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By Jillian Vriend
I received an invitation from my 17-year-old daughter’s school to attend an “Anti-Bully Summit”, sponsored by the BC government. Since Amanda Todd was from British Columbia, there has been a lot of pressure on the government to “do something” about bullying. The Summit’s agenda is to hear student testimonials, host breakout sessions discussing the impact of social media, form peer groups to discuss risk factors, and promote school safety. They are also introducing something called an ERASE bullying strategy, which includes an anonymous reporting tool. I feel how the emotional outrage expressed by many parents in reaction to Amanda Todd’s situation (a sense of alarm that “This could be my daughter or son!”) has pressed the government to respond in this manner. I understand this as a parent of a teenage daughter. However, I’d like to invite a deeper engagement and feeling into of this issue as I don’t feel that anti-bullying messages, discussions and activities, and “reporting and punishing” those who bully, really gets to or heals the root cause of this dynamic.
“The story of Amanda Todd is about a teenage girl who was bullied by both men and women, to the point where she could no longer bare it all and in one last outcry for help, posted a video of herself…Amanda Todd’s suicide has caused a tidal wave of emotion and a resurgence of “anti-bullying” messages,” Kathleen wrote in her blog entry about Amanda Todd. Kathleen offers that there are deeper issues to feel about the relationship between men and women and the wound in the collective unconscious and consciousness related to persecution of women (in which we all played different roles in various lifetimes) and shares her own process around healing this issue.
In the SoulFullHeart process, we identify parts of ourselves that have become emotionally “stuck” due to experiencing traumas and wounds that they were unable to be digested due to not being felt by a caregiver when they happened. These can be wounds and traumas from both this life and past lives, both stemming from the heart and the soul. Parts are either expressed or suppressed depending on our culture, family, and social conditioning. You can read more about parts here.
SoulFullHeart feels that the energy of both the bully and the victim of the bully live inside us as expressed and suppressed parts of us. The “Bully” part of us can be judgmental, harsh, cruel, yet, at its’ core, is really trying to protect us and make us feel worthy through the misguided persecution of our own parts or through putting down others. The bully part can express outwardly toward others or primarily inside of us as a strong frequency of “self judgment”. On the other end of the bully, receiving its’ energy, is a deep victim or shame-filled part of us. This shame part is usually deeply buried in us as shame is one of the most socially unacceptable emotions to feel and express in our culture. The bully and the victim/shame part have a complicated relationship that is familiar and comforting, but also has an element of push-pull and love-hate about it.
The process path in SoulFullHeart to heal the inner bully is not about “erasing” or “stopping” or “fixing” this part. We advocate for feeling the inner bully inside of yourself; loving and embracing it; feeling where the root cause of its’ bullying comes from in both this life and past lives; identifying if it is more outward or inner directed; having a guide who has felt their own inner bully feel yours; and, most importantly, negotiating with it so it can begin resting from its’ bullying frequencies and express more healthily as humble discernment and directness with care. Also, as the bully begins to relax, the shame/victim part becomes more available to be felt and loved by you and begins to separate more and more from the “tough and harsh loving” of the bully part.
My intuitive sense (as I didn’t know her) is that Amanda didn’t have anyone in her life to feel this inner bully dynamic inside of her, which stemmed from both past life and childhood experiences. She then drew an outward circumstance that reflected this inner wounding. Ultimately, this bully part “won” as it ended her life as it could no longer find a way to cope with the level of internal pain that was being reflected externally. It also feels like her soul just couldn’t hold the conflict, anxiety, and suffering anymore and decided to check out and try again next life to heal what it came to heal this life.
Another sad aspect of the current condition of our society is that inner bullies “run the show” in many ways. Our collective consciousness is an expression of our inner bullies, especially in the western part of the world in terms of how we relate to other countries, how severed and fractured different groups are from each other, and how we are in the process of destroying our earth and many animal species. This unhealed dynamic of inner bully in conflicted relationship with our repressed shame is one that is constantly, in my sense of it, trying to work itself out through our choices. Teenagers are still heart open enough, sensitive enough, and not yet defended over with a strong persona, so they feel and express this dynamic most acutely. This is what shows up as an “epidemic” rise in bullying incidents in teenagers.
My desire and dream is that schools would offer emotional and spiritual healing through parts work along with academics. And, if they are going to go into this territory, that they would feel this inner bully dynamic as a core root cause as I am offering. This is the holding that I feel with my own daughter, just yesterday feeling the part of her who doesn’t feel “good enough” or “pretty enough” and helping her feel the bully/judgy part that makes the other part of her feel this way. I have felt strong punisher/bully parts in myself in the past and some of this dynamic inside of me has been passed down to my daughter to whatever degree I wasn’t able to feel it. Through feeling and healing this part in myself and being present and available to feel this part in her, my sense is that she can then hold and love herself this way in the future.
My heartfelt desire is that this was something that Amanda and many others like her who are suffering around the world could have, and yet I also trust the phoenix cycles of our species evolution, as painful and difficult as it is to experience.
Visit SoulFullHeart.com for more articles and information about the SoulFullHeart Healing Process.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
