As a kid growing up, I dealt with a lot of bullying. I started doing theater in the 2nd grade and was seen as the “eccentric” kid ever since. Theater was my place though. I could be who I am without question but could also be someone else for a period of time and I loved both worlds.
I wish I could say finding theater and acting solved my bullying problems, but honestly, I was still the “weird,” “unique,” or “quirky” kid. I enjoyed being on stage because people accepted and praised me for how I presented myself…the only problem was, I only found that acceptance when I was performing as someone else.
I struggled for years never feeling comfortable with who I am. I felt too different from others around me and often dimmed my light to make others more comfortable.
As a grown adult feeling ostracized by society, I had to learn to accept myself. Going through years of counseling helped me see WHY I matter, but the actual work of changing my own mindset about that took consistent challenging and work on my part outside of my sessions.
I won’t be going into the work I did to get to a place of self-acceptance in this post because what I do want to focus on was what I realized AFTER learned to accept me for me.
After decades of rejecting myself, I finally found my self-worth. And not long after, that growth was tested when I became a high school physical education Teacher. I was working with only female students and had over 200 teenage ladies I worked with five days a week for the greater part of a year. I learned a lot about why people bully others having witnessed it between my students, but also with how the students tried to disrespect me as their Teacher.
Due to the long licensing process, I started as their Teacher about 6 weeks into the school year. I was completely thrown in without instruction and I was doing my best to get to know my students and help them understand me as their new Teacher.
Having started the year with a long-term substitute, the expectations in my class were very low. On top of that, the other PE Teachers treated their job like glorified babysitting, so my class expected the same. Boy, were they wrong.
In the first few weeks of coming in as the new authority figure, my student tested me right from the start. Defiance, disrespect, and many consequences later, my student realized I would follow through and our relationship drastically improved from there. However, that tough testing period on me came with a lot of insults.
My experiences at the beginning of the year started making more sense the more I got to know and understand my students. One particular student made a comment about my butt being “saggy” and everyone laughed as I walked away. I felt that.
I had lost a lot of weight from my heaviest at this point and, as such, my body didn’t look like it used to and I knew that. But I was then and still am proud of my accomplishments and had learned to love my body at that point. I did not even respond to the comment and kept going with my lesson as if it didn’t happen.
Had I said anything to the student, I would have said that the only person I need to approve of my body is me, and I do. I did not say this, but learned later just how relevant that would have been for this student.
As I got to know this student throughout the year, I saw how insecure she is, how she seeks approval from others, and how her body image meant just about everything to her.
I realized later that this student made a comment about my body because those comments would have hurt her. What made HER insecure, she projected onto me thinking it would make me feel the same. She wasn’t choosing words that would hurt me. She was choosing words that would have hurt her. The difference being that I didn’t need her approval and so the same words that would have hurt her feel flat on me.
It took me 40 years to realize that bullying is just the person’s own insecurities being projected onto to another. They hurt others because they are hurting inside and want others to feel it too.
And that’s where empathy kicks in.
Even experiencing pain and trauma throughout my life, I am extremely intentional about not allowing that pain to cause suffering to others. That is how my mind/heart works. I cannot imagine how much pain someone must be carrying to believe giving some of it away is the only way to feel relief. That sounds like an incredibly lonely place to exist, and my heart hurts for anyone living there.
But as much as I can see their own pain, nothing will happen within them until they see it and sit with it first. That’s a hard place to be at and because I’ve walked that road before, I have compassion for others going through it. I will never be able to stop bullying or keep suffering at the hand of others away. However, I can see that the person willing to hurt others instead of feeling their own pain is being in a mental place that makes me hurt FOR them rather than BECAUSE of them.
I don’t have to accept their pain. Those insults from the student were not really directed at me because it was her that cared about body comments. And when I took a step back at her life and saw how painfully desperate she was to feel accepted, I knew the best thing I could do was to accept her even in her disrespect. I accepted her as a hurt child who never learned how to love and accept herself. Her pain is not mine to bear, but I can most certainly make sure I am not the source of more for her.
I showed up every day in compassion, understanding and acceptance of all my students. This particular student developed a meaningful and close relationship with me throughout the remainder of the year. And at the end of the school year when I chose to leave teaching to homeschool my son and told all my students, she was one of the students who expressed her sadness in my absence and gratitude for my impact in her life the most.
I could have met her pain with more pain, but I chose differently. I do not know most of what my students went through before coming to me or how their home lives were once they left my classroom. But I do know that there were many students who were the meanest out there and had more going on at home that I ever did in my 40 years of life. For many students, school and Teachers are their escape even if they don’t want to do the work.
You never know what someone is going through and others don’t understand you that way either. And in all my trauma and pain, the main thing I have learned is that if I didn’t like the pain, most likely others won’t like it either. I cannot control other people, but I can control whether I act in kindness to reduce suffering or in aggression to perpetuate it.
I will always choose kindness.