Bullies. You know what they’re like. They’re intimidating, demeaning, and destructive. I’ve suffered from bullies. I lived as a bully to myself until I learned I could stop. I can help you stop bullying yourself too.

I’m going to compare a typical school bully to what we do to ourselves. Using your imagination you’ll see the similarities and how you can stop bullying yourself.

Bullies usually start small. There’s a 4 step process they go through to unleash their abuse. They seek a victim and then escalate with each step.

Likewise with ourselves, but we can stop the 4 step progression. We stop it by recognizing what’s happening and taking the 4 steps to stop the bullying.

I’ll show you how to stop it but first the comparison step by step.

Compare Bullies Step 1

• Imagine yourself at school. You’re walking down the hallway minding your own business when you hear it behind you. A voice throwing insults like darts into your soul. The voice cuts. The words hurt. You hang your head and walk faster to try to get away from it. You duck into class and the bully passes the door with one more nasty comment and a promise to return.
• You’re trying something new. You make a mistake or simply fear making one and the voice speaks inside. The voice of self-criticism jeers and taunts your every imperfection. It nags you’re not good enough implying perfection is the only way to escape. You hang your head and feel bad.

Compare Bullies step 2

• It’s after class and the bully finds you again. You try to ignore them but that only makes the bully angrier. Now the angry bully starts pushing with each verbal assault. Shoving you into the wall with painful force.
• After you start picking on yourself and feel bad you fearfully look for an escape. You start shoulding yourself. You should do this or you should do that. Or you shouldn’t do this or that. Either way, the inner coercion drives you to react. Your emotions escalate. You try to take action with the should or should nots.

Compare Bullies step 3

• You’re in the hallway being shoved up against the wall. The bully is yelling at you and you try to run away. The bully trips you and you fall on your face humiliated. A crowd is gathering. The bully laughs and mocks you. You want to disappear and try to crawl away. The bully gets in your way and blocks you. You’re trapped.
• You’re trying to do something you think you should but your heart isn’t in it. The self-criticism is in full swing pushing you to do it because somehow you just have to. The feeling of being trapped overwhelms you and you sabotage yourself just to get free of the coercion. But now you’ve failed so the self-criticism jeers at you, mocking you. You’re free from the should but still trapped by the bully.

Compare Bullies step 4

• You’re laying on the floor in the hallway with the bully laughing and you’re crying. Finding your emotion an invitation to more abuse the bully starts kicking and hitting you. They begin to unleash the full force of their own pain on you, the innocent victim.
• You’re beating yourself up inside. Mocking yourself for trying. You condemn yourself for all your failure and pain. Self-punishment steps up to attack who you are implying someone has to pay a penalty. You unleash your wrath on yourself not knowing what else to do.

What an awful picture

It can be different.

You can intervene at any step.

Will it be easy? Of course not. It’s a process and will take time.

But it’s possible and oh so worth it.

How do you make it stop? Prepare to intervene with a counter attack.

Step 1 to Stop

Countering self-criticism takes two things – love and the knowledge that no one is perfect. It takes loving and accepting your imperfect self to defeat this bully. Humans make mistakes. They’re a part of life. There’s a verse in the Bible that says Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.

Mistakes are not a sin. But the point is this.

If we will apply this kind of love – to ourselves – we can make room for our humanity and stop being critical.

Step 2 to Stop

Countering self-coercion (aka shoulding yourself) is also two-fold. What’s needed is grace and hope.

When the push arises to react – pause – to make room for an intentional response instead.

Grace gives you the power to pause and look for what you really want. Hope gives you the power to reach for it.

Step 3 to Stop

Countering self-sabotage is to empower free choice. Sabotage is fighting for a freedom.

Acting on something we want to do instead of feeling forced to do will stop sabotage in its tracks. There’s a verse in the Bible that says Christ has freed us so that we may enjoy the benefits of freedom…don’t become slaves again.

Tapping into the grace and hope that counter self-coercion will unveil the desire your free choice can act upon.

Step 4 to Stop

Victory over self-punishment takes powerfully fueled forgiveness. The fuel is receiving the gift of no condemnation.

The Bible says it like this: Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who give life has set you free from the law of sin and death.

Jesus bought and paid for this gift. He first unveiled it with a woman caught in a moral crime, thrown at His feet by bullies. He dealt with the bullies and then gave her His gift empowering her to defeat her inner bullies.

Give yourself that same gift and forgive yourself.

You Can Do This!

Preparing to intervene takes work and I guarantee you’ll fail at times. I still do. But freedom is worth the fight.

You are worth it. Dare to believe this.

Once you taste freedom from your inner bully you’ll never want to take it again.

So are you ready? Do you want to make it stop? Get mad at the bully.

Use the words from the movie Network to motivate you.

I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore and stop bullying yourself.

What next

• Prepare Step 1 with this free download
• Prepare Step 2 with this article
• Prepare Step 3 with this article
• Prepare Step 4 with this article 

Share a struggle or victory in the comments and then share this article to help someone else!

Danielle Bernock

Author, Coach, and Speaker helping men, women, and organizations EMERGE with clear vision of their value, TAKE ownership of their choices, and CHART a path to their promise, becoming Victorious Souls who Embrace The Change from survive to thrive through the power of the love of God

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