How To Handle Put-Downs
This Technique Is Surprisingly Effective!
A friend of mine has a teenage son (let’s call him Nate). Nate has a kind heart, and he’s also one of the most popular kids in school. One thing Nate does is he stands up to bullies that harass other kids. Nate told me that when he steps in, the bullies often come at him instead.
“How do you handle it?” I asked.
“Well, all they can do is call me names, like ‘you’re so ugly and dumb’,” said Nate. “But do I believe I’m these things?” asked Nate rhetorically. “No! So it doesn’t bother me at all.” he continued. “I just laugh.”
If someone puts us down, and we believe them by default, we let them cut into our hearts. Humans tend to trust authority figures such as parents or leaders of organizations by default. As a result, abusive, mentally ill people who hold these positions can cause a lot of damage.
However, we always have a choice. We can decide if we want to believe something or not. If we encounter abusive people, we can also choose to limit contact or cut them out of our lives entirely.
“Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.” — Siddhartha Guatama Shakyamuni
Watch Our Lives Like A Movie
One effective technique that can help us gain clarity is to watch our own lives as if we are watching a movie. When we take a third-person, audience perspective, and review our experience as if it is happening to someone else, we gain a level of objectivity that was not available to us when we were immersed in the show. This third party view is why we are so proficient at giving others advice — our emotions are not getting in the way of sound judgment.
This technique is especially powerful for survivors of childhood abuse. Even though we are now adults, if something happens in the present-day that reminds us of traumas from childhood, we could get instantaneously transformed back in time, and we feel like a helpless child again. We are easily triggered because much of the emotional damage sustained in our childhood still lives within us like lava, waiting to erupt. This lava was created when we were little and unconditionally trusted our toxic caretakers. Our hearts were open, and since these caretakers seemed all-powerful and all-knowing to us, we internalized their abuse as we must be defective, worthless, and not good enough.
Instead, we can go back in time and watch our childhood like a movie. See the interactions between our caretaker and our child-self, and ask these questions:
What do I think about my caretaker’s behavior?
What would I say to my child-self to comfort them?
The child is still inside of me and deserves my love and protection. How do I plan to take care of them from now on?
Shahida Arabi said, “A child abused by its parents doesn’t stop loving its parents; it stops loving itself.” Sadly, this is often the case. However, now that we are grownups, we have a choice. We can flip the script — we can love ourselves and set boundaries to guard against toxic individuals. People who abuse children are ill, and their behavior is a reflection of their illness. It has nothing to do with us.
Summary
If we erroneously internalize other people’s mistreatment of us as we are flawed or defective, we ingrain the feeling of shame inside of us.
This shame manifests in our lives as trust issues, self-sabotage, people-pleasing behaviors, perfectionism, hypervigilance, self-blame, and an incessant need for external validation. We never feel good enough or deserving of unconditional love.
Though this feeling of shame is common, it is not inevitable. We can choose to accurately see the situation for what it is — any shame always belonged to the abuser, never the victim.
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt
And we can put it back to where it belongs.