55: Overcoming the Long Term Effects of Bullying: Healing Low Self-Esteem, Abandonment Wound, & Mean Friends

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Mar 8

The wounds created from bullying and being bullied can impact our lives long after the instances of bullying have occurred. In this episode, I discuss the long term effects bullying has had in my own life, specifically low self-esteem and self-doubt. I also discuss more long-term effects of bullying and how to heal. I also answer a listener question about healing from the fear of abandonment from friends, as well as a listener healing from having mean friends.

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Journal Prompts 🖊️

New Journal Prompts - Healing the Long-Term Effects of Bullying
Friendship Breakup Journal Prompts

Book Recommendation 📚

Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents by Lindsay C Gibson

More Resources 🔗

Similar Episodes 🎙️

Timestamps ⏱️

0:00 Intro
2:12 Teaching
19:28 Long Term Effects of Bullying
20:27 Healing Long Term Effects
26:42 Question 1 - Abandonment Wound
34:48 Question 2 - Healing from “Mean” friends

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This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool called Otter. Please forgive any typos or errors.
Amanda Durocher (Intro) 0:00
Welcome to New View Advice. I'm your host, Amanda Durocher. And I invite you to join me here each week as I offer advice on how to move through whatever problem or trauma is holding you back from living life to the fullest. Let's get started. Hey there beautiful souls. My name is Amanda and this is New View Advice. If you're new here, this is a healing centered advice podcast where I offer guidance for the healing journey. I don't believe I have all the answers you seek. I believe you have all the answers you seek, you just may need a new view and a little guidance along the way. Thank you for tuning into today's episode. Today we're going to be talking about bullying. This is a topic I am very passionate about because I have found in my own life, and we'll be discussing today the long term effects of bullying and how bullying can leave lasting impacts on those who have been bullied and how it's important to heal from bullying in order to release ourselves of the pain of the past. I believe that bullying is not discussed enough as adults. I think that we've begun to bring awareness to bullying in children and teens. But there needs to be more conversations around the long term effects of bullying. And if you were bullied in your youth, how this experience or these experiences may still be affecting you today. So today we are going to be discussing the long term effects of bullying. And I will be giving an example from my own life and a healing I just went through. And I will also be answering a question from a listener who wants to know how to work through the fear of abandonment of friends. And another question from a listener who has found that a lot of their friends are mean to them, and how do you heal from this. So I'm excited for today's episode and I wanted to mention up front that I will have journal prompts on my website to assist with this episode and to assist with healing from bullying. I also do have journal prompts on my website for healing from Friendship Breakups. And sometimes bullying and Friendship Breakups can go hand in hand because sometimes the people who bully us are people we considered friends. So I'll link those in the show notes as well. And you'll be able to find those on my website at newviewadvice.com/55. So let's jump into discussing the long term effects of bullying and how we can begin to heal from these long term effects.
Amanda Durocher (Teaching) 2:12
Today I wanted to talk more about the long term effects of bullying. I think that bullying can have many effects on many people's lives. And it can differ for everyone. Today I'm going to give an example from my own life about how bullying has affected my self esteem into adulthood and also self doubt that I've lived with, and blink. And I've many other effects we're going to discuss as well. But I like to view these bullying experiences almost like scars, and the scars live on our bodies. And for everyone, it's in a different place. So even though we can't see the scars, the scars live in us and they deserve the chance to be healed and to be looked at and to be loved and for us to heal. We have to allow ourselves to bring to our awareness the experiences we've had as well as feel the feelings. So recently, in my own life, I realized that bullying created low self esteem and a lot of self doubt within myself. I've been working on my self worth for a while and I realized that the bullying I experienced in my youth created an extreme inner critic within myself, that inner critic would bully me in my own head. This often happens that the criticism judgments and cruel words that live within our head are actually the words that others have said to us. And our own inner voice becomes that critic as a way to create safety, even though it doesn't feel like safety. And even though it can be really painful, it's a way for our mind to try and create safety within us because it thinks that if we criticize ourselves first, that it won't hurt so much the next time somebody criticizes us. Also, we begin to internalize these false words of others. So these criticisms, these judgments, this bullying from others, and we begin to take it on as if it's truth. So then our mind begins to replay it over and over again, because we have identified that it is a true statement. But the truth is that these are not true statements. These are just criticisms and judgments of others. And it is time for us to release ourselves of the pain of others that they have projected onto us. And what I mean by that is many people who believe people are wounded themselves. And it's true that hurt people hurt people and that many people who have experienced abuse take that abuse, and they projected outwards because it's so painful within I believe that the energy of being abused has to go somewhere and it either goes to one or three places, it goes to abusing others. So you take that abuse energy that lives within you and you project it outwards. Or you take that abuse energy and you project it inwards and you begin to abuse yourself or you heal it and you transmute it and how do you heal it and transmute it you allow yourself to sit with the pain. It's just like if you had a broken leg or you had a big scar on your arm that needed stitches and to heal, you have to allow yourself the time and the energy to heal. From these painful experiences, so for me in my life, one of my biggest fears was that somebody was going to criticize this podcast, criticize my platform, criticize newView advice and take it from me that somebody's hurtful words, were going to be so harmful that they were going to take everything I had built from me. And personally, I originally kind of brushed this off, I tried to bypass this because I contributed it to cancel culture. So I assumed I had this fear only because of canceled culture and how canceled culture has arisen in our society. And the truth is, I actually think canceled culture can be a form of bullying. So it would make sense that Kancil culture would trigger my bullying wound. Because I think that when a group of people shame someone into silence, that is not healthy. I believe that people need to take responsibility for their actions. But I don't believe that shaming, blaming and being mean to people is the way to do that. I don't think that that is coming from a loving place. I think that is coming from a wounded place that is coming from a self righteous place. And I don't agree that it is the way to make change in this world. I think it's a way to create more pain and more division in this world. But as somebody who has experienced a lot of pain and division in my own life, I have found that the only true healing comes from bringing unity within myself. And that's how I create more unity and love with others is by healing those places in within me that want to shame and blame others that wants to shame and blame myself. And so originally, I thought that my own wound came from this canceled culture. But for me, I realized that this fear went deeper than just canceled culture that it was triggering my own wounding it was triggering my bully wound. And I realized that my real fear that was coming up was that one person had the power to tear me to shreds. Because yes, I would be definitely afraid of a mob culture. But actually, as I've talked about, on the podcast, I had a tick tock go viral. And a lot of people weren't nice in the comment section. And that triggered that ganging up feeling right? So I actually worked through what it felt like to work through feeling ganged up on what it felt like to be shamed for my truth and things like that. I worked through that a few years ago. But recently, the wound that was that was that one person could tear me down and could rip me to shreds. That's how it felt inside. That wounding went back to my teen years where I could be decimated by the words of a fellow classmate. I found that this happened all the time in my teen years. I never, ever could say the right thing. That's how it felt to be Amanda Durocher as a teenage girl, was that everything I said, was manipulative, and was used against me. So not only did other people turn against me, did people say really cruel things about me, there were a lot of cruel things said about me, I did not have a good reputation. And a lot of it was false. So one of the things in my teen years was I was considered like a sloth and a whore. And the truth is, most of my sexual experiences were rape. So that was a really hurtful narrative. And I began to identify with it because it made people think I was cool, and also made them think I was a sled on a horse and I had a bad reputation. But it also gave me like a weird popularity status, it was very confusing for my teenage mind that I got attention for the sexual acts that many times weren't consensual. And I just began to roll with it. And many people said that they did have sex with me, and they never did. But I just began to accept it because nobody believed me. So I would try to speak my truth. And after I was raped, I tried to speak my truth as well. Sorry for anybody new here. I am a survivor of sexual assault and rape. And I talked about that a lot on the podcast. So if that's not jiving with you today, feel free to turn it off. But I really don't filter myself here because I think it's important for me to speak my truth anyway. So in my youth, I got a lot of shame for what I survived. And a lot of people said I was a sloth. And that was so hurtful, especially coming from women. So I've done a lot of healing around how unsafe men have felt because I experienced so much physical violence from men throughout my lives. But throughout my life, I put too much trust in women because I needed to trust somebody, and I didn't know how to trust somebody. So I took a child's mindset. So it's a child thought to make one gender more trustworthy than other genders. So I found myself being decimated by many women. So throughout my teen years, I was a copycat. And what do I mean by that is that I didn't know how to act. So I would just try and mimic what other people did. I was such a copycat. Like if somebody said something, I would go and regurgitate it in different language, but because it wasn't coming from an authentic place, I was just copying people. It oftentimes came out wrong. And I found that throughout my youth, many of my words were manipulated, twisted and turned against me. So many times I'd be in a group of girls, and everybody would be talking about one person. And then I would say something to and then all of a sudden, what I said was the worst thing, or all of a sudden, it got back to the person that I was talking about them, but nobody else would get in trouble. I was also told many times that I was to blame for everything that I was in the fault that I was a bad person that I was a bitch that I was a sloth that I was all these horrible things all the time that I was fat. I mean, I was ridiculed by the people, I considered my friends. And then they wouldn't be my friends. And then I would be alone. And I'd be devastated. And with all the trauma experience when these people would come back, because people were mean to them. And Amanda was always nice, I would take them back so willingly, and I would accept them. And I would never ask for them to apologize. And then they would turn around and do it again. And throughout my life, and throughout my youth, everything I said was always considered a lie. So I was really confused by that. So after I was raped in my teen years, I tried to talk about it, and everybody called me a liar. Or they said, I didn't understand what happened. I mean, it was so confusing for me, that everything I said, I was just told it was wrong. And I bring this up, because this is what was up for me recently, was looking at how my words can be manipulated, and how I let somebody manipulate them. And what do I mean by let somebody manipulate them, it's that I chose to trust what their interpretation of my words were, instead of trusting myself in my own heart, in my own intentions. So because of my pain and suffering, and my wounding where I wanted to belong, but I was looking in all the wrong places to belong, I would let people convince me that I was a liar, that I was wrong, that I was mean that I was a sloth, like all these things. And it took me a really long time to see that it took me a really long time to see the amount of times I turned against myself, the amount of times that I let others dictate the way I viewed myself. And it wasn't until I went through a friend breakup this fall. That was absolutely devastating. And I felt like I broke up with a boy, I used to say, a lot of times that more girls have broken my heart than men. Because I have struggled in friendships, if I'm honest, my experience is and I've been writing about them in my memoir, which I think is a reason why all this is up for me. And it's something I've been really conscious of is because with a lot of the trauma experience, friendships were a big part of it. And friendships were affected because of the trauma experienced, I don't want to go too deep into that today. That's for another day. But because of this, I have been looking at how I allowed people to manipulate me how I have allowed people to manipulate me and coerce me into doing things that I didn't want to do, out of fear. And in the fall when I went through this friend breakup, my guidance, my inner world, and a lot of red flags were going off in September, and I knew I had to end the friendship. And I didn't really understand why at the time, but I knew I had to, I could just feel things were off. I could feel in my gut that things weren't truthful, even though I had a hard time seeing it at the time. And as I moved through this breakup, and as I moved through this experience, I began to see all the red flags I had ignored. I began to see every time my gut did let me know that there was a red flag, I began to see all the time my words were manipulated, I began to see that I had allowed myself again to play out a pattern that was extremely painful. And why did this pattern arise is because there was a part of my teen self I had not looked at yet. I had not looked at all the lies that were said about myself. I was still identifying with those lies. I was still allowing my own inner critic to tell me I was a bad person. I was still allowing my own inner critic to tell me that I wasn't worthy of friendships, that I was a bad person who didn't deserve love. And it took this friend breakup for me to fully see myself and to fully allow myself to grieve how painful my youth was. And alongside this friend breakup, I was also healing a lot of the trauma experienced in my youth but these experiences from my youth of being bullied, and of my words being manipulated and of women, specifically, being the perpetrators of my harm was so painful for me. It was so painful for me to look at how girls hurt each other about how girls put the word of men or boys above the word of other girls. How girls out of their own insecurities twist the words of other girls, how girls ganging up on each other how girls bully each other. I recently read a story about the show yellow jackets, which is a thriller TV show, I actually haven't seen it, I read the whole plot. But it was created because a man had said to a woman, that Lord of the Flies, that's a book, if you're unfamiliar with the book, you can Google it. But it's about a bunch of boys who end up on an island and what happens in survival mode. And he told her that women could never do this to each other. So she wrote the show yellow jackets, which shows that women can be just as malicious as men. And I bring this up because much bullying is from women, but it's a different kind of bullying, it's oftentimes not physical bullying doesn't mean it's never physical. But a lot of times, it is psychological. It is mental, and it is emotional bullying. And it is real bullying, that leaves lasting effects, and causes people like myself to live with a low self esteem and self doubt, these were two of the things I recently had to look at in my own life. These are two of the long term effects of bullying that I experienced having low self esteem, because in my youth, I didn't have many friends, or I didn't have any real friends, everybody was always leaving me is how it felt. And I take responsibility for some of the things I did. And I take responsibility for how I was a very needy person at that time. But I also can see now and I've allowed myself to see that my pain was real. Many times throughout my healing journey, I'm often quick to see how others were in pain. And I forgot to give myself that full moment that my pain was real as well. So my low self esteem was becoming really prevalent in my life, because I was having a really hard time accepting the kind things people were saying to me about my podcast. I've recently received so many messages, and so many beautiful emails, and I'm so grateful for each and every person who reaches out and lets me know how this podcast impacts you. It has been such a gift to my heart and such a blessing to be seen by all of you, and to receive your kind words. And it took me a while to realize that it was so hard for me to receive these, because I had such low self esteem. And as somebody who's had this podcast for almost two years, it was kind of like a humbling moment to realize how low my self esteem still was. And much of this was from the experience of being bullied by my peers. And from having my self worth ravaged is how it felt. And so I just want to thank each and every one of you who listen and who resonate with my work and who reach out it really has been so healing for me. So thank you for the gift of seeing me. And the other long term effect that I've lived with from bullying is self doubt, because my words were twisted and manipulated in my youth, because everything I was told was wrong. So basically, after I was sexually assaulted, everybody told me I made it up. People told me that if I talked about it, they'd kill me like it was all this crazy nonsense. And then the people who assaulted me wouldn't even look at me, they pretended we'd never met. They were like, I don't know who she is, like, I mean, absolutely so confusing for my awareness, I created a lot of self doubt that maybe I was crazy. And this bullying caused me to continue to live with this self doubt into my 30s. This is something that I've just been coming to terms with that I don't need to doubt myself so much. And this came up in the grieving of the friendship I had this fall. And I bring that up because I wanted to explain how this friend breakup was so painful one because I lost a friend, but two because it actually connected back to my teen years. And there was so much unresolved pain from my teen years that needed to be looked at and healed. And so through healing both these wounds simultaneously, this current pain and this past pain, I'm able to move forward without the self doubt. And this self doubt is so ingrained in me that it's something that I'm still working with. And it's something I'm still talking about in therapy. And every day, I'm reminding myself that I can trust myself and I can trust others because I can trust myself. But I just want to offer you grace and offer you compassion that these really deep wounds. And these long term effects don't always go away overnight just by bringing awareness to them because they've become so ingrained within us that we need to start living from a new place and that can take time. So those are two ways bullying had long term effects in my life.
Amanda Durocher (Long Term Effects of Bullying) 19:28
I also want to mention a few other long term effects of bullying that you may see in your life. And these can include being really resentful or bitter about your past or even in your present. This can include social anxiety, feelings of guilt, shame and hopelessness that you can't seem to shake trouble in many of your relationships, friendships or other relationships can be affected by long term effects of bullying, long term effects and bullying can also include mental health problems and even physical health problems. So I just want to offer those to you It can also include depression, which I don't think I mentioned. So as you can see, bullying can have many long term effects, which is why I think it's so important for us to heal from bullying, emotional bullying is just as harmful as physical bullying. And if you were punched in the face, for lack of a better example, you would put ice on it. And we have to begin to do that with our emotional and mental wounds as well, we have to begin to ice them to care for them, and to put medicine on them the medicine of our hearts.
Amanda Durocher (Healing the Long Term Effects of Bullying) 20:27
So now I want to talk about how do we let go, how do we overcome? And how do we heal from these long term effects of bullying. So to begin to heal, we begin to bring the pain to the surface, we begin to acknowledge that these experiences were truly painful. I know in my life, I kept shoving a lot of this down and telling myself it wasn't a big deal. But it was a big deal. This bullying had massive effects on my life that still affect me to this day. So yeah, that was a real experience. And it really was painful. I think that so many of us judge our own pain, which keeps us from truly looking at the pain, it's so easy for us to say, Oh, it wasn't a big deal, or oh, I shouldn't be over that by now. But if it's coming up again, and again, you're not over it, and it is real pain. It's okay for you to acknowledge that the words that other people said to you really hurt you. I think a lot of us in our youth or whenever we experienced these painful experiences, had to for safety keep powering through and move forward, we weren't able to process it at the time. So we may have created thoughts and narratives and stories around this pain in order to remain safe. But the first step to healing is beginning to peel back those layers and allow ourselves to truly look at how painful being bullied can really be. And then when you allow yourself to acknowledge this painful experience, a lot of feelings will arise. And it's okay to have all your feelings, it's actually imperative that you have all your feelings, it is so important for you to allow yourself to feel the pain, to feel the sadness, to feel the heartbreak, to feel the anger, there are so many real feelings attached with bullying. And if you were bullied by friends, you may have to allow yourself to feel those feelings of being betrayed. And having your trust broken. I know those were real things I had to feel in my life. I also had to allow myself to have all my feelings about how I didn't trust myself, and how I turned against myself. And how I was my own biggest critic, and how I allowed the words of others to create my self image rather than creating my self image from my heart. Instead of being my biggest supporter, I was my own biggest enemy. And that's because I was bullied and from other things, but a big part of that was being bullied by my peers was having the words I said and my intention skewed and twisted, was having people not believe me was having people judge me and criticize me. And I also want to mention that when it comes to bullying, some of us have parents who were bullies. And so if that arises for you throughout this, I invite you to explore that as well. Because for a lot of people, their parents can be a bully and can be that inner critic. So this episode is about bullying. And I'm talking a lot about our peers and other children in my example, but you might find in your life that your parent was a bully in your life. And that's okay, your parent can be a bully. And I feel like we don't usually use that word with parent child relationships. But that may be healing for you to really accept that your parent didn't bully you. So you want to allow yourself to have all your feelings. And then you also want to begin to pay attention to that voice inside your head. What are the words you're telling yourself? Where are you being critical? Where are you being judgmental? And asking yourself where these thoughts originated? Are these your words? When did you start telling yourself this? When did you start being cruel to yourself? Do you have a memory of somebody telling you this? Or are you telling yourself this because of an experience you had. Allow yourself to explore where these thoughts originated. And when you begin to process and heal from bullying, this is a real trauma. This is real pain. These are really hard experiences. So it's important to create safety for yourself. So you may be able to create safety in your own life by creating a safe space to explore this by having a journal or a meditation practice. You may also want to work with somebody one on one. I know that therapy has really helped me to dive into my experiences of being bullied. I also offer one on one sessions and I can help you to walk through this experience and walk through these painful experiences and connect back to the root of the bullying and how it is still playing out and affecting your everyday life. But it's important that you find safe spaces to begin exploring this because safety is so important when healing and especially healing from bullying because when we were bullied, oftentimes we didn't feel safe. And so so many effects of bullying are created because we didn't feel safe in that moment, and we're searching for safety. Now, my last piece of advice for beginning to heal from the long term effects of bullying is to begin to treat yourself like your own best friend. And this includes talking to yourself kindly pointing out your own greatest qualities, allowing yourself rest when you need it. Because processing unresolved trauma takes a lot of energy. And we have to understand that it is work that so much energy is used. And it's just as healing to begin to allow yourself rest and play, and moments of doing nothing that is just as healing as feeling your heart feelings. And I also invite you to begin to embrace the things you love to do in life. We all have them, we all have things we love to do. And many of us stopped doing the things that we love to do, because we were bullied. And this may not be true for you. But I know this is true for a lot of people that they were bullied because of some of the things they loved. And then they stopped doing them. And I think it can be so healing to give yourself the permission to begin to do these things you love and to know that it's safe to do them. And to know that it's safe to be happy, creative, and joyful and playful. And that if other people don't feel that way that's on them. You're allowed to have all your feelings, including the good ones. I believe the world truly needs more happy people who take the time to do the things that make them happy. Life is short, and your happiness and love for yourself is so important. So I just wanted to send you so much love and compassion. If you are healing from bullying, as I've talked about, it can have many long term effects. So be kind to yourself as you move through this process.
Amanda Durocher (Listener Question) 26:42
How do you reduce the fear of abandonment from friends? Thank you for this question. This is a great question. And this question to me, the underlying question is how do you heal an abandonment wound? I think that your fear of abandonment, and your fear from friends to me would be a sign that you have an abandonment wound. And there's nothing wrong with this. Most people have an abandonment wound. Most people felt abandoned at some point in their childhood and developed a belief around abandonment and developed a fear of abandonment. What does it mean to have an abandonment wound it really just means you fear abandonment. So that's why to me this question is really about how do we heal from a fear and a wounding of abandonment. So many people have abandonment wounds. And these can happen from big moments like say you were adopted and you feel abandoned by your birth parents or having a parent die when you're young or having a parent leave your family or experiencing divorce that can create an abandonment wound. But many people have abandonment wounds from a less severe experience but end up feeling just as painful. So even though from the outside it may look like a quote unquote less experience, it can be just as painful for a child. So for example, being dropped off at summer camp can create an abandonment wound your parents leaving for a week and not understanding where they went when you were a child can create an abandonment wound. Having friends leave you having friends ghost you having a boyfriend leave you or ghost you can create an abandonment wound and a fear of abandonment. And also having an absent parent I know in my life, my abandonment wound, which was one of the first things I looked at in therapy was because I had an absent father, I felt abandoned by him. Though he was technically present, he traveled a lot. He really wasn't around a lot. But he was never really present. If that makes sense. He was never emotionally present. He was always distant. And even when he was home, he was absent. He wasn't around, he wasn't available to me as a child. And so this created the feeling of being abandoned. I felt abandoned by my father. And I didn't understand what I did wrong. And so I identified with having done something wrong, that I did something to create this feeling of abandonment. I also think having distant parents or emotionally unavailable parents can create an abandonment wound as well in children. So my first piece of advice for you would be to begin to bring curiosity, not judgment. We talk a lot about that here. But self awareness is to become curious about your inner world, not judgmental, it's taking that step outside yourself a little bit and beginning to look at your thoughts from a curious place. Like Oh, where did that originate? Not saying oh my god, I can't believe I have that thought. It's like, Oh, that's interesting. Where did that start from? When did I first feel that way? Why do I feel that way? Oh, it's so interesting. I feel that way. It's bringing that curious energy to the first time you felt abandoned. So when did you first feel this way? Do you feel everyone will leave you have you always felt this way? Does a specific memory stick out to you? If a memory feels extremely painful to look at, it's a good sign that there's some unresolved feelings there. Many times we don't look at specific memories because of the pain but that pain is still there because One, it's a sign that there's something to look at. And also the pain is there because there's something unresolved that needs to be healed. And so I invite you to start becoming curious about this fear of abandonment. Is it only around friends? Or do you have this fear of abandonment around all different types of people? And did this begin in your childhood, or did this begin in our friendship did a friendly view and did this create this abandonment wound, and then start looking at the beliefs you have around being abandoned, for example, in my life, like I said, I thought I did something wrong, to have my father be absent. I did nothing wrong. It wasn't about me. My father's emotional capacity had nothing to do with me. But I couldn't understand that as a child. So it took me beginning to look at the situation from that outside point of view, bringing curiosity to it, and allowing myself to have all my feelings that my father wasn't who I needed. My father wasn't who I needed when I was a child. And he has a lot of great qualities. But he also was absent. He also wasn't there. And he also didn't provide to me everything I didn't need. And that's okay. It's okay. I had a hell of a lot of feelings about it. But it's okay, because I've allowed myself to feel those feelings. And I'm now able to provide for me what I needed when I was a child. And so I also want to mention that if you identify with maybe this abandonment wound, beginning somewhere in your childhood with a parent, the book adult children of emotionally immature parents, is a really helpful book and starting to bring awareness to the deep wounds created by having emotional immature parents, and how to begin to heal and move forward from these relationships. I also want to suggest that if you struggle to think of a memory, if this just isn't coming to you, or it feels too painful, I also invite you to begin to look at abandonment from the body. So what I mean by this is, I invite you to begin to become aware of where do you feel the abandonment in your body? Do you feel it in your gut? Do you feel it in your throat? Does it feel tight? Does it feel heavy? Does it feel hot? What does this abandonment feel like become aware of it? And then I just invite you to sit with the sensations breathe into that area of your body? Does it just want to be witnessed? Do any emotions arise? Just stay with them. You don't even need to identify the memory if you start crying, just allow yourself to cry. Your body knows how to heal, you just have to allow yourself the space and the safety to heal. And as you begin to witness it, does it just want to be witnessed? Or does it maybe want to move? And can you visualize that feeling moving down your body down your legs and into the earth. That's one way that I like to move difficult feelings out of my body is really to stay with it and to slowly see it moving and seeping into the earth. I then invite you to feel the feelings. So you may feel them in your body, you may feel them when the memory arises. There's nothing wrong with you. If you have a lot of feelings, it's really important for you to have a lot of feelings actually. Many of us have had very painful lives with a lot of heartbreak. And it's okay to feel all that heartbreak. You're not making it up. Don't tell yourself somebody else had it worse. So you shouldn't feel this allow yourself the truth of your situation that it was painful and your heart is broken. And allow yourself to feel those feelings. And again, like what the previous section where I mentioned, it's important for you to find a safe space. So I invite you to see if you need to find a therapist or if you have a safe person in your life already, or a coach or somebody to work with to help you to feel safe as you dive into this experience and these traumas and this pain. And my last piece of advice for healing from an abandonment wound is to begin to write down and reflect on all the love in your life. Begin to focus on those who have not abandoned you and who love you. This could be your friends or family or maybe a pet. Or maybe you feel really at home in your house, you can write a love letter to your home. I know that places for me have been the safe spaces and almost feel like the safe people I've needed along my healing journey. And the spaces never leave me the beach never leaves me if does not abandon me. And reminding myself that there is safety in this world. And there are people in places and things that do not leave us is a helpful thing to help you to remember that not everybody is going to abandon you that there are safe people, there are safe places. And so beginning to focus on the love that is in your life. Because where attention goes energy flows. So by beginning to bring awareness to the good things as we feel the hurt and the pain, we do begin to heal our hearts. Thank you for this question.
Amanda Durocher (Listener Question) 34:48
Recently I realized my friends are mean to me. I stopped talking to them but I've been bullied by my friends in the past and find it hard to make friends now as an adult. Many of the people I meet continued to be mean to me and now I just spent Most of my time alone, how do you become okay with people being mean and lowering your expectations of them so you don't get disappointed. I am so sorry. For all the people who have been mean to you, I am so sorry for all the pain you have experienced. I'm so sorry that you've been bullied in the past. As I've talked a lot about here, it's something I've experienced as well. So I just send you so much love because I know how painful it can be. And I want to start this question by saying, I don't think you need to be okay with people being mean. And I don't think you need to lower your expectations. Instead, I think you need to start viewing the situation for more of an empowering stance that you have power over. So if I were you, I would begin to ask myself, why do I attract people to me that are not nice. And I would ask myself, do I not feel worthy of kindness? Am I a kind person? Do I feel like I am good enough to have kind people in my life. To be honest, I used to play this wound out as well. I used to attract many mean people into my life. And so many of the people surrounding myself in my early 20s weren't nice to me. And when I started my healing journey, I had to really look at this. And what I found was the hard truth, that I didn't feel worthy of kindness. I felt like I deserved people to be mean to me, and a part of me felt safe with me and people, because many of these people were protective type of people. So they were protecting themselves when they were mean to me, but they would also be mean to people outside of me. So I would feel like I was protected from the harm of the world. So at least if I expected the mean this from my friends, they would keep out the strangers. And it was not a healthy pattern I was playing out but it was one I picked up in my youth. So how did I heal this? I had to look at where this belief began? Where did I start to believe that I didn't deserve kindness? When did I begin to feel like I was unworthy of kind people? Why did I think kind people were unsafe, because that is really how I felt I felt like people who were kind weren't safe. And for me that originated because many of the people who abused me pretended they were kind. So a lot of people were nice to me and my youth and then would flip. And were manipulative, or mean or harsh. Or even when I experienced sexual assault, those people were very nice to me. And then it was like a switch went off, and they attacked me. And so I didn't trust kind people. And in order to heal this wound, I had to look at that. I had to look at how I created a belief that kind people weren't safe. And that wasn't true. Because the people who attacked me, and the people who manipulated me actually weren't kind people. So that was an untrue statement. I had labeled them kind, but kind people don't do those things. So I had to take back my power in the situation and realize that I was telling myself stories that weren't true. And I also had to feel the feelings, I had a lot of feelings about the stories I had been telling myself and also about the pain I had experienced. And it wasn't about lowering my expectations. It was really about becoming responsible for my life and why my expectations weren't being met. And many of them weren't being met because I had underlying beliefs that needed to be acknowledged. And I do have an Episode Episode 48 about releasing expectations, which you may find helpful. This episode is more for expectations about yourself. But my guess is if you have expectations of others, you also may have expectations of yourself that you may want to begin to look at and learn how to release. And so again, it's not about becoming okay with people being mean, it's about taking responsibility for your own life. I also invite you to ask yourself, if you're a kind person, when I was attracting mean people into my life, I was not kind to myself, I was my biggest critic. And I was also not kind to others. I always labeled myself a kind person because my heart is kind. And I am a very kind person now. And I always strive to be a kind person. But the truth is I wasn't being kind in my early 20s. I wasn't a great person to be around. I wasn't nice to the people in my life because I wasn't nice to myself. And so because of this, I was not a kind person and I had to learn that it was safe for me to be a kind person. And then by being a kind person I was able to attract kind people into my life. And so a great way for you to begin diving into this is to begin journaling. I'll add some journal prompts, as I mentioned on my website to assist with this process. I also have some journal prompts for Friendship Breakups that I'll link in the show notes as well, because it sounds like you may be moving through that simultaneously. So you'll be able to find all that at www.newviewadvice.com/55. Thank you so much for this question. I know how complicated how scary, how hurtful and also how wonderful friendships can be. We all want to be a part of community we all want to feel loved. But so many people in this world are wounded and so many people are acting from an unconscious space. So the healing journey is starting to become conscious of our actions. Why do we do the things we do? Why do we attract the people we do? Why is our lives the way it is, and the healing journey is taking the power back. It is taking your power back and understanding that you are responsible for your life. It is not your fault what happened to you, but it is your responsibility to heal. That's just how it is here. And I have an episode called why life is unfair, because I do believe that that is not necessarily fair. But I also know that life was never meant to be fair. That's a lie. That's a lie. We tell ourselves that it was ever set up here. To be fair, it just isn't fair. So once we can let go of the fact that life was ever supposed to be fair, we're able to take back our power and come at life from an empowered place and understand that if we're not happy with something we always have the responsibility and the power to change it. I hope something in this answer was helpful. Thank you so much for this question. I'm sending you so much love.
Amanda Durocher (Outro) 40:59
Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of New View Advice. As always, I am so grateful to be here with you and to offer you guidance along the healing journey. I hope you found something in this episode helpful. I want to invite you if you found this episode helpful to leave a five star rating and a review for the podcast. Ratings and reviews are super helpful way to support the podcast and help to bring more people to the podcast. So if you haven't already, I invite you to leave a rating and review for the podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of New View Advice. I hope I was able to offer you a new view on whatever you may be going through sending you all my love. See you next time.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai