Bully on Your Back

Sssshhhh! Listen …. Do you hear that? Sounds like jeering. Where is it coming from? Sure feels up close and personal, but you look right, then left – just in case.

There it is again. Sneering this time – laughing that “AT YOU” kind of laugh meant to make you feel small and powerless – inconsequential. You feel a heavy weight dragging you to the ground and in a split second before buckling under the pressure you look over your shoulder. You see it — “him”, “her” — perched on your back with a reflection that mirrors your own face and carries your own namesake — your nemesis who whispers in your ear day in and day out. Your own personal bully has wrapped arms around you and rides shotgun through your day to day.

We’ll call this bully, “Big B” but inserting our own names also suffices.

Big B didn’t rise to authority in our lives without our permission. See, there’s the rub. Somewhere along the line we invited Big B to hop on, piggy back, and we agreed to carry Big B with us. At first it seemed like no big deal. Just a little extra weight. And Big B knew better than to speak up too loudly, too soon. Just a little whisper of self-deprecation here. A teeny, tiny, treacherous tirade there. Just enough to ruffle our feathers a bit but not force us to drop that unwanted weight off our backs. Big B knows exactly how to slowly condition us to the inner bullying until we convince ourselves there’s truth in the whispers.

Along the path, as we become accustomed to the added weight on our backs, Big B decides to kick it up a notch. Time for more ammunition — Finger Pointing, Word Darts, Accusatory Arrows, the “Should Have”, “Could Have” Rocks, the Derogatory Name Calling — all get picked up and thrown into Big B’s pack. And we find ourselves struggling intensely under the burden of it all.

Big B’s voice gets louder:

“Haha, look at you! Don’t you know you’ll fail?”

“You could’ve done ________________ but you dropped the ball. How pathetic are you?”

“You are a wanna be and everyone knows it, except you.”

“LOSER! Quitter! Play small because you could never make it in the big leagues.”

“Try all you want but in the end you know it won’t work. It never does. And you are to blame.”

Points a finger in your face and pulls out the fiery darts…

“You are ugly. You aren’t good enough. You’re unloveable. You are too much to handle. You can’t do anything right. You will never change. You are stuck. You are hopeless. You CAN’T. You WON’T. You are pathetic. You are too emotional. You aren’t emotional enough. You aren’t likable. You are too headstrong for your own good. You push people away. You are not pretty enough, thin enough, athletic enough. You ___________________fill in the blank______________________”

There’s a lyric I absolutely love from a song by Florence & the Machine called “Shake it Out”

“It’s hard to dance with the devil on your back so SHAKE HIM OFF!”

When did we allow the voice in our head to become the Big B on our backs? More importantly, when did our own voice begin to sabotage us, to cut us off at the pass, to become the enemy at the gates, to drive us down into the dirt and keep us there? Our OWN VOICE?

There are enough naysayers, haters and outright bullies out there as it is. How dare we give credence to the BIG B that crops up in our own heads? It certainly is enough of a battle dealing with the negativity of others, the jealous pettiness they throw our way in the form of slings and arrows meant to take us down, put us in our place. The comparisons, the jockeying for position, the keeping up with the Jones’s (again I ask, who are the Jones’s anyway?) and the general dog eat dog world out there are already more weight than we can bear. But that internal voice in our own heads is what is gonna do us in, and for good, if we don’t shake that Big B devil off our backs.

But how? Easier said than done – especially when Big B has laced fingers with ours and has wrapped arms and legs around us for what seems like the long haul. Big B’s voice, though unkind, has become a sort of melodic rhythm in our ears and we find ourselves walking this life to it’s beat.

But Remember … Big B has camped on our back because of our permission. So, I believe the one and only step we need to take is to mandate Big B’s departure. Shake it out. At first, this will require a DAILY, dare I say MOMENT BY MOMENT decree from within us. Big B will continue to throw darts and arrows, hurl rocks, detonate soul crushing bombs and even resort to nasty little whispers in our ears. We must HOLD FAST at every turn, each moment. When we feel our knees buckling under the pressure to believe anything Bib B has to say, we must STAND FIRM, an unmovable defense against that domestic enemy.

We shake, we shake, we shake some more until that Bully on our Backs falls off, we hear the beautiful sound of silence and we start to dance!

“Shake It Out”
Florence + the Machine

Regrets collect like old friends
Here to relive your darkest moments
I can see no way, I can see no way
And all of the ghouls come out to play
And every demon wants his pound of flesh
But I like to keep some things to myself
I like to keep my issues strong
It’s always darkest before the dawn
And I’ve been a fool and I’ve been blind
I can never leave the past behind
I can see no way, I can see no way
I’m always dragging that horse around
Our love is pastured such a mournful sound
Tonight I’m gonna bury that horse in the ground
So I like to keep my issues strong
But it’s always darkest before the dawn
Shake it out, shake it out,
Shake it out, shake it out, ooh whoa
Shake it out, shake it out,
Shake it out, shake it out, ooh whoa
And it’s hard to dance with a devil on your back
So shake him off, oh whoa
‘Cause I am done with my graceless heart
So tonight I’m gonna cut it out and then restart
‘Cause I like to keep my issues strong
It’s always darkest before the dawn
Shake it out, shake it out
Shake it out, shake it out, ooh whoa
Shake it out, shake it out
Shake it out, shake it out, ooh whoa
And it’s hard to dance with a devil on your back
So shake him off, oh whoa
I tried to dance with the devil on your back
And given half the chance would I take any of it back
It’s a final mess but it’s left me so empty
It’s always darkest before the dawn
(Oh whoa, oh whoa)
And I’m damned if I do and I’m damned if I don’t
So here’s to drinks in the dark at the end of my road
And I’m ready to suffer and I’m ready to hope
It’s a shot in the dark and right at my throat
‘Cause looking for heaven, found the devil in me
Looking for heaven, for the devil in me
Well what the hell I’m gonna let it happen to me
Shake it out, shake it out,
Shake it out, shake it out, ooh whoa
Shake it out, shake it out,
Shake it out, shake it out, ooh whoa
And it’s hard to dance with a devil on your back
So shake him off, oh whoa
Shake it out, shake it out,
Shake it out, shake it out, ooh whoa
Shake it out, shake it out,
Shake it out, shake it out, ooh whoa
And it’s hard to dance with a devil on your back
So shake him off, oh whoa