In the previous post ‘Be In The Present Moment’ I mentioned how learning to be in the present moment can help one combat the damaging effect that bullying can have to your psychological well-being. Unfortunately if you are already being bullied (maybe for quite some time now) than trying to get your mind out of the mental fog and back into the present moment (the only true moment) can be very difficult
You may have noticed that I have put the term ‘mental fog’ in bold. The reason why I came up with this term is because on being bullied (especially on a consistent nature) one can find themselves living their day-to-day lives as if they were shrouded in a fog of anger, fear, despair, confusion, etc. It may sound far-fetched to many, but bullying does not only effect one when it is happening but can have further far reaching effects, affecting one throughout almost every waking moment. If you have been fortunate enough to never having being bullied to the point where you find yourself living in such a mental fog, you may well be wondering what exactly all the fuss is about. Surely when one is not being bullied at that specific moment in time, one should be able to focus themselves on something more positive. Unfortunately this is not always the case as the human mind is built to look out for threats and potential issues: thanks to our evolutionary past when we humans lived in caves and had to constantly be on the lookout for real threats to our survival. As such, when we get bullied on a consistent basis, our minds begin to label the threat and if the bullying is taking place on and on-going basis, the mind will see it as a threat still. As such it would do what evolutionary it was designed for, to consistently make us aware of the threat: and ready to fight or flight!
So how can you tell if you are mentally caught in a mental fog due to the bullying within your life? Well if you tend to spend a large part of your day (when the bully is not around) thinking about the bullying, perhaps feeling scared at what may happen next time you two meet, or instead feeling furious and imaging drastic revenge scenarios , than you are in a mental fog! (Hopefully you can now understand how simply trying to bring your mind back into the present moment won’t truly help when you are in such a state).
Fortunately if you do find yourself in such a state of mind, help is at hand and the key to getting out of this fog lies in getting a pen and piece of paper (or if you are a techie, than opening up a word document on your PC). Anyhow at the top of the paper, write down the question‘What actually happened?’
While it may seem obvious to you what happened (i.e. PERSON IN QUESTION did this and said that against you, etc) the reason why it is vital to write down what actually happened is because when you replay the incident over in your mind, your imagination is likely to alter bits of the story, etc. The reason for this (as science has proven) is because our minds tend to delete, distort and generalise our memories in order to fit our own interpretation of reality.
So though it might seem hard, as you answer the question, put down what actually happened whilst trying to take as much emotion out of the description as possible! Than when you have answered this question, jot down
