Let me help you: she was lucky enough to be surrounded by healthy human beings. Unfortunately, many kids didn’t have this chance to address their mental health issues through the right channels before it is too late. Their caregivers weren’t present and didn’t even see it coming; in most cases unintentionally — they were simply absorbed by their own struggles and prisoners of their invasive subconscious program. They can barely live with this guilt afterwards, and this simply too sad.
If the goal of the school is to create learning for students; if you are not acknowledging that that student is maybe coming to school with a past trauma or with some sort of unresolved conflict, then that student is really in survival mode, and no learning is happening. ~ Jocelyne Chirnside
This brilliant lady was introduced to me by my friend Jeff Ikler —to whom I am grateful for his generous contribution in this essay – through one of his empowering interviews co-hosted by Kirsten Richert:
I believe many school personnel and parents could drastically benefit from the special program lead by a special lady and discussed in this heartfelt episode I highly recommend.
What new alternatives could we consider?
Since I am aware of the human nature: we need to see the light at the end of the tunnel, that this bullying critical issue is no secret to anyone, and that brilliant minds have been working on it for so long – still, the results are limited, I thought of giving a try to come up with some new alternatives, and maybe collectively execute on them – the issue scale being global.
Do you think school bullies are raised in healthy family systems? Try to visualize kids who were:
- Taught a responsible behavior through letting them make their own choices, empowering them to do so, and making sure to always take note of the good things they’re doing,
- Actively listened to — instead of listening to respond, we listen to understand; instead of listening to the words, we listen to the body language and emotions; instead of listening with the ears, we listen with the heart — so that to help them avoid developing a narrow range of thinking,
- Constantly feeling emotionally safe, given space to create and stay connected to their inner passions,
- Taught the value of giving, to be empathetic to others, and reinforced for their efforts,
- Most importantly, raised in alignment with the principles — one of their inner gifts granted by the divinity — namely respect, fairness, integrity and honesty, human dignity, abundance mentality, service, quality or excellence, potential — the idea that we are embryonic and can grow, develop and release more and more potential and talents, etc…
Do you think they could become bullies? I’m guessing the answer is evident and straightforward.
Chances are rather high they were raised in dysfunctional family systems, and that one of their parents/caregivers — if not the two of them — belong to those disordered-character people introduced above.
More to the point, here is what I am thinking of:
What if we could have a therapist assigned to every single school in the world, that any bully’s caregivers would be asked for a session with the psychologist — this being legally imposed? Three possibilities would emerge from it:
- The parent (s) is (are) only suffering from some chronic depression or anxiety, in which case the kid could stay home on one condition: everybody should be regularly seeing a therapist to reframe the limiting beliefs and help heal the scars and process the feelings.
- One of the parents is a disordered-character aggressive person, in which case the partner would need to understand a separation is mandatory if they want to keep their kid. Obviously, the partner would also need therapy, since they would surely be another victim of the emotional, verbal, or even physical abuse.
- The two caregivers turn to be suffering from some aggressiveness disorder, in which case they would be legally prohibited from raising the kid who would be directed to some new kind of rehab which, instead of dealing with drug or alcohol addictions, offers qualified caregivers who would replace their parents until they could be adopted by new healthy ones.
What if we can give a real chance to such a delicate and urgent conversation to start and be seriously followed up on, so that we could probably save the next generations? Do you think this can be part of our new reality post-COVID-19?
With love, Myriam
Thank you for this lovely Myriam! You have amazing understanding of personality disorders. As a child, I was bullied even by a friend who always threatened to assault me if I did not do her bidding physically. Finally, one day in seventh grade, I will never forget, I stood outside her brother’s car and shaking in my boots said, ”Go ahead.” She never bothered me again. We remained friends/acquaintances for years.💖
Wow did you? How was it even possible to remain friends with you bully? I’m truly curious! 🤩🤩🤩
I’m with you Myriam in wanting to come up with solutions. Being a parent is a very challenging role, that nobody has been given a golden book from which to draw from. But that is no excuse for what we read about hear about and know from our own experiences where bully type/narcissists trample over other people and children to get their way. These personality/character disorders, whatever we want to label them really does begin at home, where they were raised–for the most part. There are fruits that fall from the tree and are just plain sour and mean; different from others in their family but that I think is rare.
In the US we’ve always had in house nurses and counselors but I don’t know how much they are allowed to delve into one’s family unless there is physical abuse. In California where I am from, the laws are now very strict on abuse and if a doctor even suspects abuse happening they must by law report it to social services. This can lead to the incarceration of the abuser who has physically harmed a citizen.
Thaaaaanks my sweetie for stopping by and for making me feel so good because of the hope there are people out there having the same concern 🙏💙🙏
This being said, the problem is indeed the laws only punishing the PHYSICAL abuse! The emotional subtle abuse can be way more dramatic, and this is the awareness we ALL need to start having…
For instance a Covert Narcissistic mother would be having 3 roles for her SONS: the Golden son — and this one will become a narcissist, the Scapegoat and the Forgotten one. Those two would develop Anxiety Disorders with different levels. Their daughters become perfectionists.
This means one of the kid will be another character-disturbed individual and the others neurotics struggling in life and could easily be bullied or find themselves in toxic relationships.
Is this regulated? NOPE! Is this dangerous? HELL YES!
What is the most brilliant therapist able to do without this recommendation of radically changing the law? They could work with the kid for months, and only 1 INCIDENT at home could destroy everything…
That’s what is making the current situation so problemtic! The experts are NOT ENABLED TO BE EFFECTIVE… That’s extremely sad anf I so hope a global awareness and mobilization could occur to fix it!
This one hits very close to home for me. I was thankfully never bullied, if I was, I don’t think I would’ve made it out alive as I wasn’t raised in a home full of healthy caregivers. I did however marry a bully. A bully with ASPD, PTSD and a TBI, so I do know how it feels to be bullied. As an adult, I was able to figure it out but it took the care of a therapist and domestic violence center. And thankfully they understood what was happening when I couldn’t see the forest – only the trees.
Where I think what you recommend has true merit, one concern is who would raise these children? Our foster system isn’t known for being as stable and supportive as these children would need. And most abusive/aggressive partners might end up killing or severely hurting their partners when they try to leave. Statistically it takes seven tries for a woman to leave her abusive partner. Most abuse survivors know when it is safe and how it is safe to leave. They know their situations better than anyone. So forcing them, may be deadly.
I think the issues of domestic violence, bullying, racism, and sexism all come from unhealthy thought patterns. I also agree that treating children with their neuroplastic brains is the way to do it. The how is the tricky part. From my experience, the court system wouldn’t save children from being forced into visitation with abusive parents during a divorce. Every person has rights, no matter how terrible they are, as long as they don’t get caught being their most terrible self. In some of these cases it might even be better for the parents to stay together. Is abusing the mother better than having the abuse fall on the children?
Even therapists in these situations can’t (or won’t) do much. I had a couple’s therapist get on the stand and act as though she couldn’t remember the majority of our sessions. She basically only attested to me being sad and my husband being aggressive. Which doesn’t hold much weight. During a session I told my ex it was hard for me to get over the night he pointed a gun at me, his reply – you wouldn’t get the F out of my face with the F was I supposed to do. There therapist said, when that situations was brought up he didn’t deny it. That was it.
This post bring so many questions to my mind. But we’d need to have more a more accountable system in general to have any of it work. I’m not sure how that happens, but I’d love to be a part of the change.
Millions thanks JoAnna for stopping by and being bold enough to share your story! I so value it! 💙
This essay, as well as another one around narcissism, are the result of some very hard times I’ve been going through for 3 weeks. The trigger was a horrible discovery I made about my family after deciding to get knowledgeable.
I’ve been learning during those 3 weeks what I didn’t learn in months… And what is mind-blowing is that I’ve been re-adjusting from day today.
If you read the other article, you’ll see I was talking about how UNCONSCIOUS the strategies of most kinds of narcissists excluding the ‘malignant’ one were; thus that it was nonsense to blame them. Btw, I had a similar experience as the one with your ex I talked about in the previous article. So, I might have an idea about your caregivers.
I am literally contradicting myself in this one after having the honor of discovering Dr. George Simon’s work. He’s simply a genius! He is stipulating they know EXACTLY what they are doing, and that the Narcissistic Disorder is not really a Personality (mask people wear in general to fit in) Disorder; rather a Character one. It means the problem is in the disconnection from the conscience (giving us the possibility to know what is right from what is wrong). It also means their levels of shame and guilt are extremely low, explaining why they can do the same abusive thing over and over again.
This is making so much sense for me even if it is extremely painful since I was confused about how possibly ‘strategies’ and ‘unconsciousness’ could be combined.
What I’m trying to say here is that those aggressive people are not automatically openly violent or that they are more men than women. So many of them belong to the COVERT ones, and I would say those are the most DANGEROUS for the kids’ sanity because their ABUSE is so subtle and difficult to explain…
I am so aware the new alternatives I am recommending are not obvious in terms of execution; since they would definitely need changing the laws and acknowledging the FRIGHTENING truth that NOT EVERYONE DESERVES THE RIGHT TO PARENTING…
I know how hard this is to be accepted; like all the stigmas anyway. I know that this might even sound like non-principled. But here is the thing my friend: PRINCIPLES SHOULD APPLY TO PRINCIPLED FOLKS.
I also know the sad truth that the world is ruled by those character-disturbed aggressive individuals in its majority making the task of changing the laws even more difficult.
Nevertheless, I keep faith that so many people around the world are kind-hearted and do care about the sanity of their own kids as well as the future generations. That’s exactly why I’m hoping some mass mobilization could probably come out of this idea and make a serious discussion around it start 💙
Oh, you’ve jumped into a world that I’m all too familiar with, Myriam from my own lived experiences. Thank you so much for all you’ve offered here in describing aggressive personalities (both men and women can embody these characteristics-tortured souls come in human packages) as well as some possible solutions that could support children in their growing up experiences. How important to heal our souls as human beings, to get to the very source of much of the ancestral toxic patterns that need desperately to be broken. May we find all kinds of pathways to holistic transformations for the heart, mind, body, and soul.
Thanks my lovely soulsister for stopping by and for sharing your beautiful feelings and wisdom! I know how much you care and have always valued it 💙💙💙