Aside from considering departure options, the other way to protect yourself, especially if a bully is irrational, is to wall off your negative, helpless emotions and feel proud of your ability to make the best of tough situations. Whether you’re getting zapped by your boss at a job you can’t afford to leave or by a husband under comparable circumstances, stop sharing how you feel and start negotiating, beginning with whatever you’re accused of doing wrong.
Talk proudly about whatever you’ve done right and positively about whatever your bully, if he or she has flashes of reasonableness, does right. Regret disagreement, conflict, or disappointment and express hope that it will get better, without apology or blame. Look confident and stand proud, regardless of how you feel. Build a boundary that lets the bully know that you value his opinion, but still judge yourself by your own standards, which, in this case, you’ve met. As long as you haven’t let fear and anger compromise your behavior, you can disagree without having to defend, persuade, or continue conversations that you think are destructive.
Unfortunately, as you know, many bullies, due to some combination of physical, financial, and psychotic strength, can’t be stopped, in which case winning means doing what’s necessary to survive until you can get out. To others, it may appear as if you’re bowing to intimidation, compromising your principles, and giving in to weakness. What you know, however, is that you have more important priorities than avoiding humiliation and that you have the strength to tolerate humiliation whenever you think it’s necessary.
As long as you haven’t let fear and anger compromise your behavior, you can disagree without having to defend, persuade, or continue conversations that you think are destructive. Whether or not your protest is heard, you know where you stand, and you’ve kept your pride intact.
Quick Diagnosis
Here’s what you wish for and can’t have:
• Victory over unfair aggression
• A fair outcome (forgive me for using this horrible f-word)
• Freedom from undeserved criticism
• Control over your reputation
• R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Here’s what you can aim for and actually achieve:
• Keep your cool under fire
• Learn to choose your battles
• Respect yourself regardless of disrespect from others
• Find the least humiliating option that’s necessary to bear
• Take pride in your ability to eat shit when necessary and smile
Here’s how you can do it:
• Shut up until you’re ready to speak; don’t yell or act out because you’re angry or tired
• Gather information about whether you can win
• Assess yourself and respect your self-assessment
• State everything positive you can about yourself, your persecutor, and whatever has been or could be good about your relationship
• Regret disagreement and conflict without expressing responsibility or apology for it
• Take action when you’ve decided it’s worthwhile, not because your feelings tell you to
• Until you can move on, bear the pain
Your Script
Here’s what to say to a bully/yourself when you feel falsely accused, mocked, or disrespected.
Dear [Me/Relative/Boss/Assailant],
I value our having a [insert positive adjective to describe kindness and nonviolence] relationship and am sorry you are [unhappy/angry/dissatisfied/threatening legal action/urging me to make painful physical moves]. I believe in the values of [hard work/good neighborliness/brushing after every meal] and have examined my own behavior to see if, as you’ve suggested, it needs [improvement/cranial-anal insertion/self-sexual engagement]. I can’t agree, but I believe we continue to have much to gain from working together and hope things will go better in the future.
Did You Know . . . That Prince Is an Inspiration to All?
You don’t have to enjoy Prince’s music (although you should) or agree with his political or religious views (you probably don’t want to know) or even want to quote his words in your own book (please look up the very-apt lyrics to “Let’s Go Crazy” since we can’t afford to reprint them) in order to appreciate the man who was born Prince Rogers Nelson.
That’s because Prince is so much more than a Lilliputian juggernaut of talent; he’s an icon to anyone who feels different, loser-like, or generally doomed to outsider/failure status. True, he has an outsized and admirable talent, but what’s most inspirational about the Purple One is not his musical success but his determination to make music and pursue other forms of self-expression (dance, wardrobe, articulating the sound of crying doves) simply because that’s his artistic mission, and in defiance of so much easy ridicule.
Despite being mixed race and of decidedly minimal height (five foot two), Prince believed in himself and his own talent so strongly that he began writing and performing his own songs as a teenager and put a shirtless portrait of himself on his second record. Admittedly, he had the talent to culturally dominate the 1980s, managing to do so from not-cultural-mecca Minneapolis and while wearing a pirate shirt with a bandmate dressed in surgical scrubs; but he also had the determination to do things his way, regardless of how or whether the public responded. Given that he was a tiny, bare-chested “not a woman, not a man” with a quasi–Jheri curl, that response could have been cruel indeed.
So if you’ve ever been tormented by self-doubt and wished you could be better looking, taller, or less inclined toward platform shoes so you could believe in yourself more and maybe accomplish something, look to Prince, and trust that you too can be a massive weirdo and stay true to your vision and mission without having to forgo your dreams of acceptance.
Overcoming the Stigma of Disability
Given the way we equate poor performance, damage, and abnormality with low self-esteem, it’s not surprising that the goal of people with disabilities, be they physical or mental, is to gain confidence by reducing their disabilities, keeping them hidden, and reclaiming normality as soon as possible. Sometimes, they seek out special challenges—some positive, like running a marathon, others less positive, like running away from treatment they’re sure they no longer need—to prove that they have the strength to overcome all obstacles and get their confidence back.
What’s dangerous, however, about taking too much responsibility for controlling a disability is that disabilities usually come with an even-higher-than-normal vulnerability to unforeseen shit, and thus prevent the less able from ever having full control. As a result, if your self-esteem depends on the state of your recovery, you will waste energy fearing and then feeling personally responsible for slips, setbacks, and relapses that even the most capable person doesn’t have a handle on.
You may stop treatment that might otherwise help, or hide symptoms in order to keep up appearances at home or at work. The state of your illness will dictate your self-esteem, which means you will become your illness, rather than a person who happens to have a disability. You won’t be someone living with a disability, but