A sad story: Ep 1/8 The seed of my social anxiety.
Chapter 1: Disasters don’t just happen
Where it all began, the seed of my social anxiety: Disasters don’t just happen
This is where it all started, the main event that started the chain reactions that helped the first 25 years of my life become the train wreck that it is. Disasters don’t just happen they are chain of key events, moments in time.
South Africa 1995. A year after the end of apartheid government's rule. Racism was (and still is) a big part of this countries culture. The derogatory word for a black person here is ,”Kaffir” it has the same meaning as “Nigger” does and is considered profane to use it in S.A.
I was 12 yrs old in grade 6. Being attractive & having leadership qualities lent me Alpha male potential* (alpha male = most popular member/leader of the male group) but there already was an alpha male, the school bully, Kyle who viewed me as threat but he couldn’t do anything about it, as I was friends with most of the other boys in my grade, boys from both sides of the tracks.
I was a quiet but respected member of the clique until one day when my group saw me asking a black guy in class for a piece of his chocolate. One of the boys John got up & started chanting “Albino” and seeing how uncomfortable it made me feel, the whole class soon joined in until I broke down in tears.
They didn’t even stop when the teacher walked in. That day I got ostracized from the group for being an “Albino” (which to them & I, translated as white-kaffir). Even my then good friend Aiden called me “Albino” after that day - much to the school bullies delight Kyle used to chant it whenever he wanted to feel better at my expense.
One day at break time on the school field this led to a conflict situation, And me being completely against using fighting & violence to solve anything, I kept trying to back out of the fight, refusing to fight him, while Kyle kept provoking & taunting me, a crowd had gathered around us by now of course, and they were shouting “fight, fight!”
I broke down in tears & backed out of the fight & I think everyone was disappointed. As I walked away the only people that consoled me were the black guys, not even the popularity “bottom feeders”; the nerds & geeks wanted to be anywhere near me. This sick harassment cycle of victimization continued until the last half of my grade 7 year in school.
So how did the bullies hurt me?
By bullying me and destroying my self confidence at a critical psychological point in my adolescence for teaching me to hang onto fear in social situations (which has now flowered into Social Anxiety Disorder)
When i asked a black guy for some chocolate, those white boys, saw the act of asking a "kaffir" for anything as a faux pas, It was taboo in their racist-culture, they couldn't tolerate me in the group if I was a "kaffir-lover". So they joined together to 'vote-me-out' of their group' and they did that by chanting, verbalizing to validate their disdain.
As a bonus, this situation was a prime opportunity for each of them to "pull-me-off" the "pecking-order"(as I was a popular member of the group) And force me to subjugate my budding leadership qualities and my "near-alpha-dog" status, so they could climb the ladder and also make me a sacrificial lamb for their own insecurities about talking-and-interacting with black children in the class.
I allowed them the authority over me, to bully me, because I thought that I was wrong for asking the black guy for his chocolate. And I allowed them power over me because I couldn't allow it to myself. In a way it was a sick way of being acknowledged and validated by my peers. At my core I didn't allow myself the responsibility of standing up for myself ( Because my mom usually did that for me) I didn't feel I worth standing up for.
And so I just hoped they would stop bullying and harassing me but they kept on because of the delight from the reactions they got from me, so it was a continuous cycle, day after day. Reinforcing the "fact" that I told myself I wasn't loveable, deep in my heart there was no self love anyway) a low self-esteem, and at a critical developmental stage in pre-teen time my self-esteem was damaged and scarred to a critical point. Because I allowed it to happen, because I lacked courage as I had no self-love, self-trust from home.
The main source of my lack of assertiveness at 12yrs of age comes from my parents bad parenting. Where else would I have gotten the "mental-self-defence” tools that I needed but didn't have from at that age?
Some times you can only fight fire with fire. If I could go back in time, I would only leave a yellow note in my 12 year olds room, that reads: “Rudboy41 don’t be afraid, today you must take Dad’s big yellow screw driver to school, hide it in your sock and when Kyle wants to fight you at break, pull it out and hit him, if he doesn’t stop you need to stab him and say it was self-defense” – my whole life would change for the better.
* My last paragraph begs the question; “if you could go back in time and change a negative event. Would it change your life for the positive i.e. the here and now?”
The answer is complicated, it’s solely dependant on how you apply this change. If I went back in time and only applied physical self defense without applying healthy mental self-defense as well, then I was really just fixing a symptom of the problem( harassment from bullies) and not the cause( [long list of cumulative factors] the root was low-self esteem/self worth from childhood)
What I discovered was that my life would not really have changed for the better that much, especially with regard to GAD & SAD. Because after beating up Kyle, there would have been another bully, then another, then another. And so on, (which you’ll see in the next few blogs)
Why? Because basically my low self-worth was fertile soil for the weeds, that are bullies. I needed to fix that (core beliefs) instead of just going back and stomping each bully every time. So minus the bullies and I’d still be where I am today because I had never learnt or came into contact with healthy mental self beliefs. Things that develop self-trust, things “normal”(big apostrophes on normal there) people take for granted.
Where it all began, the seed of my social anxiety: Disasters don’t just happen
This is where it all started, the main event that started the chain reactions that helped the first 25 years of my life become the train wreck that it is. Disasters don’t just happen they are chain of key events, moments in time.
South Africa 1995. A year after the end of apartheid government's rule. Racism was (and still is) a big part of this countries culture. The derogatory word for a black person here is ,”Kaffir” it has the same meaning as “Nigger” does and is considered profane to use it in S.A.
I was 12 yrs old in grade 6. Being attractive & having leadership qualities lent me Alpha male potential* (alpha male = most popular member/leader of the male group) but there already was an alpha male, the school bully, Kyle who viewed me as threat but he couldn’t do anything about it, as I was friends with most of the other boys in my grade, boys from both sides of the tracks.
I was a quiet but respected member of the clique until one day when my group saw me asking a black guy in class for a piece of his chocolate. One of the boys John got up & started chanting “Albino” and seeing how uncomfortable it made me feel, the whole class soon joined in until I broke down in tears.
They didn’t even stop when the teacher walked in. That day I got ostracized from the group for being an “Albino” (which to them & I, translated as white-kaffir). Even my then good friend Aiden called me “Albino” after that day - much to the school bullies delight Kyle used to chant it whenever he wanted to feel better at my expense.
One day at break time on the school field this led to a conflict situation, And me being completely against using fighting & violence to solve anything, I kept trying to back out of the fight, refusing to fight him, while Kyle kept provoking & taunting me, a crowd had gathered around us by now of course, and they were shouting “fight, fight!”
I broke down in tears & backed out of the fight & I think everyone was disappointed. As I walked away the only people that consoled me were the black guys, not even the popularity “bottom feeders”; the nerds & geeks wanted to be anywhere near me. This sick harassment cycle of victimization continued until the last half of my grade 7 year in school.
So how did the bullies hurt me?
By bullying me and destroying my self confidence at a critical psychological point in my adolescence for teaching me to hang onto fear in social situations (which has now flowered into Social Anxiety Disorder)
When i asked a black guy for some chocolate, those white boys, saw the act of asking a "kaffir" for anything as a faux pas, It was taboo in their racist-culture, they couldn't tolerate me in the group if I was a "kaffir-lover". So they joined together to 'vote-me-out' of their group' and they did that by chanting, verbalizing to validate their disdain.
As a bonus, this situation was a prime opportunity for each of them to "pull-me-off" the "pecking-order"(as I was a popular member of the group) And force me to subjugate my budding leadership qualities and my "near-alpha-dog" status, so they could climb the ladder and also make me a sacrificial lamb for their own insecurities about talking-and-interacting with black children in the class.
I allowed them the authority over me, to bully me, because I thought that I was wrong for asking the black guy for his chocolate. And I allowed them power over me because I couldn't allow it to myself. In a way it was a sick way of being acknowledged and validated by my peers. At my core I didn't allow myself the responsibility of standing up for myself ( Because my mom usually did that for me) I didn't feel I worth standing up for.
And so I just hoped they would stop bullying and harassing me but they kept on because of the delight from the reactions they got from me, so it was a continuous cycle, day after day. Reinforcing the "fact" that I told myself I wasn't loveable, deep in my heart there was no self love anyway) a low self-esteem, and at a critical developmental stage in pre-teen time my self-esteem was damaged and scarred to a critical point. Because I allowed it to happen, because I lacked courage as I had no self-love, self-trust from home.
The main source of my lack of assertiveness at 12yrs of age comes from my parents bad parenting. Where else would I have gotten the "mental-self-defence” tools that I needed but didn't have from at that age?
Some times you can only fight fire with fire. If I could go back in time, I would only leave a yellow note in my 12 year olds room, that reads: “Rudboy41 don’t be afraid, today you must take Dad’s big yellow screw driver to school, hide it in your sock and when Kyle wants to fight you at break, pull it out and hit him, if he doesn’t stop you need to stab him and say it was self-defense” – my whole life would change for the better.
* My last paragraph begs the question; “if you could go back in time and change a negative event. Would it change your life for the positive i.e. the here and now?”
The answer is complicated, it’s solely dependant on how you apply this change. If I went back in time and only applied physical self defense without applying healthy mental self-defense as well, then I was really just fixing a symptom of the problem( harassment from bullies) and not the cause( [long list of cumulative factors] the root was low-self esteem/self worth from childhood)
What I discovered was that my life would not really have changed for the better that much, especially with regard to GAD & SAD. Because after beating up Kyle, there would have been another bully, then another, then another. And so on, (which you’ll see in the next few blogs)
Why? Because basically my low self-worth was fertile soil for the weeds, that are bullies. I needed to fix that (core beliefs) instead of just going back and stomping each bully every time. So minus the bullies and I’d still be where I am today because I had never learnt or came into contact with healthy mental self beliefs. Things that develop self-trust, things “normal”(big apostrophes on normal there) people take for granted.
