I have been learning about true self-care over the last 10 years and from putting simple self-care techniques into practice I have enjoyed my life, myself and my body more and more over those years. However, I recently realized that I had been overlooking an area of my life where I have not been truly caring for myself.
In the last 2 years, myself, close friends and colleagues have all been targets of cyber-bullying that seems somehow to be an acceptable form of expression in our technologically advanced world, under the banner of ‘Freedom of Speech’. However, what disturbed me more than the actual cyber-bullying, was my lack of outrage and motivation to stop this intellectual and emotional abuse to which we were being subjected.
In asking myself why I didn’t react with outrage, I realised one of the reasons was that I had normalized this type of intellectual and emotional abuse from when I was young.
It is really disturbing to find how common bullying via the internet is affecting people both personally and professionally. Cyber-bullying is another obvious abuse and since I have been the target of this abuse I have done my own mini research into where abuse starts.
I cringe at the way my siblings and I used to talk to each other in fights over the most insignificant things. We would literally sneer at each other, sling nasty names at each other and try and verbally hurt each other from our own reactions and hurt. We all used to walk away from these interactions emotionally bruised and we just hardened in our bodies to cope.
We are all born naturally sensitive, gentle and tender and none of us start off name slinging and criticizing when we are toddlers. Many children lose touch with this natural gentle tenderness as they get older. It seems like adults and parents accept as normal the competition, fighting and name calling that often goes on between siblings as they grow up. Kids do this in reaction to hurts they are not aware they have and in their hurt they lash out at others. This really is a form of abuse and it often starts at home when we are really young.
Years later I learnt that burying these hurts caused more emotional harm than a physical punch to the body.
I remember the occasional times when my brother punched me there was the obvious bruise so I could not dismiss the hurt – it would heal and I would accept that – after my initial reaction – and let the incident go. In hindsight I would have far preferred my sibling punched me rather than the deeper emotional hurt that I would bury and hold onto for years.
In my 30 years of working as a health professional I have learnt from thousands of clients that it is precisely these emotional hurts that are far more damaging than the physical ones. When they tell me about childhood emotional traumas – it can be 30, 40 or 50 years ago –they still cry as they retell these moments from when they were little.
As they talk about these events I have observed how old tension patterns in the layers of their soft tissue let go and soften. The body areas affected by this old tension become more fluid and flexible.
When do we numb ourselves from this type of hurt and virtually say to ourselves and others that this form of intellectual and emotional abuse is OK? This got me thinking; do we consider that in a fit of frustration, rolling our eyes and criticising our friends, family or colleagues could be labelled as abuse too – and that we have accepted it as part of ‘normal’ living?
15 years ago I had a pivotal moment during a presentation from Serge Benhayon of Universal Medicine, on the profound simple truths that were shared on living a simple, more self-caring and gentle way of life.
Over the last 10 to 15 years I have changed the way I live: I am less driven and critical of myself, I appreciate and care for myself more and now I enjoy my life, myself and my body more and more. The simple truths that were shared all made sense to me. These truths were for example:
• that we are all sensitive and feel things all the time – such as the moods others are in or what is behind their reactions to us, and
• that we are all in essence love – equally so, however we often don’t live from that essence but from our protections and emotional patterns.
I have listened to my body over the years by feeling how it responds to how I live in it, which has helped me to reconnect to this more natural, gentle way of living. I have learned how and why I do things, from observing myself and others in a detached and curious way. This has helped me understand old patterns of abusive behavior I had towards myself, for example, pushing myself to finish 30 laps of swimming when my body was feeling content at 20 laps. I have learned to appreciate that my body always gives me true messages about how I treat it.
As I have returned to being more naturally gentle and self-caring, I have started to say No to any emotional abuse – in the way I am with others and the way they are with me.
I can feel how self-loving it is to say no to a sarcastic or critical comment, as when I do I feel my body relax and the pockets of tension in my soft tissue release and unwind.
This has supported me to enjoy and respect myself and others again and to be able to say No to intellectual and emotional abuse. It has been a gradual and ongoing process and I am learning as I go how truly caring and loving this is for myself and others too.
This blog and the positive changes in my life have been and are continually inspired by Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine.
By Anonymous
Further Reading:
Domestic Violence and dealing with hardness in our lives – Esoteric Connective Tissue Therapy
What To Wear … You’re Not Wearing That, Are You?
671 Comments
Burying our hurts just means that we can be got at far more easily for the hurts are just there under the surface waiting to be cajoled, manipulated or basically played with.
All our experiences of life are held in our body and tensions between family members can be the start of abuses that we take as ‘normal’.
Psychological or emotional abuse can have devastating effects if left buried in our bodies, ‘I have learnt from thousands of clients that it is precisely these emotional hurts that are far more damaging than the physical ones.’
It is truly shocking how normalised intellectual and emotional abuse have become and I know that I have spent many years protecting myself from past and potential assaults that have a more lasting impact than things like physical bruises. It has been an revealing process to explore how reluctant I have been to call out abuse for fear of being ridiculed for ‘making a fuss’ etc but the more loving care I take of myself the more any abuse stands out and the more I am willing to speak up or examine why I chose not to.
I was an observer in a meeting recently where there was bullying behaviour going on and whilst it felt horrible I feel strongly that it should not go unchallenged even if that means I have to stand up and be counted.
What % of the time do we live from our essence, and what % from our protective patterns – and what supports us to live more from our essence and not from our protective patterns? Great blog that helps us to look at these questions more deeply for ourselves. Making the switch from living from our patterns of protection to living from our essence isn’t an overnight thing, but a gradual shift, that happens the more we commit to staying awake and aware of what we’re feeling. As we feel more, we get to see and feel more deeply the choices we make and how they affect our body, and the difference between the steadiness and loveliness that we feel when we live from our essence, and the unsettled, shut down state of living from our patterns. The choices to maintain the latter state of being simply become more obvious ones for us to make, instead of living on auto-pilot and in reaction to what’s going on around us.
When we feel the sacredness of the love we are in essence, it is then a deeply honoring act of love to say NO to any form of abuse. It is honouring not only for ourselves but for all as in the arrest of this loveless behaviour we offer a pull-up to all, for the truth of who we are to be lived.
What a great area of focus this is. Family is certainly an area where we can say tings to each other that are actually harming and unloving – and so to be able to call out the truth that this is not ok and that we harden as a result is really Important so we can hear from this and know it is not truly us and that we don’t need to be tough or hard.
It has taking me quite some time to come to the realisation that anything less than love constitutes abuse. Having this as my ‘yard stick’ so to speak has allowed me to feel and read when something is not loving. In order to be aware when this is the case, requires me to treat myself with love and respect so as to build a body of love within myself.
Beautifully expressed Elizabeth and your commitment to building this is deeply felt.
Sarcastic or horrible comments are abuse. As well as certain tones or attitudes as these make me feel tense and tight in the body. If I contract I give more space to that abuse. If I say no theres less space for abuse and more for love. I am not mastered at this but I can appreciate that I have this ability to choose either way.
It’s great that an abusive situation like the cyber bullying could become an opportunity to heal abuse in your life. It’s so important that we honour our feelings and speak up about situations that feel abusive even if it’s subtle, otherwise we run the risk of lowering our standards and accepting abuse in our lives so that it becomes normal.
We are such sensitive beings that the simple act of raising one’s eyebrows at someone conveys so much, we may pay little attention to it at the time but it is definitely felt in the body.
We are incredibly sensitive beings, so where and how do we lose this way of being, ‘We are all born naturally sensitive, gentle and tender’?
Protecting ourselves from abuse is an important start. Understanding the reasons for the abuse can be a very powerful next step.
I found it very interesting how the author of this blog described how working as a health professional she experienced so many people emotionally reacting in a strong way after sharing something that felt abusive to them decades ago. This shows just how emotions are an energy that can be stored in the human body, and I can only imagine just how harmful that stored hurt is when it is running its program inside us before we deal with it and heal it once and for all.
In our Australian culture sarcasm is often used as a supposed form of humour, yet this is often quite cutting and creates a situation that intimidates people and then we interact on a superficial level instead of going deeper with each other.
‘observing myself and others in a detached and curious way’ … when we do this, life becomes very different, we become our own science experiment and as such we can more clearly see what does and doesn’t support us and catch any patterns we have which may be abusive and ways in which we’ve allowed abuse. It’s like learning to walk in a way that avoids banging into all the furniture.
Our body is a great detector of abuse no matter how subtle, a word meant with malice is clearly felt when we are connected to our body – no matter how much niceties the word may be wrapped in.
Yes, even a movement in anger has an effect on us.