When You Realize the Bully Has Always Been You

Growing up, I can only remember two situations in which I felt I was “allowed” to be angry.

First, when fighting with my family.

Looking back on every house I’ve lived in (and having moved almost every year until I went to university, I’ve lived in many houses), the one constant in all of them was the frequency of the air in each and every home: frenetic. Alight. Gyrating from voices yelling to their max.

As frustrating as I’m sure it was for my parents, and as frustrating as it was for me, who—fulfilling the role of “peacemaker”—only yelled if I felt there was something to yell about, yelling wasn’t risky. No matter how many fights I had with my sister, or how much I yelled at my mother, while there were consequences (isolation, grounding, and/or being made to apologize), I was never afraid of expressing my anger because I learned that I could yell day in and day out—all of us could—and I would still be given food, shelter, and love.

The second situation in which I was allowed to be angry was when standing up to bullies — though the fact of the matter was I never had to actually do so. I was homeschooled much of my life, and so the imagined opportunity to protect a fellow classmate from getting their lunch money stolen, their head flushed down a toilet, or any other number of injustices I saw on TV or read in books, just wasn’t realistic. But that didn’t stop me from telling my friends that if I ever witnessed such a thing, I would “beat that bully up.” (I may have different views now on the appropriate way to deal with such a person, but the point remains: I would stand up for the little guy.)

What took me years to finally learn was how to stand up for myself.

Bullies (in grown-up language: power-hungry individuals, corporations, politicians, and narcissists) are such a force because they know how to be incredibly convincing when it comes to putting you down. They know exactly where to hit you, when, and how hard. They take and take and take, representing that faction of our society that seeks to lord over those who have less power than them simply because they can.

Almost always, their brutality is the result of insecurity; their need to control, the product of scarcity culture pounding into them that what they don’t take for themselves the world will take first.

What I never realized was that the most relentless bullies — the hungriest, the most ruthless, and, unfortunately, often the most influential — are not those that reign from without, but those that reside within.

It’s the harsh voices in our own heads that often garner the most airtime, and for someone who had, from a young age, vowed to kick some serious bully ass, I was far too lenient when it came to allowing my cruel, critical, condemning inner monologue to run the show.

I learned to smile on the outside, while on the inside, I was second-guessing myself constantly. I was always trying to prove my worth by behaving like the perfect little girl. The only way I would allow myself to stand out was if I was exceptional.

The story would go:

I’m exceptionally responsible. I’m a hard worker, I never give up, and I let my actions speak for themselves.

I an exceptionally reliable. I take care of my family, I’m there for my friends, and I search for those feeling left out, that they might find belonging.

I read an exceptional amount.

I can draw and paint and write exceptionally, but don’t worry — I’m not loud about it.

I don’t boast, I don’t ask for too much, I don’t act like too much.

I’m just right.

Exceptionally so.

See?

See me, see me, see me.

What I found was that as I tried to prove my worth by being exceptional, every time I was anything less, I suddenly became a disappointment — to no one more than myself.

The funny thing was, I wasn’t even that exceptional. I just held myself to these wildly high standards that I consistently failed to meet, but never saw fit to alter my projections.

I used to think that lowering the bar meant that I was accepting a menial life for myself. That if I lowered my standards, not only was I “not enough,” I was accepting the fact that I was below average, effectively planting a flag into the territory of “just barely made it.”

But I was a hard worker! I was responsible! I took care of things and I didn’t ask for too much! I’m doing everything right! See?

See me, see me, see me.

The fear was that if I didn’t prove to everyone that I was worth seeing, they would never see me.

If I wasn’t exceptional, I was effectively invisible.

And that was too much to bear.

So in order to make who I was more bearable, I learned how to take more and more on without saying no.

I began to believe that the more I could prove how strong I was — the more I carried for others, and the less I complained about it — the more the world would see and approve of who I am.

Be selfless. Be a servant. Help others. Don’t quit.

These were messages I received at home, in the church, and in US culture in general. While on the surface they may seem harmless — honorable, even — I’ve adopted some amendments:

1. Be selfless — with boundaries.

Selflessness without boundaries is self-flagellation. It’s harming one’s own body, mind, and/or spirit for the sake of virtue, and it’s neither sustainable, nor compassionate, to run one’s self into the ground.

2. Be a servant — but not a slave.

Offer your support, but remember that you have the agency to say no when you are too tired, when your resources are too depleted or exhausted, or when something else must take precedence over the request of another. Saying no doesn’t mean you don’t care. It means you care so much that you’re willing to sacrifice your image now for the sake of being that much better later.

3. Help others — but make sure to help yourself first.

Ie, put on your own oxygen mask before you help to put on that of the person beside you. Ensure that you first have what you need, so that when you do offer help, you’re not running on fumes; this only increases the likelihood of making mistakes. Helping others is such a beautiful way to build community, connection, and fill one’s love cup — but if it’s not done with simultaneous care of yourself, it won’t last.

4. Don’t quit —

Actually… strike that one entirely.

4. Absolutely quit. (When necessary.)

Quitting is not the same as giving up.

I stayed in a toxic marriage for far longer than I should have because I was afraid I was “giving up” on the relationship — even though it was actively breaking my spirit day by day. When I finally quit my marriage, I was able to feel more myself than I had in years, and I realized that quitting was necessary for my freedom. To not have done so would have been to completely sacrifice who I was in order to prove I was “strong enough to bear it,” and that isn’t fair — either to myself or to the person to whom I was married.

Similarly, when I quit a toxic job, I wasn’t “giving up” on working hard, I was choosing to prioritize my mental health over being viewed as a “good employee.”

It’s taken me years, but I’ve finally learned that when you’ve done everything you absolutely can to make something work, and it still isn’t enough, it’s time to let it go.

Staying in an unhealthy situation — whether it’s a friendship, relationship, job, or otherwise — in order to prove that you’re not a quitter isn’t valiant, it’s invalidating.

It’s simply another way we shut ourselves down and ignore our own needs in order to prove that we’re worthy to those who will never truly be able to see our worth regardless.

It wasn’t until after my marriage that I finally worked up the gumption to be angry at how I was treated; at how I had allowed myself to be treated.

I had to see the hurt little girl inside, beaten, bruised, betrayed, and begging for relief, before I was shaken enough out of sadness to conjure up the sort of anger that would motivate me to start making a change. Because that little girl deserved it.

It’s a humbling moment when you realize the bully has always been you.

But I’ve read enough Brene Brown to know that the antidote to shame isn’t kicking your own ass further for the mistakes you made when you didn’t know any better.

It’s empathy. It’s compassion. It’s granting myself the same kind of understanding when I make mistakes as I grant each and every other person in my life whom I love.

As beautiful as those things are, they took massive work to implement—work that I’m still doing to this day. Mindfulness. Self-Compassion. Radical love. Meditation. Gratitude. Rest.

These are the things that led me back to myself, so that now I know that no matter how many times I fail, it does not make me a failure.

No matter if I am weak, insecure, forgetful, clumsy, incapable, irritable, messy, erratic, or need help and can’t ask for it. I am still worthy of love and belonging.

For a long time, I couldn’t accept the angry part of myself; couldn’t hear what she had to say. Did not, in fact, even want to.

But I know better now. And so I do better.

I do better at allowing anger to guide me. I allow it to be a signpost directing me where there’s an unfairness in my life so that I may correct it. I allow it to fill my body, to have a voice, to be allowed a seat at the table. I hold my anger as sacred, and then I give myself space before I decide what to do so that anger does not control me.

My worth is not determined by anything I say or do. It is inherent in who I am as a human being. And while it’s still hard to remember that sometimes, I’m continuously working at honing my reflexes to respond with grace, rather than criticism.

The bully exists in all of us. But so too does the liberator. Give voice to the latter, and compassion to the former, and slowly, you, like me, will start to feel lighter and lighter every day.