Bullies and Victims

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Hollywood actor, Tom Cruise, battled the effects of childhood bullying. For many years he struggled with anxiety panic at home and at school.

Cruise says of his father, Thomas C. Mapother III:

“He was a bully and a coward … the kind of a person who, if something goes wrong, they kick you. It was a great lesson in my life – how he’d lull you in, make you feel safe, and then, bang! … Big bully comes up, pushes you. Your heart’s pounding, you sweat, and you feel like you’re going to vomit …”

Bullies have a strong urge to dominate. They lack empathy. Untroubled by anxiety or guilt over the suffering they inflict on others. They blame others for their offenses.

Males are more prone to physically bully. Females bully by picking on appearances, social status, and relationships.

Generally, bullies attack – through damaging, manipulating, or controlling relationships and situations.

How about the victim?

Some victims of bullies are “blind.” They refuse to defend themselves. Offer healthy boundaries. They allow themselves to be bound by the bully to isolation, humiliation, and despair.

A case in point is Martha, one of my clients who is repeatedly abused verbally and physically by her husband. For years, she displays pain, which fueled further attacks from her bullying spouse.

It impresses me how much Martha readily acquiesce too quickly to her husband’s demands. She’d just cry and cower. She’s so submissive before she’s picked on and bullied.

Dealing with bullies is not avoiding conflict. Running away, pretending bullying or abuse is not happening, hiding it, or being afraid to talk about it is actually destructive.

Facing bullies is taking responsibility to speak up to them. You walk tall so they don’t perceive you as weak or easily manipulated.

You set and state limits on bullies. Healthy boundaries so they know your thresholds. You don’t volunteer to be a victim.

You remove yourself from a relationship in which a bully tries to control or own you. You don’t allow bullies to undermine your sanity … or that of your children, loved ones.

Face bullies. Protect yourself. Seek support. Be brave.

Should I Take Drugs?

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Drugs. They’re either prescription or nonprescription drugs. This includes vaccines, psych drugs, and other types of chemicals put into the body by medical procedures.

According to well-documented cases and statistics, hundreds of thousands of people die taking even the proper dosage of prescription and nonprescription drugs.

When one of my clients, Domingo, saw me, he was already full of nonprescription and prescription drugs in his body. He’s been taking them, including Ritalin (a psych drug), for over 3 years now.

What horrified him was the “side effects.” Since taking the drugs, he noticed how he progressively developed other long-term medical and mental health conditions.

It’s alarming. To say the least.

Drugs are poisons! That’s what this is showing us. They can make you sick and develop disease!

In psychiatry, this is especially so. Statistics show that majority of people who are treated by psychiatrists actually get worse! Psychiatrists always prescribe drugs to patients.

Brain drugs are some of the deadliest pharmaceuticals available today. Since psychiatrists prescribe these drugs, avoid them at all costs.

Do you know that virtually every violent act committed in schools was perpetrated by one on psychiatric medication? Research also shows that certain psychiatric drugs actually increase the propensity to commit suicide.

Each week, I’m with Dr. Galvez, a former health department secretary of the President. In our frequent health talks with other men in our group, he’s always advocating “natural cures.”

One of the very few MDs who practice medicine outside the mainstream, Dr. Galvez champions preventing and curing any disease through natural means.

In my opinion, we should take drugs only as a last resort. Only in severe or emergency cases, involving life and death. But not as a first resort.

There are natural cures more effective than drugs. There are nondrug and nonsurgical methods to prevent and cure almost all illness.

Especially mental illness.

But these natural cures are being suppressed and hidden from us by the pharmaceutical industry. Big business pharma.

You figure out the motive for such a thing. It’s as clear as what makes the world go round!

Labels Don’t Define You

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Diagnostic labels are typical. You enter a hospital, consult a doctor, and take lab tests. Then, you’re given a Label of your condition.

In psychological care or mental health, labels abound. They emanate mostly from DSM. It’s a doctor’s guide on mental health disorders used by MHP (mental health practitioners) around the world.

Yesterday, I was reading a psychological report on Marino, a teenage client. It’s issued by a registered drug-based professional mental health agency based in Manila.

In the report I found lots of familiar DSM labels. Depression. Agoraphobia. Social anxiety. Depersonalization Disorder. Schizophrenia.

As usual, aside from the labels, the agency required the client to take brain drugs. When the drugs manifested serious side effects on the teen client, his mother chose to stop it.

When the mother reported about it to the agency, she was simply told to comply. Without drugs, they said, no psychotherapy will be allowed for his son.

Labels and the pharmaceutical industry usually go together in psychiatry. Describing who you are as “depressive” or “BPD” or “schizoid” is an attitude often encouraged by the big pharma.

In my initial session with Marino, I’d noticed how much the “labels” given him have already affected his sense of himself. Mostly in our talks, he spoke of who he is as the “labels,” the sickness.

Sadly, in my observation, Marino has come to see himself as inherently dysfunctional. A major part of it was the result of the way he was labeled and boxed in.

Framing one’s identity around some drug-based label is dangerous. It harms one’s overall health. Worse, it can destroy even the core of one’s self identity.

You are more than any diagnostic “label.” You are a person, not an object. The label is just a temporary state or external behavior. It does not exclusively define you.

Transcending “labels” means looking at life beyond them. Labels can be useful in a way. But they can also shape your thoughts, emotions, and behavior.

Be careful then. Discern differences. Labels stick, but they can also be unwrapped. You and any label are two different things.

Most importantly, you can be stronger than the “label.”

Is Text-Based Therapy for You?

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Text-based therapy is a type of online counselling. It uses typed text to communicate. Users take it in turns to type.

Format may be as in Skype, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and other similar programs.

In text-based therapy, you don’t need a microphone or webcam. That makes it one of the most accessible types of online therapy.

Once, I had an American soldier client suffering from PTSD. He was sidelined to an Asian country to recuperate.

Using text based therapy was useful for him in therapy because he did not feel the need for face to face contact.

He found it easier to write his thoughts rather than speaking them. Also, it was good for him who had difficulties with privacy … and was daily at home alone.

Yes you can choose text-based online therapy! It may be a best fit for your current life situation and issues.

Living Your Life Again

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We live in a fast-paced age. The world is a smaller place because of technology, internet, and airplanes through our skies.

This advancement has lots of pluses. The speed, the technology, helps. Speaking for myself, I can conduct sessions anywhere I am to attend to those from varied places or nations.

Yet despite the advancement to make life easier, people still feel uneasy. You can see the tension: in their faces, voices, hands, bodies. The way they live.

Now, why is this happening? Well, you proceed to the source of the problem: your mind. Keep your mind alive now. Your imagination.

Do you see a frown of anxiety on the face of your mind? Are your teeth gritting? Your jaw stiffening? Now, in your mind, smile. Choose to shift to a face with joy.

Let me tell you about a man. He won out over his wounds and tensions.

He had undergone a severe family and marital trauma. Abandoned, deprived. He was no youngster. He was already in his 60s, a senior citizen.

What to do with his life and time in which he lived empty, depressed, and tense?

He decided it was moment for action. He had to bring life back into his life. He had to do it in simple, realistic ways.

Well, what could a man his age do?

First, he became a life coach to couples, families, and other adults. He was a wise, talented, and friendly guy. It suited his personality. Soon he had substantial clientele and been earning well.

Second, you see him volunteering as a toddler caregiver in a church’s Sunday kids’ school. Spending time with children brought him much joy. It makes him feel more alive.

And lastly but not the least, he found peace leading bible studies and joining periodic mission trips through his church. His life leads to more life.

In his 60s, abandoning the passive concepts of retirement, he found healing for his wounds. He used his mind and work to get active. Live life again.

The Value of “Hate”

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“Hate” is a psychological and emotional state. Despite the negative implications it evokes, it could not really be that negative.

In fact, if you look deeper, “hate” can be good!

I once sat across a 28-year-old woman who screamed, “I hate my depression! I hate my condition!” She didn’t really like her state and she’s lost about what to do with her self.

As we progress together, she’s able to use her “hate” as significant motivator to get better. Hating her depression was actually a good thing!

Maybe, “hate” is too strong a word to describe what I’m driving at. But “hate” or dissatisfaction is a jewel we better not miss.

Think about it.

You need to be emotional about where or what you are for you to take action!

You “hate” when you see your marriage crumbling.

You “hate” when you watch your children get addicted to drugs or the wrong crowd.

You “hate” that you couldn’t earn enough income to feed your family.

You “hate” when you find your self unable to keep relationships or friendships.

There it is.

Define what you “hate” about where you are right now in your life. Get specific about what changes you need to go where you want to go.

Maria

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At the time I started to see her, Maria had been in therapy for few months. She saw me for she felt stuck from a previous therapist. She reported that her therapy was not moving anywhere.

When Maria was born, her father and mother looked to her for the fulfillment of their damaged dreams. They pushed her to activities they felt incapable of doing.

Growing up, Maria felt that her parents owned her by the way they spoke to and treated her. When she refused what they wanted her to do, they’d call her demeaning names.

Under such circumstances, Maria developed a shame-prone “core identity.” She felt bad because of disastrous consequences of asserting her individuality, own thoughts and feelings.

Toxic parents are shaming. They treat children as possessions. Not persons, but extensions of themselves.

When children develop their separate and unique identity, they’re seen as a threat by their shaming parents to their personal needs.

The result is, children are not moulded to feel valued as a person. In the shaming process of being treated as a possession rather than a person, wrong behavior and self are the same.

This is the reason why unhealed people who are shame-based end up spreading the shaming process in relationship with others.

Without therapy or intervention, the cycle perpetuates itself all the time. Affirming the mental template of badness – a possession rather than a person.