If someone asked me whether or not I was brave, I would probably say no. There’s still a very big part of me attached to that kindergartner who was so scared to go to school, she got sick in the morning. My extreme shyness made me a target for bullying in school.
Clearly, I still don’t look for adventure. I don’t climb mountains, or skydive, or travel alone to distant places where I don’t speak the language.
Consequently, I miss out on a lot of opportunities in life. Whether it’s attending classes or meeting new people, I miss out because I prefer staying at home.
I’m not as shy as when I was a child, and I worked hard to overcome it. But I still consider myself an introvert.
How my Son Reminded me of Brave
Growing up here on the island, summers were a flurry of classes and camps for my son before Covid. In the last few years, he emerged from a shy little boy to someone who, while still shy, loved to swim, acted in plays, played tennis on his high school team, and learned to sail.
He was only able to attend one camp last summer before starting his senior year in high school. But we were grateful the sailing camp was able to run. He had been attending every summer for 4 or 5 years. I still remember the last day of his first year of camp, the instructor was givingt out awards, and announcing who passed to the advanced sailing level.
When he called my son forward, he handed him his certificate he said, “This young man is fearless out there.”
Even so, my son still didn’t think of himself as fearless. Or brave. He still thought on a day to day basis of all the things he couldn’t do, or the things he was scared of. Nevertheless, when he was out there, just him and his boat ,the wind and the sea, he was and is fearless.
And he inherited from his grandfather the courage to stand up to bullies when he saw someone picking on one of his classmates.
Many of us are like my son. Maybe we think too much about how we will handle a situation, and run it through our minds again and again. Most often, that situation never comes up, so all of our rehearsing for the worst was not necessary.
But when we are out there in the moment, and the winds of life hits us, or when we stand up to mean bullies, we are braver than we know.
Why Introverts Relive Bad Memories
It should be noted, if you are shy, or an introvert, letting go of memories and experiences from our past proves difficult, because we ruminate on them. We live them over and over. Importantly, this is the very reason we must work through them. Because imagining the things we don’t want to happen increases the very possibility of attracting those things to us.
It’s not easy as an adult to step out of our shell. It’s difficult to put ourselves in situations where we, or our work, might be criticized, and made fun of. Or we express a belief and someone ridicules it. Nowadays, if we say the wrong thing, a thing that just last year it was okay to say, it can even be labeled as hate speech online.
But whether you are an artist, a writer, or you run any sort of business online, you need to be noticed. And we all have an innate need to share our opinions, whether is it with a friend, a neighbor, or the world.
Standing Up to Bullying in School
In particular, when you encounter a bully, whether in school, or the workplace, and definitely online, remember they are not really a brave person. Not only are they not a brave person, but the people who surround them are not brave either. They are afraid to speak up, and they defend the bully’s target because they fear becoming the next victim themselves.
Bullying in school seems almost epidemic today. We used to call it being picked on. And a lot of parents and teachers didn’t usually step in to help. My own mother wouldn’t even consider letting me change schools when I begged her. Instead she repeated things to me like, “Bloom where you’re planted,” or “You’ve just as happy as you make up your mind to be.” Then she returned to reading her evening newspaper.
In a way though, she was right. My own energy attracted the bullies. Being liked by the popular girls became too important to me. I wish I could have been like my son, who just doesn’t care about being popular. And speaks up when he sees someone being bullied.
But I did care about what the popular girls thought of me. Too much. And it made me a target. Now, as an adult, I realize that I wouldn’t want to be friends with them anyway. Not if being friends meant I had to watch silently, or join in when they bullied others.
Even if my mother allowed me to go to a new school, but I carried the same energy, I might have been picked on and bullied all over again. But I was really just asking her for a new start. A chance to change my energy in a new setting.
Change Location and Change Your Energy
I finally got a chance in a new setting when I went to college. My father died the previous year, and I didn’t care about being popular anymore. And my new friends at college? Many had been the popular girls in high school.
As a result of my own experience with bullying in school, if my child told me they were being bullied, I would listen and I act. Absolutely, it’s one of the reasons I choose to home school the last couple of years. It gives us more choices, and we are not tied to the school or their policies.
Most importantly though, standing up to a bully is one of the most fearless things you can do.
Online Bullying is the Perfect Domain for Hateful People
Bullies still exist in the adult world. It’s easier than ever for them to hide now behind social media accounts and avatars.
Stay Safe Online has tips on what to do if you experience Cyber-bullying.
These are things you can do to make yourself safe from online bullying while still sharing your light with the world:
- If you experience a cyberbully in a forum, or see it happening to someone else, report it to a moderator
- Use moderation on your website, or social media channel, and manually approve comments if that is an option. Or have a friend moderate for you. Regularly check the comments and delete things that are hateful, or must plain mean.
- Don’t respond to a bully, just delete. They want a reaction .
Bullies in our adult world are still angry people, and they’re scared. Remember that. They’re scared. Otherwise they wouldn’t bother making fun of other people, or even trying to destroy them. It’s easier to stand up to them when we remember that they are the ones afraid.
Indeed, they are in politics, and they run counties. They might be raciest, but equally, they might hide behind titles of Social Justice and Equality while they nevertheless bully others. What they have in common is they are all full of hate. Often, they are scared. And they rely on us being scared too. That’s how they operate.
Face Down Bullying in School and Online
Whether you are facing bullying in school, at work, or online, the more memories you can recall of the times you have been brave in the past, the easier it is to stand up to them now. Standing up to a bully isn’t only brave, it’s fearless.
When you are out there in the world and something bad happens, how often have you been the one to make a decision that was fearless? Did you react on your instinct to do what you felt was right without thinking about the consequences down the road?
Being brave doesn’t mean not being scared, it means being scared, but doing the thing anyway.
When to Seek Help
If the memories in your past are really strong ones, (and for those of us who faced bullying in school, they sometimes are), please find someone to help you work through them. Bullying often leads to chronic anxiety which is now days considered as much of a disease as diabetes, or hypertension. There is no shame in seeking help.
Have you faced bullying in school, the workplace, or online? How did you handle it?
