Stop Critical, Complaining Bullies from Undermining Your Leadership

Being open to suggestions from your team is an important part of being a good leader. But don’t be bullied by whining complainers who always find fault, no matter what you do.  They’re not interested in improving teamwork or performance in the workplace.  They’re interested in feeling superior and in bullying and controlling you by getting you to try to please them.

To read the rest of this article from the Pacific Business News (Honolulu), see: Stop Critical, Complaining Bullies from Undermining Your Leadership http://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/stories/2008/03/10/editorial4.html

For example, Claire is a dynamic manager who wants to resolve problems and get results through team effort.  She asks for input and strives to incorporate it.

Heather was an unhappy employee who always found something to complain about.  She was never pleased; nothing was ever good enough.  She was demanding, abusive, nit-picky and delighted in pointing out when Claire had, once again, failed to please her.

No matter what Claire did, Heather found something to be angry about.  She always had reasons and justifications for her criticism. Heather complained bitterly and encouraged the rest of the team to express their unhappiness and to harass Claire as well.  Heather’s small clique also gossiped about and was disdainful of Claire’s efforts.

When Claire had accepted the idea that she should make Heather happy, she gave Heather control of the whole team.

Heather was a manipulative bully.  She used her unhappiness to dominate Claire and the team.  She was haughty, sarcastic and demeaning.  She acted as if everyone’s job was to satisfy her every whim.  She was like “the belle of the ball.”  You can imagine her as the leader of a clique of snotty high school girls.

The first question most people have is, “Why didn’t anyone stop this long ago?”  Usually, there are two reasons:

1. As in Heather’s case, her previous manager was conflict-avoidant and had allowed Heather to control the team.
2. Many managers naively believe that happy employees are always productive employees.  These managers assume that if they give all employees what they want, they will build high morale and encourage teamwork.  They think that employee satisfaction is the way to increase performance and elevate attitudes and behavior.  Instead, they usually encourage a few selfish, spoiled brats to victimize the rest of the team.

Heather’s unhappiness, verbal abuse and negativity triggered a pattern in Claire that I call “self-bullying.”  Claire assumed that if she were a better manager, Heather would be happy.  Since Heather was unhappy, Claire thought she wasn’t good enough.  Her self-doubt and self-questioning increased, and her confidence and self-esteem were eroded.  She felt defeated.

With coaching, Claire stopped assuming that every one of Heather’s complaints was worth satisfying.  She saw that Heather used her unhappiness and negativity to control people.  Heather was like a bucket with no bottom.  No matter how many times Claire did what Heather wanted, she’d never be able to fill the bucket.  Heather’s unhappiness was not Claire’s fault.  Heather wouldn’t be pleased, no matter what was done for her.

Claire’s big lesson: Bullies don’t take your acquiescence as kindness.  They take your giving in as weakness and an invitation to grab for more.  If you enable them, they’ll be toxic to the whole team.

Learn what you can do to eliminate the high cost of low attitudes, behavior and performance.

All tactics are situational.  Expert coaching and consulting can help you create and implement a plan that fits you and your organization.

Can We Stop Bullies if We Love Them?

Many comments are similar on the articles:

• Get Away from a Controlling, Bullying, Abusive Husband
• Abusive, Manipulative Husbands Who Control Wives
• Top 12 Warning Signs of Controlling Husbands

Abused, bullied and battered women often end their comments with some version of:

• But I still love him.
• Sometimes he’s nice to me and I still think I can change him, if only I was good enough.
• He still says that he loves me.
• I’m afraid to leave because I’m worthless and won’t be able to make it without him.
• I’m afraid to leave because he’ll kill me.

Today, let’s focus on the idea that woman can’t dump him because they love him.  Of course the same reasons are true for men facing negative, critical, harassing, manipulative, abusive, bullying, battering women.

For a moment, forget what we were taught about love, especially the importance and moral value of unconditional love, when we were young – what it is, what it feels like, how we know we’re really in love and what we’re supposed to do when we feel that way.

Now that we’re adults, we can decide for ourselves what we want to call “love” and how we’ll act when we “love.”  Is love merely lust, or feeling complete or whole, or feeling that we can’t live without the other person?  Do those feelings mean that we’ll be happy because we’re mad for the other person or that we can work out how to live together?  If we feel those feelings, must we move in together and maybe get married?  When we love, must we believe what he says or accept whatever he does, must we be submissive and obey him, must we accept his reasons, excuses, justifications and promises, must we forgive or appease him endlessly, must we debate until he accepts our point of view..

As long as the answers don’t affect our lives, we might have fun speculating about those questions.  But even though love is usually accompanied by real feelings, it’s still an abstract concept that really isn’t a tangible noun, like a physical object is.

A more useful path is to choose how we want to be loved.  That is; what kind of behavior will we allow in our personal space, whether the actions are called “love” or “bullying” or “abuse.”

Also more useful is to choose which of our thoughts and feelings we want to follow in our lives.  Or, which feelings, if any, do we want to let blow us over or sweep us away.

Now that we’re adults with more experience, we can see that when we let some feelings sweep us away, we’re like a sail boat without a rudder or keel.  We’re blown whichever way the wind and current takes us.  We’ve lost control and we’ll never get where we want to sail to.  We’re at the mercy of external forces – his whims and actions at the moment.  Do we want to continue letting ourselves get blown away?

It’s even worse after kids come.  So many women make mistakes about which values are most important.  For example, they think that it’s most important that their kids have a father even if that father abuses and bullies them or only their mother.  Or they think that they most important value is never to say anything bad about their children’s father, even though their observations are accurate and especially necessary to reinforce what their children see and think.  People are being beaten and that’s being called “love.” Children must learn that they are seeing reality and they can trust their perceptions.  Covering up the truth or lying creates self-doubt and undermines their confidence and self-esteem.

I think that it comes down to knowing, in our heart-of-hearts, that we can’t let whatever feeling we call “love” take over our lives when that feeling keeps putting us and our children in harm’s way.  There are higher standards of behavior than that feeling we call “love.”  And that the word “love” doesn’t remove all the pain caused when narcissistic, righteous predators attack their targets.

If “love” means that we’ll never stop the perpetrator and never leave him, he’ll never stop bullying.  Why should he; he’s in control and gets what he wants.  If “love” means that the victim must follow the Golden Rule, never confront or upset the bully and only beg him to change, but never have serious consequences, we’ll never stop bullies.

On the other hand, if we love our spirits, our children and our high standards of behavior that are required in our personal space, then we can stop bullies or get away from their bullying.  The number one factor in changing the behavior of relentless bullies is serious consequences.

We know we must live up to our best aspirations and standards, we must demand only the best for ourselves and our children.  Don’t suffer in silence.  We must say, “No. That’s enough.  I won’t let our lives be ruined for that kind of love.”

Of course, it may be scary, dangerous and difficult to get away.  Of course, we may be poor and suffer at first.  But it’s the only chance we have to clear our personal space so that someone wonderful can come into it; someone who treats us good.  We must not be defeated by defeats.

Three steps are necessary:

1. Taking power for ourselves, and counting on the strength and determination that will come to us when we keep making good decisions by dumping the jerk.
2. Getting help to create a plan and carry it out with determination, perseverance, strength, courage and resilience.
3. Having a wiser and more mature sense of love and which feelings to pay attention to.  That means straightening ourselves out so we’ll love better people who treat us well.

Feelings and thoughts are like the bubbles of carbonation on a soda.  They’re always, always, endlessly bubbling up to the surface and then drifting away.  Some of those bubbles can smell pretty bad.  Pardon the crudity, but we’ve all had brain farts.  And like the other kind, we know that if we wait a minute, the stinky, scary, self-bullying fears, put-downs and “shoulds” will drift off on their own.  We can decide not to act on them and simply let them go.  We can throw ourselves into other thoughts or activities to speed the process.

I’ve focused on bullying spouses, but the same can be said about demanding, bullying, toxic family members, like parents, siblings and extended family.  They bully and say that we should accept the bad treatment because we’re “family.”  But requiring good behavior is a better standard than tolerating bad blood.

For some examples, see the case studies in “How to Stop Bullies in Their Tracks” and “Parenting Bully-Proof Kids,” available fastest from this web site.

Since all tactics depend on the situation, expert coaching by phone or Skype helps.  We can design a plan that fits you and your situation.  And build your will and skill to carry it out effectively.

Can We Stop Bullies if We Have Sympathy for Everyone?

Of course, it’s easy to sympathize with most people.  If someone has been abused, bullied or worse as a child, our hearts go out to them in sorrow for their suffering.  Or we can see someone’s beautiful spirit, the spirit of God, in them and our hearts will go out to them with compassion and empathy. But if a friend, neighbor or co-worker comes to you full of hurt, anger and outrage, does that mean that someone else actually did something wrong to them?

Maybe or maybe not.

For example, Linda recently moved next-door to Carrie in their friendly, family-focused block. It was a cul-de-sac and all the families had kids approximately the same age.  They’d organized many activities, birthday parties and car pools in order to create a community feeling.

Carrie and Linda started becoming close friends.  One day, Linda came to Carrie crying and angry.  As Linda struggled to stop her tears, Carrie felt herself becoming angry on Linda’s behalf.  Who’d caused this much pain and suffering to her friend?

Linda explained that one of the other women had made cutting remarks about Linda’s husband not being as successful as many of the other husbands and that Linda’s children weren’t as athletic or smart as the others.  Carrie was furious.  How could that woman say such things and hurt Linda so much?  What kind of neighborly welcome was that?

In an act of sympathetic friendship, Carrie said she’d never liked the other woman, who was always pompous and inflating her husband and children.  Linda shouldn’t pay attention to what the other woman had said.  Linda should know all the other women liked her much more than the other woman.

None of that was true.  Carrie actually liked and admired the other woman.  She’d never been negative, insensitive, righteous or arrogant before.  She’d always gone out of her way to help everyone.  Actually, Carrie couldn’t imagine the other woman saying those things to Linda.  But, obviously Linda’s pain meant that she had, indeed, said those things.  And Carrie thought it was her responsibility to comfort Linda and make her feel better.

The tactic worked.  After Carrie’s statement, Linda seemed to feel much better.  She thanked Carrie and left.

Two days later, Carrie noticed that the other woman had snubbed her in public and was whispering with Linda and a few of the others behind Carrie’s back.  Linda seemed to be accepted as part of the group and Carrie was glad for her.  But she still felt the cold shoulder.  Over the next week, it got worse.  She felt defeated, being cut out by the other women.

Episodes like this were repeated, sometimes with Carrie as the target and sometimes with other women as targets.  Carrie realized that it was like being back in junior high or high school again.  There was the clique of “in girls,” now led by Linda, and a shifting group of “targets-of-the-day.”

Carrie later discovered that after she’d sympathized with Linda, Linda had gone to the other woman and told her what Carrie had said behind her back.  Of course, the woman had reacted and had started snubbing Carrie.

In this article, I won’t go into how Carrie learned what Linda had been doing to each of the women or how Carrie managed to combat it.  Carrie might have been Linda’s first target, but she was not a victim.

Linda’s narcissistic, sneaky, manipulative, back-stabbing behavior was her tactic for breaking in to a new group and taking control of it.  Linda was a Queen Bee.  She wanted to control the turf.  She wanted everyone to be either so worshipful or so afraid that they sucked up to her and did what she demanded.

If Carrie had let herself be ruled by her sympathy for a friend trying to break in to a new group, she’d have never been able to protect herself.  Instead, she did not accept defeat.  She took power over her actions.  She was able to bring the women together in friendship and to return the block to a friendly, activity-filled community.

Carrie and the other women found that acts of friendship did not change Linda’s behavior.  She could not be won over to acting nicely.  All their sympathy and compassion didn’t stop Linda from harassing or bullying.  She would not be a true friend.  She remained a “mean girl.

As Carrie discovered the hard way, sometimes sympathy can be a trap.  Her sympathy only aided and enabled a bully to spread her poison.

Just because someone is hurt and angry does not mean that someone else really did anything wrong to them

Carrie should have been more careful of what she did to make Linda feel better.  And she should have trusted her knowledge of the other woman’s good character.  She should not have believed Linda’s report, no matter how convincing.  She should have spoken face-to-face to the other woman in the beginning.

If a person who’s hurt, angry and complaining is a snake or go-between, who likes to pour gasoline on fires and stir up trouble between other people – who plays the game of “Uproar” – they’ll use any sympathy, opinions or information to enmesh you in a fight with someone else.

I haven’t mentioned the “Linda’s” in our extended families because we already know who those manipulative tricksters are.  We’ve already been sucked in to their manipulations so many times that we’ve learned to protect ourselves and to maintain good relations with the other people who act nice in return

A big learning for Carrie was that we may see someone’s shining, Godly spirit, but we’ll probably get to deal with their personality and the consequences they cause us.

It’s not the sympathy that’s a problem.  It’s how we express that sympathy or the dumb ways our sympathy can lead us to act in order to make someone feel better.

For some examples, see the case studies in “How to Stop Bullies in Their Tracks,” available fastest from this web site.

Since all tactics depend on the situation, expert coaching by phone or Skype helps.  We can design a plan that fits you and your situation.  And build your will and skill to carry it out effectively.

Stop Angry Obsessing; Start Acting Effectively

Cindy was up again at 2 AM, infuriated at her mother and her older sister.  They were so mean and cruel.  What they’d said and done hurt so much.  It was like she was a child again, subjected to their verbal beatings.  The more she thought of what they had done, the angrier she became.  She couldn’t stop her racing mind from obsessing on what they’d said. She linked the episode yesterday afternoon to the thousands of times she’d felt the same pain and frustration.  She wanted to beat them, even kill them, or never see them again.  But they were her family and she thought she couldn’t talk back or leave them.  She felt frustrated and stuck.

As the rage took her over, guilt and shame started growing.  How could she feel that hateful about her family?  Maybe they really were trying to help her?  The more she tried to get back to sleep, the more she jumped back and forth between rage and guilt.  She hadn’t seemed to make any progress in becoming a better, more spiritual person.

Cindy is stuck in “The Emotional Motivation Cycle.” The episode yesterday was like the key that started her emotional motivational engine.  And the more she thought about it, the faster ands hotter the engine went.

This cycle can be triggered by external events like Cindy’s mother and sister attacking her, or by thoughts and memories of previous episodes of harassment, blame or put-downs.  Once triggered the cycle repeats and builds in intensity and speed until we are taken over by it.  At 2 AM, in a half-sleep state we are most vulnerable to simply watching it run, as if on its own, and take over our minds and bodies.

Stages of typical cycles are:

1. Hurt, Pain --> Frustration --> Anger --> Self-Bullying (Blame, shame guilt) --> Frustration -->
2. Fear --> Run, Freeze --> Self-Bullying (Blame, shame guilt) --> Frustration --> Anger, Fear -->

Of course, the crucial question for each of us is, “What are the repeating stages in our cycle?”  We probably know exactly which thoughts, memories and words will follow in which sequence because we’ve done it to ourselves so many times.

Notice the stage in which we indulge in self-bullying: negative self-talk, blame, shame and guilt; loss of confidence and self-esteem; even suicidal thoughts.

What’s the Purpose of the Cycle? The purpose of the cycle is not really to make us feel angry and bad, even though it inevitably does.  The purpose is to motivate ourselves to make effective action.  Feeling is a tool; make us feel bad enough and we’ll finally break out of the iceberg that traps us and do something so they can’t hurt us again.

The purpose might seem to be to change the behavior of the bullies, but I think a better way of thinking about it is that its purpose is to goad us so that we simply won’t have bullies and their harassment, abuse, nastiness and bullying on our “Isle of Song.”

We may or may not be able to change their behavior.  We must accept that they have free will and they may not stop their toxic behavior.  All we can do is have effective consequences for their behavior and not put ourselves in harm’s way.  If they won’t change, we can’t allow them on our Isle of Song.  We won’t accept their control of us even or especially when they’re righteous.  We won’t be slaves, scapegoats or whipping boys/girls.

The major downsides to the Emotional Motivation Cycle method of self-motivation are that:

1. It can make us too depressed to act.  We make ourselves feel like we did when we were children; all our strength, energy, adult wisdom, determination and skill are sucked out of us, and we feel helpless and hopeless again, like we did when we were children.
2. If we wait until we’re enraged, we’ll explode and do something ineffective that we’ll regret.  We’ll go too far and then repeat the cycle with emphasis on the self-flagellation.  Or our oppressors will change the subject and use our over-reaction to attack us on a different front.

Two responses, often championed in self-help literature, do not work:

1. Stop thinking about it.  However, ignoring the insistent call of our spirit is not effective, and who would want it to be?  Our spirit wants us to do something effective; to stop bullying on our Isle of Song.  Nothing less will satisfy our spirit.  Why should we settle for less?
2. Become more spiritual, understanding, forgiving – act like the Golden Rule requires.  The assumption here is that our unconditional love and perfection will convert bullies and they’ll stop abusing us.  Or we’ll get into heaven faster. That’s simply not true for real-world bullies.  Our spirit knows that also; that’s why it won’t stop bringing us back to the problem.

Instead, I recommend:

1. At 2 AM, wake up so we can be mentally, emotionally and spiritually strong, not weak.  Get out of bed, eat a little chocolate, shower if you need and plan what to do to act effectively.
2. Connect with our spirit’s call and pledge to answer it.
3. Connect with our spirit’s strength, courage and determination.
4. Then we can coach that inner voice to help us by giving us the necessary strength, courage and determination, and by helping create an effective plan.

But what if the bullies won’t like us or will think badly of us? Who cares what jerks and sociopaths think – just stop them from abusing and harming us?  We don’t owe toxic parents or relatives anything, even if they fed us when we were children.  Good behavior is the price for admission to our Isle; blood, especially bad blood, doesn’t get them on our Isle.  Maybe we can even measure our success by how unhappy they are?

Often, the desire to protect our children from obvious, blatant rotten behavior motivates us to break the cycle and stop the abuse.

We can train ourselves to respond to our spirit when the situation is merely an irritation or frustration.  We can develop good habits that function naturally, automatically, easily.  The more we start listening to our inner voice, the more we’ll respond effectively in the moment of an assault or at the first self-hating thought.

You’ll find many examples of these responses in “How to Stop Bullies in Their Tracks,” available fastest from this web site.

Since all tactics depend on the situation, expert coaching by phone or Skype helps.  We can design a plan that fits you and your situation.  And build your will and skill to carry it out effectively.

Can Fear and Anger Help Stop Bullies?

Some people think that fear and anger are always bad.  Some people think that fear and anger can’t help stop bullies. I disagree.

When used and directed appropriately, fear and anger can help us stop bullies in all areas of life – abusive, violent, demeaning spouses; sneaky, manipulative, toxic parents or adult children; taunting, teasing, harassing, predatory school bullies; dangerous and deadly gangs; bullying bosses or coworkers; or even our worry and anxiety about something general and more amorphous like a poor economy and no savings, no insurance and a huge mortgage payments for a house beyond our means.

Fear

• Fear is a normal feeling we have in order to warn ourselves of danger.  It's our way of telling ourselves to get ready, mobilize ourselves and take precautions - there might be a saber-toothed tiger lurking down the trail.
• In these situations, the purpose of fear is to alert and energize us to make our best and most thoughtful responses to the danger.
• If we let fear grow so big that we’re panicked into fight, flight or freeze, or into our favorite childhood response, we won’t respond effectively.  We'll go overboard.  We'll start begging or we'll run and hide.  And then we’ll bully ourselves with negative self-talk, guilt, shame, perfectionism, remorse and recriminations because we over-reacted and made a mess of things.
• Our childhood responses were useful when we were growing up.  After all, we did survive; we did live to become adults.  But those over-the-top responses are no longer effective enough; they’re the down-side of allowing our fear to overwhelm us before we respond.
• The key to success is to act when our warning fear is small so we can engage our brain in planning how to respond.

Anger

• Anger is simply our effort to mobilize ourselves, to get us in gear to respond, to give us enough strength and power to act effectively.  Most people need some amount of anger when they’re small children in order to get the big people to listen.  Anger is simply motivational energy.
• But if we let anger build up too much we’ll blow up and kill someone.  Just like the case for fear, our childhood responses were useful when we were growing up.  After all, we did survive; we did live to become adults.  But those over-the-top responses are no longer effective enough; they’re the down-side of allowing our anger to overwhelm us before we respond.
• The key to success is to act when our energizing anger is small so we can engage our brain in planning how to respond.
• If we start acting when our anger is merely irritation or frustration, we can engage our brains to develop smart, effective action.  If we wait too long, we’ll make ourselves much too angry; we’ll turn to rage.  We’ll explode and create a bigger mess.  Or we’ll repress ourselves totally and live with those terrible consequences, such as depression and low confidence and self-esteem.

Maybe a good analogy is that if doing nothing is like going zero mph and blowing up is going 100 mph, we need to train ourselves to start acting at 10-40 mph, and to learn skills in that range so we can act effectively.  When we were children, most people didn’t get enough practice of how to act in that range.  As adults, many people still haven’t learned how to act effectively in that range.

Of course, if we respond early and effectively to our hesitation, irritation and frustration in stopping bullies, we can respond more effectively.  Fear and anger are simply warnings (like smoke detectors) and fuel for our engines so we can get to where we want to be.  There’s nothing inherently wrong with those signals or with that fuel.  As long as we act before we’re at their mercy.

Of course, our tactics will be different when we stop bullies in different situations.  But once our energy, courage, determination and power are hooked up to our brains, we have a much better chance of success than if we’re overcome by fear or anger.

We can even learn to respond effectively to the worry, fear and anger that are common at 2 AM when our “Monkey Minds” jump around uncontrollably.

What if our fear or anger seems to become overwhelming instantly and we feel out of control?  Actually, you’ll find it’s not instantaneous; it just seems that way because we’ve practiced soften. For some techniques to overcome worry, fear and anger, see the case studies in “How to Stop Bullies in Their Tracks” and “Bullies Below the Radar: How to Wise Up, Stand Up and Stay Up,” available fastest from this web site.

Expert coaching by phone or Skype helps.  We can design a plan that fits you and your situation.  And build your will and skill to carry it out effectively.

Stop Self-Bullying by Blame, Shame and Guilt

If used well, blame and guilt don’t lead to self-bullying.  They’re useful ways of motivating us to do better, even though they can cause a lot of wear and tear on our bodies, minds and hearts. If we analyze our actions objectively we might take on the blame for some of what we did or failed to do.  We can decide how to make amends.  We can decide what actions would be better and we can strive to do better next time.

We can also use guilt and feeling ashamed of an action to motivate us to act better next time.  That’s a hard way of motivating ourselves but it’s often effective.

However, wallowing or obsessing in blame or guilt without changing behavior is merely self-bullying.  At some point, self-abuse becomes addictive and gratifying.  There can be a sinister pay-off in the pleasure of feeling wretched.

Unrelenting and deep shame, on the other hand, leads to destructive self-bullying – negative self-talk, self-doubt and self-harassment, loss of confidence and self-esteem, and increased anxiety and depression.

By shame, I mean the idea that “There’s something wrong with me; I’m bad, evil or defective; I’ll never be free from sin; I’ll never succeed; I’m cursed.”

This kind of deep shame, as opposed to the way I’m using blame, guilt and feeling ashamed, is not focused on an action.  This kind of deep shame points us at supposed defects deep within us, at defects that we can’t change, at defects in our identity.  There’s no escape from the flaws we imagine are inherent and permanent.  The self-laceration of this kind of shame is endless and self-defeating.

Where does this deep shame come from?  We’re not born with this kind of shame.  We’re born demanding that we be fed, clothed and have our diapers changed.  Little babies don’t question whether they deserve to get what they need for survival; they demand it.  That demanding approach is necessary for our survival.

Deep shame can only be taught to us through continued and brutal repetition – physical, verbal, emotional.  Eventually, most children internalize constant harassment, criticism, put-downs and denigration – assaults on our identity.

Imagine how you’d feel if someone shouted or scolded you, 24/7, “You’re bad.  You’re defective.  You’re wrong.  You shouldn’t have been born.  You’ll never do better.  I wish you were dead.”

However those harsh and shaming messages were thrown at us, whoever the bullies were, our task as adults is to leave them behind.  The two critical steps in leaving home are to leave physically and to leave mentally-emotionally.

The first leaving is obvious to most of us; we get financially independent in order to stay physically independent.  We test ourselves against the world, not our parent’s opinions.  Can we earn a leaving?  Can we meet people and make friends?  Can we love and be loved?

The second leaving is mental, emotional and spiritual.  We put aside all their beliefs, ideas, attitudes, values, opinions, rules, roles and moods – all the ways they thought mattered in how to face the world, how to earn a living, what equaled a good life, how to be a good person.

We put aside all the false ways they thought about us – whether we were good or bad, strong or weak, stupid or smart, pretty or ugly, hard-working or lazy, the prized child or the scapegoated child, probably going to be successful or guaranteed to fail, blessed to be happy or doomed to be miserable.

We put aside all we were handed when we were children and all we accepted because they were the big, right and righteous people and we were the little and learning people, and because we knew what would happen to us if we disagreed.

To become independent adults we must cast aside all of their opinions and, as independent no-longer children, we must choose and adopt our own beliefs.  Some may be the same as theirs; some may be exactly the opposite.

The two important aspects of that mental, emotional and spiritual leaving: One is that our ideas are now adopted by us as adults, with our adult understandings, meanings and limitations.  The second is that they are not carved in stone as childhood ideas are.  We change them as we get feedback from the world – does this idea actually fit the reality I can now see clearly with adult eyes; does this way of facing the world get me closer to what I want; does it help me be and do good as I now think of that?

In this destroying and creating anew our inner world and our ideas of the ways of the outer world, we can choose whether to keep blame or guilt.  But, in order to be free and independent, we must discard deep shame as a way of thinking about ourselves and of facing the world.  We can excise the stain we once accepted, we can heal the great empty space we once had, and we can fill us with ourselves at our best.  We can develop strength, courage and skill.

Then we can look back at the bullies in our family and decide whether to be with them at all or when and how to be with them.  If they continue to bully us, if their bullying continues to trigger our self-bullying patterns we are better served by disconnecting, by making distance – electronically and physically.

If they treat us as newly made adults they’ve just met and want to be friends with, instead of forcing us back into their old images, instead of continuing to try to beat us into the shape they want we will probably want to be with them sometimes.

My recommendations: Don’t stay where you’re continually blamed, guilted or shamed.  Be where you’re respected, appreciated, honored.  Also, don’t accept the one of you that continually blames, guilts or shames you.  Train and discipline yourself so that you have better internal self-talk.  Live with the good inner coach you create, not with the internal bully who sounds like your parents, still ripping you down.

For clear examples, read in “How to Stop Bullies in Their Tracks,” the studies of how Kathy, Doug, Jake and Carrie got away from bullying, abusive parents.