Awakening Goddess: Empowering the Goddess Within

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End Bullying By Changing Yourself

Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs

Recently, a 14 year old boy shot himself in the head in the boys’ restroom at his central Florida middle school.  His family had moved here all the way from New York to escape bullies. Turns out you can’t end bullying by moving hundreds of miles.  You can’t end bullying by talking to school administrators or teachers.

You can’t end bullying by fighting and punishing bullies because fighting and punishing IS bullying.  Imagine firefighters trying to put out fires with flamethrowers instead of water hoses or buckets of earth.

There is only one way to end bullying.  All we have to do is change our entire culture, starting with how we treat ourselves and the people we love most.

Bullying, rape culture, mommy wars, gang violence, and domestic violence are all symptoms of the punishment/reward paradigm on which we base our civilization.  Punishment uses fear and shame to bend the will of a vulnerable person.  Reward uses a vulnerable person’s need for approval combined with the fear and shame of not getting that approval to bend that person’s will.

Most of us grew up with punishment and reward as our motivations to do things that other people wanted us to do – parents, teachers, bullies, even our friends.  We learned that we have to manipulate people to get them to do what we want using fear, shame, and the biological need we have as social mammals for approval and acceptance.

This is a paradigm of power struggle and power hierarchy.  It turns every conflict into a battle of wills, including internal conflict.  It makes us fight ourselves, increasing our stress and decreasing our ability to meet our needs.

In fact, the punishment/reward paradigm makes it difficult for us to recognize our needs.  We think we need other people to change what they do or say.  We think if we just have more power we’ll feel better and BE better.

Reward and punishment are so intertwined we punish ourselves for doing things that make us feel better than we think we deserve to feel, and we reward ourselves for suffering!  “I can’t believe how stupid I was.”  “After the day I had, I deserve this.”

We also learned that accepting punishment negates our bad behavior, that if we're bad but suffer for it, it's okay.  This is especially dangerous because we can get trapped in shame spirals.  When we believe that we are not good enough, as the punishment/reward paradigm teaches us, we feel shame deep at our core, and since we associate shame with punishment, we punish ourselves both subconsciously and consciously, over and over, trying to motivate ourselves to be better.

Punishment can never make us better because it makes us feel worse.  We cannot do better by making ourselves feel worse.  Feeling bad releases stress chemicals into our bloodstreams.  These chemicals, including adrenaline and cortisol, shut down the part of our brain that we use for higher thinking and problem-solving, damage all of our organs, slow our digestive system and metabolism so we have less energy, and primes our fight/flight/freeze response which makes us act out of anger/frustration, fear, or shame.

Rewards play into the same processes as punishment because they have to be earned. If we have to earn them, then we have to prove that we deserve them, meaning we could fail.  Failing to earn a reward causes shame and feelings of not-good-enough.  Even winning a reward is stressful, because we feel pressured to live up to it, we question whether we were really better than our competitors, and living in a competitive environment is stressful, activating fear and priming the fight/flight/freeze response.

Growing up and living out our lives this way, is it any wonder so many people suffer from diseases caused by chronic stress, including high blood pressure, heart disease, depression, and anxiety?  Is it any wonder so many people feel trapped and hopeless, that our suicide rate is so high?

Growing up in this system, we all adapted to survive.  Some of us leaned toward the fight response in times of stress, and became bullies.  Some of us leaned toward the flight response, and learned to cope with stress by running away literally or by distracting ourselves.  Some of us leaned toward the freeze response, which led us to hiding and making ourselves as small and nonthreatening as possible.  Some of us switch it up.

However, when we feel good, stress doesn’t affect us the same way.  The better we feel, the better our bodies and brains work.  When we feel good, we’re able to solve problems and use our higher thinking skills, including our abilities to act with compassion and in the spirit of cooperation.

The cure for the punishment/reward paradigm is to adopt a paradigm of compassion and cooperation.

Power struggle paradigms, including punishment and reward, exist to help our species survive times of lack.  When we believe that we don’t have enough resources, our primal brains take over to ensure our species’ survival.  When you live inside that paradigm, you believe there is not enough for everyone, you are on your own, and you have to struggle and win.

To live in a state of compassion and cooperation, your higher brain needs to take over.  You have to teach yourself that we are all in this together and that there is plenty for all of us.  You have to understand the needs that drive you and how you can meet those needs, diminishing the stress that inhibits your higher brain.  You have to learn how to communicate in such a way that invites cooperation without manipulation.  You have to learn how to think and act with compassion in a world ruled by fear.

How do you do that?

It’s not a simple step by step process, unfortunately.  This is how I have been doing it:

  • ·         I read and put into practice the principles of Nonviolent Communication by Marshall B. Rosenberg.  This book taught me compassion for myself and others and how to communicate effectively in a way that meets my own needs, the needs of others, and invites cooperation.  It also helped me understand how to figure out what my needs are and how to meet them.
  • ·         I read and put into practice several times over a decade to principles of You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay, which helped me learn how to think positively instead of negatively, forgive myself and others, and how to shift my beliefs from fear-based to compassion-based.
  • ·         I watched What The Bleep Do We Know Anyways dozens of times, and still get more out of it every time I watch it.  It helps me think in terms of the bigger picture and how my beliefs and thoughts affect my reality.
  • ·         I made friends with people who are also striving to live more compassionate and cooperative lives, people who are motivated by a desire to help others, including alternative healers.
  • ·         I read Positive Discipline, which is meant for people who work with children, but the principles and practices of the book apply to all ages.  That book showed me that we can’t do better by feeling worse, and that we can’t make others do better by making them feel worse, and that concept has been my mantra on my own path to both self-compassion and compassion for others.  It also teaches a viable method for cooperative living, a method that has worked in my own life and that I see working in the lives of so many of my mommy friends and their families.
  • ·        I learned and practice alternative healing modalities including Reiki and ThetaHealing, basics of aromatherapy, vibrational healing, and all these things that have helped me learn how to clear out negative energy, recognize and get rid of sources of negative energy, and raise positive energy in my home and wherever I am.

 

      How do we change our entire culture?

All cultural changes start on the level of the individual and spread out through our interactions with our families, friends, and communities.  Teach yourself how to live a compassionate, cooperative life and your peace and happiness and the love you radiate reaches others and influences them.  You inspire people, for better or worse, every time you interact (or choose to not interact) with them.  If you have or teach children, you have an even bigger impact.

You are never alone, no matter how alone you may feel in a particular moment.  There are people all over the world just like you, and there are people everywhere already shifting or living in the compassion/cooperation paradigm who will help you and be there for you, people who love you before they even meet you, because they know the universal truth – that we are all born deserving unconditional love, and that unconditional means we can never stop deserving it.

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Ashley Rae published her first book, a memoir, in 2012, and has been a professional psychic, healer, and teacher since 2003. Ashley's goal in life is to help you empower the divine spark within yourself so that you can love yourself freely, make your life awesome, and make this world a more beautiful, compassionate place. Visit her website to check out her other blog, find out her schedule, book an appointment and register for her classes.

Comments

  • C.S. MacCath
    C.S. MacCath Thursday, 25 September 2014

    Thank you for this post. It was particularly timely for me.

  • Ashley Rae
    Ashley Rae Thursday, 25 September 2014

    Thank you for taking the time to leave me a bit of feedback! ((HUGS))

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