect back with yourself? You start doing things for internal validation? So what makes you feel good? Is it a bubble bath? Is it eating well is it when you exercise you feel good about yourself, connect to what makes you feel good, and try to start slowly disconnecting from those things you're doing for strictly external validation. Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of New View Advice. I am always so grateful to connect with you in this way. I wanted to invite you if you haven't to rate and subscribe to this podcast. I am hoping to reach 30 reviews by my 30th birthday. And I would really appreciate your support. I am so passionate about these conversations we're having and creating a safe space for healing. And I think that the more ratings and reviews really help people to feel safe coming to this podcast and to see that other people feel safe coming to this podcast. So if you've enjoyed any of these episodes, or even this episode, I invite you to leave a five star review and a rating and feel free to write just write what your favorite episode was. So if you feel called thank you so much for doing that. Thank you so much for joining me Amanda Durocher for another episode of New View Advice. As always, I am so grateful to be here with you and to offer a new view on whatever you may be going through. sending you all my love. See you next time
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
