“THEY WERE WRONG”

And if you can’t see anything beautiful about yourself, get a better mirror, look a little closer, stare a little longer because there’s something inside you that made you keep trying, despite everyone who told you to quit. You built a cast around your broken heart, and signed it yourself. You signed it, “they were wrong.” -Shane Koyczan

I have had the above quote saved on my phone for literally months because I thought it was so powerful. I had no idea where it came from or who I could credit it to. And so there it sat on my phone and I had almost forgotten about it. But then this week in my psychology class, my professor showed one of the most powerful short videos I think I may have ever seen. A lecture hall of over 200 students went alarmingly silent and I struggled to hold back my tears. The video captivated me from the very start, but then towards the end I think my heart skipped a beat. The above phrase was spoken and when the video ended I just sat there motionless with the beautiful irony.

It’s no surprise to many of you who know pieces of my own story or who have been following me that bullying had a very large impact on my life. We all have our own stories and many are stories of negative peer interactions. Sadly, bullying is a very common thing and does not only come in the form of physical abuse. It’s often the psychological bullying and the relational aggression that can hurt the most and slip under the radar the easiest. Bullying is defined as unprovoked, repeated attacks with the key word being repeated. It’s been shown that just witnessing others being bullied is enough to cause feelings of fear and anxiety.

I was an easy target. I didn’t have any close friends, I had low self-esteem, I was shy, I was overly nice… desperate to be liked and accepted by my peers and I was sensitive. I internalized everything. To me personally, the psychological bullying that I endured for many years caused the inevitable. I had no one stand up for me when I was bullied by my peers and at certain times even adults. I felt helpless. I felt ugly. I felt rejected. I felt alone and worst of all I felt that it was me who was the problem, and this was the most damaging effect of all. Bullying didn’t directly cause my development of an eating disorder, but it played a large part. My eating disorder allowed me to feel a sense of control over my painful, humiliating and lonely environment.

My eating disorder also became a built in friend… not a nice one… but at least some sort of “companion” that wouldn’t leave my side or reject me. My eating disorder also was a way for me to punish myself first, so that when I was bullied by others it wasn’t so painful. You see, my eating disorder was the biggest bully of them all, but if I could bully myself first, I could feel a sense of control and power over my peers and their unpredictable attacks. It was my way to cope and at the time survive. I beat myself so far down that I created a  buffer from the outside world. Yes, it made the bullying from others not hurt as bad, but it also created a buffer from what good there was in my life. When I developed an eating disorder as a way to cope and numb out the pain, I paid a high price. Because not feeling pain also meant not feeling love. Not feeling sadness meant also not feeling happiness. Not feeling meant trading a very important aspect of what it means to be a human being. Now, what I did was psychologically clever, but also a perfect storm for psychological destruction. And that’s exactly what happened.

If you haven’t had a chance to read my blog post from last week about feeling again for the first time and dealing with the emotional pain from my past you can do so here: Beauty From The Breakdown . I am no longer being bullied and I now have some of the most amazing people in my life that love me, support me and would stand up for me no matter what. But the repeated pain I dealt with silently and early on has stayed with me like a scar burned into my brain. It will take me a while to trust others fully again, to re-train my brain and to learn to fully love and accept myself. There is nothing in my mind more sad and detrimental than a person growing up with the belief that they are not good enough, not worthy, alone and are somehow “bad,” “different,” or “unwanted.” We all find different ways to cope and it is my hope that none of you have or will experience bullying, but sadly that probably isn’t true. What you need to know is that if your coping mechanism is destructive or if you are still dealing with feelings of negativity and hate towards yourself; please stop. No, it’s not that easy. No, those painful feelings, memories and destructive coping skills won’t go away over night. But I’m reaching out to you to tell you that you were an unfortunate victim in an unfortunate circumstance, which had nothing to do with you.

We need each other. We need friends. We need a supportive peer group. We will always need other people. Don’t settle for living in silence and isolation like I did for so many years. It’s a hard process to learn to trust and let others in again, but it is possible. You are not alone and you deserve to speak up for yourself. This video below is the one my professor showed my psychology class, which really spoke to me. I encourage you to watch it to the very end. When you watch it I hope you feel some sort of emotion. I hope it gives you goose bumps. I hope that it makes you realize the power of words. And ultimately, I hope it makes you realize that “they were wrong.” ~Britt