Forgive Your Bully, Restore Your Clarity

The great gift we get from forgiveness is clarity. When we have been bullied and abused, forgiveness is often forgotten because we are unclear that we have been victimized in the first place. Chapter seven of The Bullied Brain explores the way in which we might identify with our abuser as a survival mechanism. Once you have exited the actual abuse and you look back on what has happened, you may find that you are now stuck with what I term a “mind-bully.” You have internalized the aggressor. When you forgive them, you take their power away.

When you are trapped in the mind bully syndrome, you identify with the aggressor as a self-protective mechanism to survive the abuse. It’s surprisingly difficult to exit this framework, and forgiveness is one of the most powerful tools to accomplish this critical move for health and well-being.

When the brain can’t answer the question

If you are bullied and abused, after you have left the toxic environment, you still may find yourself accompanied by stressful sessions where you pose questions and try to figure out how and why the maltreatment occurred. Why was I targeted? What is it about me that caused the maltreatment? What did I do wrong? What could I have done differently to have avoided this misery?

There are no answers to these questions, which is highly frustrating to the brain and therefore to organic brain health. The sense of being trapped in a never-ending cycle of trying to answer the question of your maltreatment can lead to sleepless nights, frequent bouts of cortisol harming your brain and body, eating disorders, perseveration, anxiety, depression, and even suicidal ideation. As quoted in The Bullied Brain, Dr. Michael Merzenich explains that when the brain can’t answer the question, “it degrades all systems.”

Forgiveness shifts the focus

Research shows that forgiveness can act as an antidote to the poison of bullying and abuse. It boosts your health, empowers you, opens up opportunities, and gives you clarity. The questions die down when you decide to forgive. The mind-bully collapses when you make the decision to forgive for the simple reason that you sever your mental dependence on the perpetrator.

Forgiving the individual who has harmed you is challenging because it requires you to acknowledge the agony of what they did to you and the loss they caused you. It’s easier to remain in state, described by Jennifer Freyd and Pamela Birrell, as "blind to betrayal." It’s easier and more comfortable to identify with the abuser and hold on to what you think is their power, their aggression, their lack of empathy, their outright ability to strike and damage. Acknowledging how destructive they are is not only painful, but it can be fear-inducing.

Forgiveness requires courage

The reason you get a boost to your health and your self-empowerment when you forgive is because you figuratively look your aggressor in the eye. In the moment that you see them clearly for who they are and the damage they cause, you take your power back. Your cortisol levels drop because you are no longer stressed out, confused, trying to wrongly take responsibility for the harm done to you.

In the moment you forgive, you see clearly. You cut through the lies of bullying and a whole range of manipulations and abuses. When you align with the aggressor—feeling shame, trying to parcel out your responsibility for what happened, striving to give a reason for why you were targeted—your sight becomes blurry and inaccurate.

When you’re abused, the perpetrator is the one who needs to shoulder feelings of shame. When you’re maltreated, you don’t need to take any responsibility for it. When you’re bullied, the reason you were targeted has nothing to do with you and everything to do with the offender.

Bullying is frequently accompanied by gaslighting that tries to erode your trust in your own ability to perceive reality and see with clarity. This is why it’s such a deadly attack on your health. Gaslighting is designed to take your power and self-esteem away. It accuses you of the crimes the abuser is doing which is so mind-bending that it requires intentionally ripping off the blinders to truly see the betrayal and survive it.

Forgiveness needs to match the ritual of bullying and abuse

As Dorothy Suskind explains, bullying proceeds through a “degradation ceremony,” and in order to match that orchestrated and destructive experience, it is helpful to participate in a “ceremony of forgiveness.” I spoke with British life-coach Stephen Tolfree, who uses forgiveness rituals with clients who have been abused. He has witnessed countless times the effect of participating in a forgiveness ceremony as significantly restorative for his clients. They regain their health and find opportunities opening up.

Because bullying is all about a ceremony designed to demean, degrade, and shame the target, described by Jeremy Rifkin in Empathic Civilization as the act of driving someone out of the community, forgiveness becomes effective when we ritualize it as a return to the community. Through forgiveness, the mind-bully transforms into an empathic coach who guides one through the ritual of return to belonging and self-worth.

Tolfree has the target who strives to forgive their abuser visualize a series of ritualized steps in order to support them in finding the courage to fully see and accept the harm of what they suffered and the loss they have had to endure. It is wise not to do these kinds of psychological exercises alone.

If you have been bullied or abused and put through a degradation ceremony, know that when you’re ready, forgiveness is an excellent pathway back to self-esteem and community. It doesn’t erase the injustice, it identifies it with courage and clarity. It lays the harm done squarely at the feet of the perpetrator. The return to wellness benefits from the guidance of an empathic coach or mental health professional to support you in returning to your full potential before you were interrupted by an abusive individual.