After studying spiritual teachings for a few years, I experienced moments of total bliss and deep understanding. But I still found myself falling into old reactive patterns when faced with a difficult situation.
Even though I knew there was a better way, parts of my personality took over as if I never knew any spiritual teaching at all. COVID-19 and quarantine brought those parts to the surface. Without the busyness and distractions of normal life, the ugliness that remained was easy to see.
I judged and argued against my own family and the world. And reacted to other people’s actions rather than focusing on the only thing I could actually control — what was happening within me. I desperately wanted to overcome the blocks that were keeping me stuck in negative patterns. And I wanted to live in that place of inner peace — whether life was easy or not.
I realized I needed some help.
After doing some searching, I found a therapist that focused on integrative holistic healing. She introduced me to Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy.
IFS Therapy is an approach to psychotherapy that helps people heal by first learning to access their core Self. Then, through Self, they come to understand and heal their inner wounded and protective “parts”.
Parts are broken down into three categories: Managers, Firefighters, and Exiles, with all parts centered around the core Self. For more details on what IFS is and how it works, see my post- Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy.
Uncovering a Bullied Exile
During one of my therapy sessions, a part emerged I wasn’t expecting. I noticed a part that was warning me not to dig too deep and to stay on the porch where I belonged. I knew that part. It lived in the background of my mind and would rise up whenever I was facing a big decision or change in my life.
I focused on that part and asked it why it wanted me to be afraid and stay small. Then, it showed me what it was guarding. A shy, scared, bullied twelve-year-old girl.
The memories came flooding back.
I saw her, that young girl, sitting in an eighth-grade classroom praying to be invisible.
I don’t know what propagated the bullying, but it seemed to begin soon after I made the cheerleading team. A popular girl and her group of friends made me their target. Regardless of how small I tried to make myself, they always found something to ridicule: my clothes, my hair, my answer to a question if called on, and so on.
The teacher of the class was either oblivious or didn’t know how to deal with the situation. So, for the majority of eighth grade, I endured that class with fear, shame, and misery. I didn’t tell anyone — including my mother or any of my friends. I was ashamed. And I believed there was something really wrong with me to be disliked that badly.
Middle school ended and I went on to high school with the bullying behind me. But that shamed young girl remained exiled in an eighth-grade classroom, silently influencing my decisions for years to come.
Before the bullying experience, I had always wanted to be a broadcast journalist. In elementary school, I wrote to Jane Pauley of the Today show and asked how I could become a show host like her. But when it was time to choose my college path, a career in television rattled the door of the bullied girl too much. I wasn’t conscious of her at the time, of course. Nor did I connect the eighth-grade experience with feelings of fear and shame at the thought of putting myself in the spotlight.
So, the bullied girl remained frozen in time locked in that classroom for thirty-five years. It wasn’t until I found her that day in my therapist’s office, and embraced her with love and compassion, that she began to release the shame she had carried for me.
By bringing her to the light of my core Self she could begin to unburden and trust my Self to lead.
Releasing the Burden
I don’t resent those girls for bullying me. Nor do I regret it happened or blame them for de-railing some imagined career I may have had. As Nelson Mandela once said, “Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.”
Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies
Nelson Mandela
Maybe it happened to bring me to the place I’m at right now. Maybe it was to put me on a quest for peace and to remember who I really am — a pure and immortal piece of God having a human experience for a little while.
I don’t know. And I don’t need to know.
I do know that traumatic experiences of death, disease, and violence (to name a few) can and will happen at any time. But there is a better way to deal with life’s trauma than shutting it away and giving it reigns to silently control our lives.
It all comes back to knowing who we really are—our Core Self—and allowing our Self to lead.
…die to the past every moment, and let the light of your presence (Self) shine away the heavy, time-bound self you thought of as “you.”
Eckhart Tolle
The bullied girl is but one of the exiles that have been locked away over my lifetime. With the help of my therapist, I’m uncovering them one by one. I’m no longer willing to accept anything other than living in a state of inner peace—at least most of the time.
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