#7: Silencing Your Inner Bully

 
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Welcome to episode seven of The Oh Shit Kit Podcast! Our “oh shit moments” of the week involve everyone being a general mess, especially Maddie and Leora’s dog who have both been randomly and inexplicably sick. Maddie still got all her work done...so much for self care? Hey, no one is perfect at it, even those of us who have a podcast about it. Thankfully, it appears that everyone is on the mend, we will keep you posted! Our disclaimer is super short, and basically just consists of us asking you not to sue us, because we’re just trying to help and there’s no reason to be a dick about it, mmmkay?

Today we are talking about a topic we have been alluding to for quite a while: shutting down your inner bully! This topic is super important and we hope it will be very helpful, because it is a key piece of cognitive behavioral therapy that you can apply to your life on your own time. If you haven’t already checked out our thoughts and emotions worksheet, this can be a great way to start to identify some of the things that your inner bully is saying to you. You can access it here: http://bit.ly/TOSKThoughtsandEmotions

An important part of combatting the inner bully is first differentiating between bullying self-talk and constructive self-criticism. If you’re someone who tends to feel your emotions in your body, you might want to think about how the thought is impacting your body. If you’re someone who is more action-based, you can identify what this thought makes you want to do...does it make you want to take positive steps towards change, or does it make you want to crawl into bed and stay there all day? The bully is not the voice that is helping you achieve your goals, it’s the one telling you that you shouldn’t even try because you’ll fail anyway. Not. Helpful.

Maddie keeps things simple by telling us about a book called The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer. Doesn’t that just sound like an easy, leisurely read? Shockingly, it isn’t, but Maddie did take some important life lessons away from it which she shares with us. Basically, it’s important to be able to observe your emotions and allow for a little bit of discomfort when it comes to experiencing difficult emotions.

Leora discusses how she overcame her inner bully telling her, “you’re not athletic because you never were!” Turns out, in order to be good at something, you have to practice it. Leora taught her bully to f off by becoming an athletic person who takes pride in her strength.

Maddie’s inner bully is very fearful. Maddie overcomes this by looking at the facts. Rodney loves facts, and so do we. Looking at facts is another piece of cognitive behavioral therapy, and looking at the evidence for and against a belief can be a helpful tool to shut down the bully when they are just dead wrong. Remember, you’ve survived everything you’ve experienced so far in life. Every. Single. Thing. It might have hurt like hell but you still did it, and your bully isn’t giving you enough credit for that.

We talk about different words for the inner bully, such as “negative self-talk” or “your inner critic”. We like the word bully because we know that bullies are not coming from a place of wanting to help you make positive changes, whereas constructive criticism can be a good thing. So, by shutting down your inner bully, you aren’t claiming to always do things right, but you are vowing to be kind to yourself and show yourself some compassion knowing that you’re a human being who makes mistakes.

We talk about cognitive distortions. These are common themes in thinking patterns experienced by many people who have mental health struggles, particularly depression and anxiety. Guess what guys...cognitive distortions are MALADAPTIVE. LEORA. CAN’T. HELP. HERSELF. We discuss a few cognitive distortions, but we encourage everyone to use the link below to read all of the possibilities and figure out if any of these cognitive distortions apply to you. This can be a great place to start because you might immediately be able to relate to some themes in these lists. Much like other MALADAPTIVE behaviors, cognitive distortions can be based on things our mind wants to protect us from but actually doesn’t need to. However, if we become aware of these, we can overcome our tiny monkey brains and think about things in a more logical manner.

It turns out that even if you don’t have a mental health diagnosis, we all have an inner bully to a certain extent. Everyone can benefit from becoming aware of the ways in which they talk to themselves and modifying these patterns to better serve them. After all, we will all have hard times in our lives, and building these skills will serve us during the more difficult times, particularly if we can build them during the easier times.

We discuss some information  about negative self-talk from the Scott article (see citation below). According to Scott, negative self-talk is linked to higher levels of stress, lowered self-esteem, decreased motivation, increased feelings of helplessness, and higher likelihood of depression. According to Scott, for people who engage in a lot of negative self-talk “their reality is altered to create an experience where they don't have the ability to reach the goals they've set for themselves. This is both due to a lowered ability to see opportunities around them as well as a decreased tendency to capitalize on these opportunities.” This is a pretty big fucking deal if you ask us.

Do you guys think Rodney should make a guest appearance in every episode? Maddie doesn’t think so but Leora wants to know what our listeners think, after all, Rodney deserves a full analysis. Let us know when you leave us a rave review on iTunes (wink wink).


Another way to shut down the bully is to ask yourself “would I allow someone else to talk to me this way”, or, “would I allow someone to talk to a loved one of mine this way”? If you wouldn’t allow this bullshit to come out of someone else’s mouth in your home, don’t allow that shit into your mind either. Your mind is your most sacred space.

Maddie recommends clearing up social media to protect your mind. Social media is one of the few places where we have some control over the triggers we encounter, so try to lessen the amount of distress you have to deal with by filling your feed accordingly. Maddie recently watched a video where Jameela Jamil spoke about this:

We want you to do affirmations and we will fight you if you think they won’t work. Actually we won’t, but Rodney will lay down some science to support the fact that affirmations DO work. According to an article by Catherine Moore (see below for citation), “we can maintain our sense of self-integrity by telling ourselves what we believe in positive ways...as humans, we are motivated to protect ourselves from threats by maintaining our self-integrity...through self-affirmation, we keep up a global narrative about ourselves in which we are flexible, moral, and capable of adapting to different circumstances”. Come through, science!


How do you come up with your affirmations? Well, if you’re Maddie, and you can’t toast a waffle without burning it, maybe you won’t tell yourself that you’re a great chef. That’s okay, Maddie has LOTS of other amazing talents, and she should base her affirmations on those. No one is good at everything and that’s FINE. If you’re good at everything, actually, you can leave now because that’s SO annoying. Focus on the things that are important to you, that you value, and that you are actually good at. This can include your faith, your ability as a caretaker, your work ethic, your talents, the way you treat other people...ANYTHING that feels right to you. 

Maddie tells us about a friend of hers who has affirmations written on the mirror for herself and her children, and they all practice saying affirmations together in the morning. I mean, isn't that the sweetest thing? If you have children, it’s great to model treating yourself well, because your kids are paying more attention to that shit than most of us probably realize. By being kind to yourself, you are teaching your children to be kind to themselves, too.

Sometimes the bully might say something that has a little bit of truth to it. In that case, think of the more productive alternative to the bullying thought. For example, let’s say that you sat down to have a glass or two of wine and you ended up having a bottle and woke up with a hangover and had to cancel a commitment. This was not a good choice, and you made a mistake. But beating yourself up over it is not going to help. So if your bully says something like “wow, you’re such a fuck up”, you might say “I made a mistake, but that doesn’t make me a failure. I am going to think about the reasons why I drank so much last night and work on finding a better way to cope with them. I am going to take action to do better next time.” Now you’re being productive and kind while still being honest! Maybe your inner bully was totally wrong. Then your cheerleader can just come back with a straight up comeback. So maybe you told a joke that didn’t land so your inner bully says “nobody likes you”. You can shut that shit down by saying “everyone sometimes tells jokes that don’t land, and girl, you are just dead wrong. Get a life and go pick on someone else”. Leora doesn’t relate to this because she’s never told a joke that didn’t land. Here’s some actual footage of Leora laughing at her own jokes:

 

Another tip we discuss is to keep a running list of your accomplishments. Write down all the things you have achieved in your life that you’re proud of. You can also ask friends and family members to help you with your list. To add to the list, write down some attainable goals like “I will do yoga once per week”, or “I will do affirmations in the morning”. It doesn’t have to be anything that takes a lot of time. Then, when you actually follow through on your goal, you can write it down on your list of accomplishments! 

Our bottom line for today’s episode: the world can be a mean place, but your mind doesn’t have to be. You can take active steps to shut down the inner bully and this will not only help you, it will improve your mental health and self-care so you can be a better friend, family member, parent, fur parent, employee, etc. Self-care doesn’t just benefit us, it benefits the world by making us better, and this is no exception. 


TOOLS

  1. Use the thoughts and emotions worksheet to begin to identify some themes among the things that your bully says

  2. Give the inner-bully a ridiculous name! The benefits of this are twofold- it can reduce the validity of what the bully is saying. It can also help to prevent you from beating yourself up FOR beating yourself up. Yes, we humans do need therapy for a goddamn good reason, don’t we? You can separate the bully from yourself so you don’t feel guilty when you aren’t thinking of things in the most productive manner.

  3. Examine the evidence for and against what the bully is saying

  4. Feel how your body responds to the criticism from your mind to determine if it’s a bully or a constructive thought. You can also think about how this thought makes you want to respond- do you want to take action, or do you want to crawl into a hole and give up? If it’s the latter, it’s probably a bully doing the talking.

  5. Read the list of cognitive distortions to identify if any of these distortions apply to your thinking. This can help you to begin to identify some patterns the bully is basing the criticisms on. See the link below for a full list.

  6. Ask yourself “would I allow someone else to talk to me this way”, or, “would I allow someone to talk to a loved one of mine this way”? If you wouldn’t allow this bullshit to come out of someone else’s mouth in your home, don’t allow that shit into your mind either. Your mind is your most sacred space.

  7. Clear out your social media of potential triggers that may build up your inner bully.

  8. Affirmations! They work, we swear- Rodney and science say so. Base these on the things that you value and things that are your strengths.

  9. If the inner bully is right, re-frame the way you are talking to yourself about this issue. What is a productive alternative to what the bully is saying?

  10. Keep a running list of things you’ve accomplished. Plan out future goals for yourself, including some small, easily achievable ones, so you can show yourself that you can be successful!



CITATIONS

Ackerman, C. (2019, July 4). Cognitive Distortions: When Your Brain Lies to You. Retrieved from https://positivepsychology.com/cognitive-distortions/.

Bernstein, G. (2019). Super attractor: methods for manifesting a life beyond your wildest dreams. Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, Inc.

Moore, C. (2019, July 4). Positive Daily Affirmations: Is There Science Behind It? Retrieved from https://positivepsychology.com/daily-affirmations/.

Scott, E. (2019, June 23). How to Reduce Negative Self-Talk for a Better Life. Retrieved from https://www.verywellmind.com/negative-self-talk-and-how-it-affects-us-4161304.

Singer, M. A. (2013). The untethered soul: the journey beyond yourself. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications, Inc.