Being Bullied

Being Bullied:

There is a lot of talk about the #metoo movement and bullying being written about in the media.

Being bullied is one of the things that people come to me looking for help with.

Sometimes I have clients asking me ‘am I attracting this into my life?’ as if it is their fault.

I think the answer isn’t as simple as that.

For most people who are bullies (and I think that sexual harassment is another form of bullying), I think that they can sense if people are insecure, don’t feel good about themselves and probably won’t get them into trouble (i.e. either won’t stand up to them or won’t report what has happened).

The point is that bullies don’t seek out the strong confident people.  They seek out the person who has a little chink in their armour, they are a bit unsure of themselves or they see as being a bit weak.

Think about it (and this is an extreme example), if you were Margaret Thatcher (in her heyday), or Robin Wright’s character in House of Cards?  There is no way you would mess with them!  Or Amanda Palmer (who I am going to see next May in Dublin – yay!), there is no way you would get away with bullying or harassing them in any form.

To me they come across as strong, confident women who are sure of themselves and won’t take any s**t from anyone!

Someone was asking me recently had I ever been sexually harassed in work.

My immediate reaction was no, that it had never happened to me.

But then later, I thought about it some more, and there was one particular work situation many years ago which made me extremely uncomfortable.

The sad thing is that I just took it for granted, that’s just the way things were (and indeed behaviour like that was rife) and it hadn’t even occurred to me that what happened might have been out of line.  I just accepted it.

But at the time, I was very green, very unsure of myself, never even thought to ask for help with anything to do with the job, and indeed had very low expectations of what I expected from others.

I was the perfect target for someone to take advantage of me or put me in an embarrassing situation.

That was a bit of a shocker for me to realise how much I took this behaviour for granted, and that I was in fact being bullied.  Thankfully attitudes and I myself have changed a lot since then.

Most of the work that I do with people is overcoming negative beliefs and these are the top 10 negative beliefs that I see most typically (and many of them are present with people who are being bullied):

• I’m not good enough
• I don’t deserve
• My views are not important
• I’m not important
• It’s not safe for me to speak up
• I’m stupid
• I’m not worthy
• I’m afraid of not being loved
• I’m afraid of being rejected
• It’s not safe to show my emotions

How do I know if I have any of the above negative beliefs?

Go through the list and say belief to yourself or out loud.

Then ask yourself, how true does this feel?  Note, I am not asking you how true this is, because logically a lot of the time, people know that they are good enough, they do deserve etc.

But asking how true this FEELS is a completely different thing altogether.  Unfortunately, we are not driven by logic but by our emotions.

So, 10 feels like the belief is 100% true and zero feels like it’s not true at all.

Just allow a number to pop into your head and you might be surprised at how strong one or two of them are.

And why does this matter if you have any negative beliefs?

Take one of the beliefs, say, I’m not important.

If this feels true, then this narrative will be driving your behaviour – putting people first all of the time, not looking after yourself, not speaking up when you see something that you don’t like or agree with …. and so on…..

With this belief driving your behaviour, you may be experiencing low self-esteem and a lack of confidence because you will be putting people first at the expense of yourself.  You may also be putting yourself in the position of being bullied.

So, if you do the above exercise, and you are finding that some of them feel a bit on the high side, maybe it’s time to make a change and do something about it and become the best version of you.

As Marianne Williamson said:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us.

I recently worked with someone on their negative beliefs and self-image.

They were delighted that after 2 sessions with me, they had started to speak up for themselves.

Initially, when they did this, they were so shocked as they had never done this before!  And the best part was, that they got great feedback from their colleagues.

There are many ways of tackling these negative beliefs: tapping, talking, counselling, healing etc.  It doesn’t matter which way you choose to do this.  The point is to take action.

The advice that I would give to you is to choose the person or technique that resonates with you.

You really are too important not to do something about this, so do set yourself the challenge to take action, and be the strong powerful person you know you can be.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Upcoming Events:

EFT Level 1: May 2018

My February training was fully booked and we had a great weekend.

If you missed out, bookings are now open for my next EFT Level 1 on 19 & 20 May 2018.

For more details, please click here.

Online Meditation Tuesday 27th February:

For the online meditation which you can take part in in your jammies (!), please click on this link.

e-hugs and I look forward to connecting with you soon.

Grainne

If you are suffering from stress or anxiety, lack of confidence or low self esteem, and would like to see how tapping/meditation/energy work could help you, please contact me on info@grainnemoneill.com or on 00353 87 629 7207.  We can have a chat to see what might work for you.