Episode 114 - Being Bullied and Becoming a People Pleaser
Many women who struggle with people-pleasing often blame themselves, but these habits are usually rooted in deeper issues that are beyond our control. There can be various underlying causes, but in this episode, I share how my personal experiences with bullying have influenced my people-pleasing tendencies. If recalling your own experiences of being bullied brings up strong emotions--it’s okay to skip this episode if it feels too tender. But if you’re ready, I invite you to explore how these early wounds may have influenced your people-pleasing—and how healing starts with self-compassion, not self-criticism. Here’s what I cover:
An overview of the four nervous system responses—fight, flight, freeze, and fawn
A deep dive into the “fawn” nervous system response and how it connects bullying to people-pleasing
How bullying-related shame impacts our sense of worthiness
A visualization exercise that uses arts work to help you heal your inner child
Why being attuned to others’ needs might actually be a trauma response
A compassionate question to ask yourself that will reveal the beliefs you formed about safety and belonging
Dr. Ramani Clip: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DHL5jFLMbE2/?hl=en
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Transcript
00:51
This episode, I started thinking about it a little while ago. And as they've been remembering the instances of bullying that I wanted to talk about, and how they relate to my becoming a people pleaser, and maybe if you were bullied, how that made you a people pleaser, it's just kind of laying it all out in one space is making me realize how often it happened to me.
01:26
And if you're thinking about when you were bullied, and there is some intense emotion or feeling coming up, I am right there with you. And so I just want to say at the outset here, I'm going to be describing the instances of bullying that happened to me.
01:47
And I don't want it to be activating for you in any way that doesn't feel good. And so if that starts to happen, just skip this episode, right? There's lots of different ways that we can learn about how our people pleasing habits
02:00
were formed and if this one just feels like too much, I get it because as I started to write everything out, it's been so long since I kind of looked at it all together, I had to take a few minutes for myself as well.
02:13
So with that, I wanted to talk about this because even though our years when bullying might typically happen, you know the playground or the halls of a high school are behind us, there are still some fundamental things that we learn during those formative years about security and relationships and being supported that continues to affect us today.
02:42
I was bullied in third grade by a random girl who was just mean, I had to ride the bus with her and I was just, terrified. She would just stalk me from the time we left, you know, the safety of the classroom, getting in the bus line, she would come up behind me and kind of push me, grab my backpack and kind of rattle it.
03:01
She was, I remember thinking she was huge, right? And that may or may not have been factually correct, but just the terror that I felt every single day after school. And when I talked to my mom about it, she just said, you know, just sit somewhere else, just don't interact with her.
03:19
And so I'm not mad at my mom at all. She had a lot going on, but it was the total lack of safety that I felt from the time. I mean, my stomach started to hurt around lunchtime, just knowing that the school day was going to end soon.
03:37
So maybe that's familiar to some of you. And then in sixth grade, there were two boys who just relentlessly made fun of me because I was smart. And because I enjoyed being smart, because I liked answering questions, and they would write words on my papers, they would, you know, snicker and sneer.
03:58
And I don't fully know if all of it was as malicious. I don't know. All I know is that I felt like I had to hide. And I think that's that's the thing that we all grapple with is, was it malicious? Was it designed to hurt?
04:15
It actually doesn't matter. Because the effect it had on me was hide. Don't show how smart you are. Don't speak up. Don't answer questions. Don't know things. Because if you do, there's a target on your back.
04:29
And so, you know, junior high, relatively fine. I switched schools and went to a bigger school. But then by high school, there were three different periods of bullying. And one
was pretty intense. The first was by some girls who made fun of the way I dressed, made fun of, you know, my hair.
04:50
and especially made fun of my religious beliefs. And they like to kind of corner me and ask me questions about my religious beliefs that were designed to embarrass me or make me feel like they were stupid.
05:01
They brought a book to school that kind of outlined why Mormonism was not Christianity. And at the time, I didn't have any frame of reference for what they were doing other than they hated me, right?
05:16
And they were trying to tear me down. And so I learned to just kind of not fight back, to not to just kind of take it, and then it would be over. The next was, there was a girl in one of my classes who wrote me a love letter.
05:32
And I was very, I was shocked, I was embarrassed. I didn't, at the time, you know, my sophomore self, didn't know how to respond with any kind of graciousness or grace. And actually there were two people who got the letter.
05:46
Some kids took the letter and they read it. And then they started calling me names associated with being gay that I'm not gonna repeat here. And I just didn't know what to do with that. So I would just try to defend myself, try to say, no, I'm not.
06:02
And then just kind of fold and take it. I just didn't have the skills to respond with any kind of confidence, with any kind of, you know, grounded connection to who I was and what I
believed. And I certainly at the time, I didn't have the space to even be, you know, concerned about this other girl.
06:24
It was really all about just how I was gonna get through this intense period of bullying that I was so ashamed of and so embarrassed about. And so I just shut down and I would just kind of smile and try to wait it out.
06:39
And the last incidents, which was the most intense, was by a group of girls on my high school volleyball team. And their boyfriends who in a small town, you know, were all on the football team and they would surround me at school and say things to me.
06:56
They would send me threatening messages. They alienated the few friends that I had at the time. And it was a really, really intense period of just wishing that I could crawl into a hole and not come out.
07:12
And so if your bullying was alike, if it was worse, if it was, you know, similar or different, it actually doesn't really matter. I offer those examples just for some context because I think what my brain did at the time was trying to minimize it, trying to make it like not seem like the big deal that it was.
07:36
But as I look now at the kind of the whole landscape of my past behavior, I learned to fawn as a response to being bullied. Fawning is one of the nervous system responses, F-A-W-N, that happens when you don't feel safe and you are searching for any possible way to just kind of tamp down the danger on a situation.
08:09
When you're bullied, your brain receives all of these powerful messages that you are not safe. And it's not just your brain that understands it intellectually. Like when I have a group of football players, you know, surrounding me and threatening me, obviously, my brain understands this is not a safe situation.
08:30
But your body experiences that on a deep level. And it kind of it becomes embedded in your body. It's a full body experience that changes how your nervous system reacts. And your nervous system gets rewired, and that fawn response becomes your default.
08:56
You develop hypervigilance, kind of constantly scanning the environment for threats. You learn to read the room really, really well. You anticipate other people's needs before they're even expressed, because if you can fawn, if you can please, then that stops things from even becoming a threat.
09:14
And so on the surface, you're smiling, you look very helpful, very nice, but inside there's nervousness and anxiety, and there's a constant watching for what could go wrong. The other thing that happens is that your system becomes full of shame, right?
09:35
Because there's the sense of, I am bad. I am bad that this is happening to me, or they are doing this to me because I am bad, or I am bad because I can't stand up to this. I am bad because I can't get the support that I need around this.
09:53
And something about that shame, it's different for everyone. For me, it was the shame that it was happening to me and that I couldn't get support around it. I did talk about it with some adults in my life, and I think they, in their very well-meaning way, told me to find different friends, told me to just keep to myself for a little bit, told me that if I didn't go to school during that intense time of high school bullying,
10:19
that it would be seen as weak, that I, you know, not show up. And I think that was their very well-meaning way of trying to help me, but it didn't give me any support. And there is something in for me about, like, I am not worthy of being supported.
10:36
I'm not worthy of getting the help that I need to deal with this threat that feels so much bigger than I am. I didn't feel like I had the resources or the support skills to be able to protect myself or help myself.
10:52
And even though I physically got through it, that sense of shame around not being deserving of support, I'm sure it makes sense to you that what that grows up into is someone who's constantly giving support but doesn't feel worthy to ask for the same type of support that they need.
11:11
Another thing that happens when you're bullied when you're young is that your identity forms around self protection. You learn to make yourself smaller, you learn to make yourself less noticeable, you kind of build yourself around what doesn't trigger other people to be mean to you or to attack you, rather than what feels really authentic to you.
11:35
You can't have authenticity without safety. And so so many of the women that I talked to and so much of my own experience was formed around being small and being acceptable, not making anyone mad. Think for just a minute for you how often I don't wanna make them mad is a thought that you have.
12:02
Maybe it's connected to some of these same types of things happening to you when you were younger. The next thing that happens when you experience bullying as a child and in adolescence is that your relationship with boundaries gets really, really complicated.
12:21
Either you don't believe you deserve them and you don't know how to have them because boundaries can piss other people off saying don't do that to me, you can't talk to me feels like it's just escalating the situation.
12:35
So that's possibly one thing that happens. Or you build walls so thick that no one can get close to hurt you. That's more of the route that I went. I tried to be so impenetrable to anyone else's opinions of me, their words, that I would just convince myself it didn't matter.
12:59
This just actually came back to me. I remember standing in a group of women and I am now in my late 20s, I remember I have a couple kids, so 29-ish and there was a group of women in my church congregation that had all moved to Texas where I lived from the same place in Utah.
13:19
Their husbands all worked for the same oil company and one of the women was passing out invitations to her birthday party and she passed them out to everyone in the circle but me. And it was done in a way that I could tell was meant to exclude me and I armored up, said you know what, fuck her.
13:37
I don't care, I didn't say fuck her because I didn't swear at the time. But I was like, I don't care, you know, who cares about her and her stupid birthday party. But inside I was so hurt. So, the boundaries piece can get tricky.
13:52
You don't have them, you don't believe you deserve them, or you go to the other extreme where your boundaries or your walls are so thick in an attempt to just not be
hurt by anyone again. Another thing that happens when you're bullied is that oftentimes the inner critic parts that we all have take on the voice of our bullies.
14:14
So, long after the actual bullying stops, the person is long gone from our lives, we continue to do the work that they did, critiquing and doubting and judging and questioning our value and our worth, telling ourselves that we're too much, that we should be different or not enough.
14:35
And it is so often that when I'm working with women on that particular critic part, they have memories of being bullied. by other kids their age or by other adults. Because bullying doesn't just happen kid to kid.
14:53
Oftentimes the perpetrators are adults who are dealing with their own issues who should know better who bully kids. And I think the most heartbreaking part of all of this is that most of us don't fully appreciate, especially because we were never taught to, right?
15:12
This whole kind of conversation around trauma and trauma responses and nervous system regulation really has only come into like mainstream conversation in the last what maybe five years or so. Maybe you know 10 if you're in therapy circles or we're doing therapy which you know God knows most of us weren't doing therapy you know 15 and 10 and 20 years ago.
15:40
So it just rather than understand that what happened for us was a trauma response. We think it's our personality. There's something wrong with me. I'm just a people pleaser or I'm just anxious or I'm just really good at reading people, right?
15:59
I'm just really good at knowing what other people need when the whole time it's a brilliant trauma response bonding that has just been part of the wallpaper of our lives for so long that we just think it's us.
16:18
And we tend to slap on another layer of shame and guilt for being a people pleaser or being anxious or being someone who fawns rather than really appreciating that it wasn't a choice. Those were survival adaptations that worked brilliantly to keep us safe in unsafe conditions.
16:46
When I was surrounded by five or six football players who were threatening to beat me up, fighting back wasn't a great option in that moment. And so, fawning and smiling and trying to kind of joke about it to get out of the situation really was my best option.
17:08
But for a long time, I think I just saw myself as weak or as overly nice, as overly accommodating, and I know for sure that I keep more judgment and criticism on myself for doing that rather than recognizing that it was a survival mechanism that I wasn't fully in control of, which I'm going to explain more about that in a second, that my nervous system employed to keep me safe.
17:41
And so, I want to explore further, the connection between bullying and people pleasing, because I want you to go easy on yourself. I talk with so many women who have so much shame and judgment and self-doubt and self-criticism for themselves, without fully appreciating that the ways in which they were bullied shaped their view of being safe and what they had to do to be safe.
18:08
And so the journey out of this isn't about just getting over it. It's not about being harder on yourself, so that you stop those patterns of people pleasing. It's about recognizing how these experiences really shaped us, honoring the ways that we protected ourselves,
and then gently, with compassion, learning new ways to exist, or for our systems, our nervous systems to exist that aren't organized around fear.
18:43
Because when you are bullied, so much of your orientation in the world is about being safe because of the thing that could happen. Your whole system gets organized around eliminating danger and about protecting you from fear.
19:00
So really quickly, I'm going to do a whole other episode that dives into each of these nervous system responses with more depth, but I want you to understand them for the sake of our discussion today.
19:11
Your nervous system responses are fight, light, freeze, and fawn. I've already talked a little bit about that. So your nervous system takes the wheel in situations of threat. And what I mean by that, it's literal.
19:29
When something is triggered in you, and suddenly, you're not quite yourself, and you are not fully in charge, that is your nervous system taking over your brain and body and activating really ancient survival programming.
19:44
that kept our ancestors alive and has kept us alive long before we really have the words to describe what was happening and thankfully today we do. So these four fundamental responses I just want to give you a brief overview of each one because whether it's you know the saber-toothed tiger on the savannah of long ago or a kid in the hall or your mother-in-law's passive aggressive comment at Thanksgiving dinner your nervous system can activate in these different responses without you even making a conscious choice and that's really really important to remember.
20:21
So flight. Flight is all about escape. Your body floods with energy designed to help you get away from danger as quickly as possible. So in primitive times this meant literally running right literally running away and in modern life it might look like running but it also might look like constantly staying busy to avoid uncomfortable feelings.
20:44
procrastinating on difficult conversations or anything where conflict might come up, changing the subject when things get emotionally intense, physically leaving rooms during conflict, or excessively planning and preparing to prevent any possible problem.
21:03
That's what flight looks like. So that anxious energy, the racing thoughts, the inability to kind of settle down, that is flight's response in action telling you we need to get out of here, right? We need to leave.
21:17
We need to get out of here. Fight is the defender. Fight mobilizes your body's resources for confrontation. It's your system's way of saying, I am going to face this threat head on. It's not always physical aggression.
21:32
It can be. But fight responses in our day look like arguing and debating even minor points, possibly becoming disproportionately angry about small frustrations. There's a lot of that fighting energy in your system.
21:50
And so it just kind of erupts here and there about something that doesn't really deserve that kind of response. Getting defensive when receiving feedback, being quick to criticize others, feeling a surge of irritability when you're vulnerable, the heat in your chest, the tightness of your jaw, the way your hands clench or your muscles clench.
22:14
And that is fight saying, you know, I'm going to stand my ground. I'm going to stay here and I'm going to fight. Freeze happens when flight and fight aren't viable options. It's your system's way of literally just playing dead or becoming invisible, hoping that the threat will go away.
22:35
In our modern lives, a lot of us live in something called a functional freeze. Right. We've just been taking flight. and fighting for so long and it hasn't been working that we get in a freezy state that looks like a brain fog during stressful situations that just kind of comes over us, feeling numb or disconnected from our bodies, a deer in the headlight sensation when you're put on the spot and you lose your words and you can't think of anything,
23:06
or procrastination that feels more like paralysis than the flight procrastination that I just described. Like you just can't make yourself move. It's really difficult to make decisions, even simple ones.
23:21
It's more of an empty-headed feeling, the sense that we're kind of out of body and that's freeze. And freeze is trying to help us be still and be small so that the danger will not see me and we'll move on.
23:38
So Fawn is the people pleaser and it's... least talked about, but perhaps most familiar response that I notice in myself and in the people that I talk to, especially women. It is about appeasing the threat by being whatever it will take to make the other person calm or be happy.
24:04
So it looks like automatically agreeing with others, even when you don't, because you don't want disagreement to activate them at all. It's over apologizing when you haven't
done anything wrong. It is prioritizing everyone else's comfort over yourself, because if they're comfortable, then they're happy, then I get to be safe.
24:29
It's a chameleon like adaptation to whatever environment you are in. I did this a lot with different, I just wanted friends. I wanted a friend group to be safe in, and so I could chameleon to the different high school groups trying to get accepted by them.
24:48
And it went on into adulthood with different friend groups that I tried to make as an adult. Fawning looks like a real difficulty identifying who you are, your wants, your needs, your opinions, because you are so hypervigilantly watching the needs of everyone else that there just isn't any leftover time and energy for you to know who you are.
25:14
It's one of the most common things that the women I talk to say like, I don't even know who I am. That's because of fawning. It's an ability to do this kind of instant mental calculation of what does this person want from me?
25:32
How can I give it to them and that reflexive smile? It is so instant that you go into nice mode and you are able to get other people what they want, you're able to make them happy and you're smiling on the outside, but inside there's a really high degree of hypervigilance, nervousness and anxiety that it's just kind of always below the surface.
26:01
And again, what I want you to really remember is that these are not conscious choices. They are lightning fast, nervous system reactions that happen before your brain even registers and can really do the math of what is going on.
26:19
Because if everything could slow down, right, in that moment, your brain might have a chance to do the calculation like, oh, I'm actually safe here, right? As an adult, when that woman was handing out party invitations to everybody but me.
26:36
And I felt the surge of discomfort and energy in my body that told me, you're not safe, you're not safe, you're not safe. The problem is the nervous system just takes over and does that calculation for me.
26:49
And we all have our go to responses. But most of us cycle through several just depending on the situation. There is no good or bad nervous system response. They just are. And they have kept our species alive for millennia.
27:10
And so they become problematic when they're chronically activated in situations that are not actually threatening our survival. And that's the thing that I want you to hear. It's only a problem, because your nervous system thinks you are in a situation of actual threat.
27:33
And you're not. And so that's how we grow up to become these chronic people pleasers, always fawning, fawning, fawning, fawning, because we're trying to eliminate any and all threats without even stopping to think, is this actually a threat?
27:52
Or is this actually a threat that I can't handle? And another way that this fawn response shows up over time, I heard this on a podcast, their name is Dr. Ramani. And she had a guest who said that one of the hallmarks of trauma is trying to get a difficult person to be good to you, trying to get difficult people to treat us well.
28:16
And if you think about how often when we are bullied, so many of us try to figure out how can I get this person to like me? How can I get them to be kind to me? How can I get them to stop bullying me?
28:29
That is where the fawn response shows up a lot. So much of the path to healing isn't eliminating these responses. We can't, they're hardwired. But about creating enough nervous system regulation and safety where we are able to be with whatever response our nervous system throws out in a loving, calm, kind, rounded, compassionate way so that we can begin to slow down the response and feel more safety.
29:08
So again, it's not about never having another fawn attack, or flight, or fight attack, but it's just about getting enough regulation in the nervous system by practicing, calming yourself, being with yourself in a loving, present way, so that the space between the trigger and the response gets a little bigger, and you're able to have a choice.
29:33
rather than just an automatic response. It's not weakness. It's not the character flaw. This is your magnificent nervous system doing exactly what it was designed to do to keep you alive. And so I really hope that as we look at the ways in which bullying brought some of these responses online for us, we can do so with love.
30:01
We can do so with acknowledging of the sadness and grief that is inherent in some of these situations where we didn't have the support that we so desperately needed and wanted. And that we did our best to get by.
30:18
And that with no one to explain it to us, we grew up doing the best we could, which often is just living in these responses, particularly fawning over and over and over, just trying to stay safe. I also want to say that there is really a piece of this that is very gendered.
30:44
The good girl rules all reinforce fawning as a nervous system response, the nice girl, right? Messages about being kind and accommodating. The perfect child, the perfect wife, the good wife, the good daughter, the good friend, right?
31:02
There are so many messages that are given to humans who are socialized as women, girls in particular, about fawning as being good that it can be very confusing to untie the fawn response that doesn't feel good from the way that we also all want to be rewarded and we want to belong, we want to have connection.
31:28
And so there is absolutely a piece of this that is reinforced by social and cultural messages that are people pleasing, which started out as a response to trauma is actually good. And that's why so many of us continue in it as well.
31:44
So I've talked a little bit about some of the shifts that I think are really helpful to move from having a fond response that's just really automatic to having more choice in your response. And the first is to recognize that being bullied plays a significant role in the shaping of that response.
32:08
Number two, to recognize that that response is not your fault. It's chosen for you automatically by your nervous system that is just trying to keep you safe. And number three, to recognize where you are blaming and shaming yourself for that response.
32:23
Number four, to recognize the all the good girl rules that kind of get layered in there and that reinforce that behavior rather than allowing you to question it. And there's some others that I want to mention too.
32:36
So much of the work that we have to do as adults who are women who are people pleasers is to reconnect with what we really want and desire. So much of the outflow of that fond energy is taking care of everyone else.
32:57
So spending time learning to reconnect, feeling valid in our needs, asking for the support that we need, that we didn't get during those moments when we were bullied and other moments when we felt like we were really alone in the world, not being seen, not being listened to, not being understood, connecting with that and learning to ask.
33:23
That's a very powerful way to make that journey into more choice. Secondly, doing the work with your nervous system regulation regularly to help everything slow down, right? To make that nervous system response less automatic so that you have the opportunity to differentiate between a real threat and a perceived threat.
33:51
Now, perceived threat doesn't mean it's not a threat. It just means it's a threat where you have some skills or some resources to handle. Mother-in-laws comment at the Thanksgiving table. It might feel threatening, but you might have some skills there.
34:06
And if you don't, that's the time to get them, to learn how to go into conflict in a way that feels safe for you. Now, I'm talking about some really big things here. And so if you're listening and saying, you're like, okay, Sarah, that's great.
34:23
But going into conflict in a way that I feel good about, that just sounds bonkers. I get it. I get it. But what I can tell you is it is possible, especially if you are willing to learn some skills and practice in less threatening situations first.
34:44
Practice with circumstances that don't feel if mother-in-law at the Thanksgiving table feels super threatening, that's not where you start to differentiate between real and perceived threat or slow things down and regulate your nervous system and bring your skills and resources online.
35:00
You start somewhere smaller that feels safer. You also join other communities of people who are doing the same work. You listen and read to other women who are doing this work because building supportive relationships.
35:18
that honor where you are and that show you all the different places where we are on this path of learning how to eliminate our fawning response. It is so powerful. I have learned so much from listening to the voices of other women doing the same work and we live in a time when there are more of them than ever.
35:39
We heal in communities in such a beautiful, beautiful way. It's the reason that I started Stop People Pleasing when women can hear the struggles and the celebrations of other women and find themselves there and think, oh my gosh, I'm totally normal.
35:55
This is just such a normal, of course this is happening for me. It's happening for all of us. There is just such a wonderful settling into a new level of self honoring because you know what we're all worried about is there's something extra special super broken about just me, but when I hear it reflected back to me in the stories of other people and other women especially, it is such a beautiful experience.
36:22
So if there have been things from this episode that really resonate with you, I'm so glad. I would love to hear about them. I love getting VMs. I love getting messages from people who listen to this episode where they identify where they want me to do maybe a little
more explaining something that wasn't clear to them, but here's what I want to leave you with.
36:43
I want to leave you with a question to ask yourself. If you were bullied, what did it teach you about what you needed to do or be to stay safe? And if you can ask yourself that question with so much compassion and allow inner parts of you to speak up and show you memories, that's what's happened for me as I've prepared this episode.
37:11
I've remembered things that I haven't thought about in literally decades as I have asked myself, what's the connection for me between being bullied and what I needed to do to stay safe? There is information for you in your body.
37:32
And then the last thing I want to do, I want to take you through a visualization that is something that I have done with myself. Because one of the questions that I get asked a lot is, okay, great, now I've identified, you know, this wound that happened for me in third grade when I was sitting on the bus just petrified about which bus seat to pick which one was the safest where she wouldn't bother me.
37:58
And okay, great, I've identified it, but it's already passed. Like how do I go back and fix something or heal something that I can't go back and relive that moment. And what I want to tell you is there's a magic way that we actually can.
38:13
It's through the power of our imagination and arts work. Arts work essentially says that we can go back and support the smaller parts of us, our inner children, if that feels like accessible language to you, that we're without support and resources with our wise, loving adult selves who can be curious and who can be calm and compassion and bring those resources to those situations.
38:49
And a lot of times we can do it in a visualization. So what I have done is I close my eyes and I find a place on my body. Usually I just go for my chest where I place my hands, I soften my gaze or close my eyes and I can actually remember that bus.
39:11
And I see myself walking out to the line and I see the girl coming up behind me. And then I imagine that me as an adult could go up and put my arm around little third grade me and that my presence there helps her.
39:31
It makes her brave. It gives her support. I see us now kind of walking up the steps of the bus. You know, those vinyl plastic seats were sliding into one and I let her get in first and I sit on the outside.
39:48
Then I sit with her. And it's not that the bullying doesn't happen. It's that I'm there to explain to her, this is not your fault. You are not in trouble. You are not doing anything wrong. There is something in this girl that is hurting, that is all about her.
40:12
This is not your fault. You did nothing wrong. I am. right here with you. And I just let her tell me that she is afraid. And I say, I'm right here with you. If we are going to feel afraid, we're going to feel it together.
40:31
And I sit with her. And we both are there. And she's feeling afraid. And I am sitting with her until it's time for us to get off the bus and walk down the steps. The power of that type of a visualization isn't to make it go away.
40:51
It's to give those unsupported parts of you the little us that were alone in those huge moments of fear of error, of embarrassment of shame, it's to give them company, support, presence in those feelings.
41:13
It's not about making those feelings go away. And as I have done that work with little versions of me, third grade me, sixth grade me, even high school me, it is profound how tender I feel toward those versions of me where I once really only felt shame and embarrassment and like I was never going to tell anybody that that happened to me because it was just, you know, so embarrassing.
41:36
And that is something that is available to you too. If you have any questions about how to do this, and you want to book a call with me, I would love for you to use the link that is in the show notes.
41:47
I will tell you about how we can work together to do some of these things together. And I will take you through your own visualization that can help you heal some of these things. Because again, it's not about pretending that those things never happened.
42:04
It's about understanding that we were always just trying to be safe, that that's how our nervous system responded to keep us safe. But that now as adults, we have access to a different level of safety and connection that we can give ourselves.
42:23
Some of us are being even bullied as adults in the workplace in our marriages in different friend relationship. If that is still happening, I would love to talk with you about it. Because you deserve to feel safe.
42:36
You deserve to feel connected. You deserve to be seen and listened to. And if there's anything I can do to help that, I would love to. Thanks for listening.
