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Vol.21
COMMUNICATING THROUGH BELONGING
This is not necessarily the easiest thing to share with you all. In part, it's difficult to talk about because I am dealing with it right now, and it involves my family. At this very moment, I am waiting for my phone to ring to move forward with the situation at hand. In the meantime, I am going to share my process, and in sharing this, I am hoping that this will help you, regardless of the situation you're in.
I am not here to air my dirty laundry for everybody to see. I am a private person hence why I only share my words and my story in a private forum for a private community. So, without going into too much detail, because some of you know me and live near me, I do not want to create any gossip as the situation is presently ongoing. Sadly, one of my daughters is being severely bullied at school. You may have heard me say in previous musings that my daughters were being homeschooled, but that situation has since changed. Going back to school was something that they requested until we moved. Trust me when I say that it was something that we talked about for months before we decided to send them back to school – it took time to also find a school that was aligned with our way of living, and it's a tremendous dedication and commitment for all of us – but ultimately, we made the best decision for our current, temporary situation.
So, getting back to the premise of this piece, at the school, one of my daughters is being bullied. It is physical bullying; she comes home covered in bruises, and it's not being dealt with. In fact, it's being swept under the rug. A challenging situation to discover for anyone. As a mother, all three of my daughters have been raised with a very strong sense of belonging and a very strong sense of Self. It is one of the greatest gifts that, I believe, we can give our children, whether they are your biological children, your stepchildren, your nieces and nephews, or whatever way children enter your life: the greatest gift you can give a child is to help them establish a strong sense of Self and a strong sense of identity and belonging. By showing them this, they are better equipped to deal with whatever life throws at them. Just think about how much better we would have dealt with so many situations in our past or childhood if we had a stronger sense of identity. I know that you are probably all thinking how you would not have gotten into situation x, y, or z when you were younger if you had been taught something that we typically tend to develop as we get older from past mistakes, with trial and error. It's not to say that they won't make mistakes along the way, but they will be less likely to compromise their sense of Self in situations that threaten to take it away.
This situation with my daughter is something that I am taking very seriously. Many of you know my history and know that I have done a lot of work in the realms of DVA, and I have done work to support women coming out of domestic violence situations and things of that nature. What some of you may not know is that one of my old homes was a safe house for some women who had to flee because their ex-partners were putting them and their children in danger. So, know that I take these things very seriously, and nobody wants to see their child be bullied on any level or to any extent. And out of all the parents in the classroom, I am the one parent that you don't want these things happening to because I will use the opportunity to not only save and protect my child but to be the voice of freedom and justice for all – in a Joan of Arc esque, type of way!
I was incredibly proud but also saddened to hear how my daughter was dealing with this situation. She showed a lot of resilience and expressed herself in a way that reflected her values. Without getting too much into the conversations that we had because that's private, this child who has been bullying my daughter has also been picking on other children in the same way, and it's become clear that this child has learned somewhere (presumably by her caregivers) that hurting other people is a way of connecting and that it's normal. In these situations, I must hang my therapist hat concerning all the red flags I see in this child's development and rearing. It's difficult for me because I automatically go into my own case worker steps to figure out what is going on, but as it relates to my daughter, it is not my place, nor my business to comment on any of that, and so, I must meet the situation more objectively. It can be easy in any situation to try to figure out a reason to justify it. As you will see with how I deal with the situation, the only thing that matters is your chosen result. Not to say we must not have some degree of compassion but when things are wrong, they are wrong.
Something that I really don't talk about is that I have worked in child protection, and the experience was highly traumatic for me, and it's not something I will likely return to. But in that time, I learned to be able to see abuse in someone just by their behaviour and the way that they carry themselves. It takes a particular person and training to be able to identify that, and I believe that I was able to identify these little patterns because I have also been that person, so I see it through complete knowing and understanding. It is also one of the big reasons I don't do that work anymore because it is so heavy – it is a heavy thing to hold, and I have consciously chosen to instead, through this platform, show people ways to empower and heal themselves and it's the reason I do things the way that I do now. It's not to say that you can't reach out to a professional if that is what you need, but in general, most people forget that they have it in them to at least take the steps to change their present situation. And, if any of you were curious, I have not completely discounted this area of study for myself. I am going to Switzerland next year to study at one of the leading institutes for extra credits and better understand these things. It helps me to have a better, more well-rounded understanding of the work and the way we operate and so that the content that I share and the things I create to help support this niche, this community, you, me is up to date.
Back to my daughter's situation: it has gotten so out of hand that the teacher hasn't done anything about it. And what I am currently experiencing here is not unlike other encounters and disagreements that have happened in the workplace or in any other type of similar environment. What I have found is that oftentimes, people don't stick to the facts, and so it happens that the situation is swept under the rug, left unhandled, and unresolved, and the person trying to seek justice is left hopeless and confused.
In life, when you speak up you speak out about a situation in which someone has wronged you, or a situation that you deemed unacceptable because it violated your boundaries, or broke company policy or workplace policy, or whatever it might be, people tend to scoot around the facts and manipulate the situation to create a smoke and mirrors effect to distract you and disempower you from saying what you need to say and sticking up for yourself at which point you're left to walk away from the situation wondering, what the fuck just happened? It often happens that I come to a situation with actual bullet point facts, and this person completely muddles those up, throws in a few lies and stories to justify this behaviour and in turn, does nothing about it. There is no accountability, responsibility or action taken place.
This current situation has left me, on multiple occasions wondering why somebody would choose to work with children but not want to create harmony among those children. It baffles me. When having this conversation with my husband, I went so far as to argue that the world would be a much better place if everybody who was a teacher and everyone who was a therapist had to do a psych evaluation before every new job that they got. In my mind, we would have a much better system that supports the well-being and safety of a child and, therefore also the employees, carers, teachers, and workers in that environment. On the other hand, we would also probably lose a really large proportion of mental health workers and teachers if this were part of the criteria… But, we'll leave this as a conversation for another time.
Now that you have an idea of the situation I am dealing with in real-time, I wanted to break down the steps that I take to deal with circumstances in which people might come to you with toxic and abusive arguments that make you feel small, that take away your power, that make you feel shit, or that gaslight you into conforming to their story.
In general, one of the biggest reasons people don't set boundaries is because we anticipate how the other person will react. As I said in 'The Art of Boundaries Workshop', you can't control how another person behaves to the boundaries that you set, you can only control how you behave, and their actions and their behaviours reflect their level of emotional maturity or immaturity and how you respond to their reaction shows your own level of emotional maturity or immaturity. It sounds like a mouthful, but how someone reacts to your boundary is non of your business, it shows how immature they are. How you respond to their reaction shows your level of maturity, so the saying, "take the high road" is actually pretty relevant. Take the road of being the mature one in any situation.
The first step that you take when someone is trying to glamour you (create that whole smoke and mirrors version of a story): you ask questions, you stick to the facts. I always have notes with me because when they try to fill my mind with their own stories, it is important that I return to the facts. At present, I have about three different documents in front of me from things I've typed on my computer, points I've jotted down in my journal, and keywords on another notepad nearby, all ready while waiting for this phone call. And the reason I do this is to, as I said, not fall into their trap. With your notes, you bring forward the facts and it enables you to then ask questions. This ensures that you shut down their story straight away because you are not leaving yourself open for negotiation.
In this situation, I have had to shut down my history. In addressing the bullying that my daughter has been dealing with, it somehow got out that I used to work as a therapist and I have had to, multiple times, emphasise that this was completely irrelevant to the fact that I was bringing up a conversation about my daughter being physically harmed and assaulted at school. I was not up for negotiation. The subject that was up for negotiation was what were they (the school, the people responsible for caring for and ensuring my daughter's safety) going to do about the situation? What is the resolution we are aiming for?
So in example, the way I would direct this forthcoming conversation is:
I'm not discussing who I am. What I do has nothing to do with how I'm handling this situation. Let's stay focused on the fact that my daughter is being physically assaulted at school every single day. Let's focus on the fact that she has bruises on her body while the child causing the bruises remains at school with no privileges taken away from her. Regardless of what has been said to her family or her, the behaviour and the situation haven't changed. So what are you going to do about it? What plan are you going to put in place as of today to make this stop? How are you going to follow up tomorrow and how are you going to follow it up next week? I am not interested in whether you've spoken to the other child's parents or not I want to know what action is being taken today.
Whenever someone tries to glamour you or fluff things up to you, you keep asking questions. It might mean that you keep repeating yourself over and over, but by sticking to the facts and asking questions, you remain in control of the narrative. You remain in control of the conversation's direction. It puts you in the position of power where you are back in the position for justice and for resolution. I have given these same tactics to women fighting it out in court rooms with their abusive ex, I have given these same tactics to women who has sat across from me completely disempowered from the abuse and gaslighting they received when trying to talk about their abuser.
By sticking to the facts and not the story, by sticking to the facts and not the feelings and emotions, we keep driving the point of the conversation in our direction, in the direction that forces accountability and responsibility from the other party. In this way, you are approaching the situation as a resolved human being who has self-assurance. And sure, sometimes they don't have answers to your questions because their behaviour or whatever happened is completely unreasonable and unjustifiable, but it's an important exercise to practise so that we don't allow other people to drag us into their story, or the narrative of what's happening, and we stick to the facts. When we allow ourselves to remain the resolved adult within the situation instead of stepping into our inner child (the wounded inner child who feels afraid and scared), we remain sovereign beings, we remain free thinkers, and we remain self-assured. We allow ourselves to keep our sense of belonging and grounding and rooting in the world.
And this practice of asking questions, of sticking to the facts applies to any situation and gives us the opportunity to not become triggered. In doing so, we don't act from a place of insecurity or as our inner child. The resolved adult steps in, and we allow ourselves to mature, to grow. When we start to disempower all these things around us, you can control the way that you respond to it.
I meet business in the same way. To give you another example of how I apply this to other aspects of my life: I am currently having to outsource an agency to help with marketing. In our meeting, the person made a comment about busy parenting, to which I responded with some iteration of:
Who I am, what I do, what my roles are, what hats I wear have nothing to do with the money that I want to spend and the results that I want to see. My main priority is getting things done, are you up for it or not?
I don't meddle about with the if's, the but's or the maybe's. I stick to what it is that I am seeking and what I am desiring, and whether someone can help me do that or not. This is why there are only two people (not including my photographer) who work for me on a monthly ongoing basis. Every month they do their hours to support me. And these people that I contract to do work for me for The Ritual, for Behind the Veil are there because they can deliver what it is that I want, exceeding my expectations, and we have a great relationship. I wouldn't do business or enter into any contractual agreement with somebody if they couldn't deliver what I'm asking of them and if there was fuss and fluff involved in our communications. And as soon as there is fluff, it becomes a red flag for me. This is not someone that I want to be in a relationship with, whether it be personal or business; this is not someone that I want to align myself with. Especially within friendships, I don't want a relationship with someone who brings their drama to the table all the time. My time is more precious than that, and so am I.
This follows from last week's musing (The External Detox) because as you go through life, this is how we start to free up all those fucking energy suckers, the succubus energy that you might encounter. If I were to explain this with a visual, I would ask you to imagine two human beings each with their own circle surrounding them. If these two human beings were to move close to one another, the circles would begin to touch. When you are having a respectful conversation or interaction with a person that is a blessing rather than a lesson, the circle that surrounds you starts to vibrate, as if a light bulb has turned on. But on the other hand, when you're around someone who goes on about a story, talks about emotions in a way that completely disregards your feelings, they become a vacuum cleaner, sucking all your circle away.
This is one of the key exercises that I will recommend to clients in my private sessions: I will ask them: does it feel like your circle is being sucked away or does it feel like it's pulsating and vibrating a little bit more. In short, how does it feel when you're around that person, or in that workplace or in that room, or at that function, or whatever it might be? And it's important to remember this feeling whenever you are having interactions with people. Because if the interaction does begin to take a turn, you can remind yourself of the facts. Return to you, to your values, to what you want to see come from the situation.
You can apply this to every aspect of your life, and I guarantee that you will walk away feeling so fucking amazing, so empowered because you've allowed a discrepancy, or an altercation, or a bit of an uncomfortable subject not to remove your power. There are so many people who come to me telling me that they are afraid of confrontation, and the reason they are afraid of confrontation is because they are feeding into the noise. This exercise keeps the ball in your court, so to speak. You hold yourself and the other people involved accountable. You dismantle the attachment that they have with you because oftentimes, the people we are dealing with most are a colleague, a friend, a brother or sister, a parent, a partner, an ex… And their reaction (or your own) is a result of stuff being triggered and it's not your place to know what or why or how this person reacted in this way. It is your position to remain sovereign, to have Agency, to be assured, and have a sense of belonging. By consciously returning to you, you are reminding yourself of your own sense of belonging; you are reminding yourself that what you have to say and what you do is of great value and of great reverence and is a great priority, and you will not allow anybody else to destroy the foundations that you have cultivated. You are ensuring that not one person can ever jeopardise the sense of Self that I have for who I am. Sure, my confidence might be shook at times; sure, I might feel a little bit uncertain or clouded or a little bit of doubt toward where I'm going in life, but it doesn't mean that I don't have a sense of belonging.
We're all here because we connect with each other in some way. Communities like these make us feel like I, too, want to be a disruptor. I don't want to take that path and that route because it has not got me anywhere. It has just made me feel more shit, or that's made you feel like you don't belong or that you don't know who the fuck you are or where you're going. This is why we're here. It's not because of me as an individual. It's because of what I have to say and the fact that I'm saying it as a free person who is sovereign and who walks their talk.
I can honestly say that these things work because I have been that person who is so incredibly afraid to speak up because all the times that I spoke up about the horrible things that were happening to me over the course of my life as a child and a teenager and a young woman, no one was there to help me. And within this practice, you will discover that there are also times in life when you can't even ask questions. You have got to a point where no matter what you ask, you do not get any resolution, and that's when you wipe your hands clean and move away.
Nobody can ever take your sense of belonging away from you as long as you remain connected to your Agency. Agency is knowing who you are and being capable and confident, and assured. It's about knowing you have the tools and the resources within you to keep going to get through it. Agency is knowing that you have the capabilities within you to create actions to do what you need to do. It means that your brain has the intelligence to pay attention to what's happening and therefore create a responsible, mature action. Agency is your conscious awareness to act appropriately at any given moment. Your influence impacts other people. What you say and do affects your outer world, so you choose the intention, and you allow it to guide your actions and your words. The things I do and say impact my entire life. There is truly no powerful manifestation, no more empowering feeling than using your heart and your mind to reflect and create your outer world. We have more influence and control over our life than we give ourselves credit for. Things are not happening to us. We can direct them or re-direct them in the direction of our own choosing.
So, at the moment, ask yourself what you will choose. Will you hand over your own freedom and empowerment to someone else by listening to their fluff? Or will you choose to approach it from a resolved perspective, even if you aren't feeling completely resolved. Even if you are trying to figure things out, it doesn't mean you can't put this into practice and, in time, allow it to work for you, become a part of your wheelhouse.
Amoureuse,
Brooke x
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