As a woman, I struggled with female friendships growing up. I found many other girls and women notoriously catty, jealous, and downright mean. I liked being “one of the guys” with my guy friends, and I much preferred having a steady boyfriend over being part of a large female clique.
“You Will Not Steal My Spotlight”
I was a victim of multiple “mean girl” witch hunts throughout my formative years. Some situations were more overt; others were covert — in the forms of emotional and psychological abuse. What was especially damaging was that, more often than not, I considered these people to be my friends. With numerous targets on my back, every school day and athletic activity became a war zone, wondering when the next barrage would hit. I noticed and absorbed most things committed against me, even when they were subtle. After a time, the insults and the venom spewed against me all became the same mantra of: “You don’t belong here.” I kept a “brave face” in public and pretended like it wasn’t affecting me, but I went home each night to take it out on my pillow.
I know most friendships end naturally — seasons change, we grow, we move on. But mean girls cannot simply walk away from their friendships as if they died naturally. They must burn the place down and make their old friends suffer intensely. They usually find courage in a cadre of new friends who latch onto and magnify the insults aimed at their victim. While these new friends have no actual animosity towards the target, groupthink and peer pressure overcome decency, allowing them to band together to outnumber the victim. It’s classic female pettiness that groups of women have perfected throughout history and something that’s immortalized in Western culture through chick flicks and reality television shows.
Nothing ever made me feel more guilty for just existing than the mean girls I’ve encountered. I couldn’t fathom that the people who once seemed to care could transform into creatures consumed with a seething hatred of me, deriving a twisted glee from my suffering. Mean girls turn their noses up at other women, but they are guilty of the very things they criticize. Sometimes, the hatred flows from a need to destroy what the mean girl hates in herself – aiming her poison at that mirror image of herself made flesh. It could be something as simple as the fact that another woman is comfortable in her own skin. If that other woman didn’t strike a nerve in her, she wouldn’t give her a second thought. But if another female threatens her spotlight, she is to blame. And she must be destroyed.
I’m Not the Sorority Girl Type
Growing up as a female in the southern United States, I knew I should prepare myself for social suicide if I didn’t join a top sorority in college. I didn’t realize until I got to college, though, that the Greek system on my campus had ruthless standards. When the sorority rush didn’t work out in the way I had hoped, the rejection made me wonder what was “wrong” with me. For months, I considered trying again to be invited to a sorority I liked. I wanted to fit in with the other young women who looked from their Instagrams like they lived perfect lives in their Barbie Dreamhouses. I attended recruitment events, but something felt “off.” I thought, Do I want to change myself so I’m accepted by the same people who had already rejected me? Or, could I find other things that aligned more with my goals? I chose the latter, and on that path, I found some of my best personal growth.
Once I became aware of the Greek system’s impossibly high standards, I concluded for myself that the hierarchy the fraternities and sororities put in place for themselves was ridiculous. On campus, there was a derogatory term coined by the Greek system for those deemed to be “beneath” them. They called the outsiders “God-Damn Independents” (GDI). Many people brushed me off as unworthy of their time once they learned that I was a GDI, and these moments were subtle reminders of the rejection I experienced as a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed freshman. But I was never one to look at another person by any labels that they did or did not have. I met many women in college, some who were in sororities and some who weren’t, even supporting my sorority friends at some events. Being a GDI allowed me to build my own unique story on campus without forcing myself to meet the requirements of a system that judges young women based on things I consider to be superficial, such as their attractiveness, social connections, and parents’ wealth. I later looked back and was glad I did not join a sorority.
We Cannot “Fix” Mean Girls
When I was younger, I was competitive. Years of trauma made me realize that nothing was that serious to me anymore. In the past, I had plenty of jealousy toward other girls and women myself. However, I still forced myself to be polite to them (even through gritted teeth), go home and cry about it, and move on with my life, never thinking about it again. I didn’t set out to destroy their lives because I was jealous. Mean girls do not have this emotional maturity, though. They are sore losers. Mean girls relentlessly punish their victims for their success and joy, no longer seeing their victims as human beings with feelings but as emotional punching bags for their own anger.
I hate interpersonal tension. I typically seek to resolve it through mature communication and mutual forgiveness, as any healthy person would. In one bullying situation later in life, I decided to take the “kill them with kindness” approach — returning my bullies’ hatred with genuine kindness, even when my heart was pounding out of my chest. It was an interesting experiment. You see, bullies don’t expect their victims to react this way; they expect them to submit to the abuse. It was my way of sending them the telepathic message of: 1) Why do you feel the need to treat me this way? And 2) You won’t destroy me. Regardless of my fear, each time I conquered the people who had made me suffer deeply with a big smile, it was an empowering “win” for me.
I was a little naive to believe that my kindness might soften their hearts enough to help me resolve the tension. They were unsure how to react once I started taking my power back, and they started losing control over their victim. It made their blood boil, and I watched their own hatred eat them alive as they wrestled with the fact that their victim was beating them at their own game. The continuous rejection and fuming anger in response to my kindness caused discomfort within me, and I continued to absorb their negative emotions as if they were my own. I even wondered if I was still “wrong” for opening my mouth to be kind. But as my repeated forgiveness of them forced their facades to fall like dominoes, I started to become less afraid of them, and I learned through their body language that they were completely terrified of their own victim. They froze in their tracks like deer in headlights, couldn’t communicate properly due to their voices that shuddered in terror and couldn’t even look me directly in the eyes as they cowardly resorted to side eyes, bloodshot with abomination and fear. Those same abusers eventually waved their white flags in their own way, unable to face their victims with dignity, and I knew in my heart that I had won that brutal battle.
When I realized that all the perpetrators throughout my life were driven by fear, it changed my entire perception and made overcoming the ruminations and flashbacks much easier. All those people seemed so intimidating at the time. The way they carried themselves, it felt like they’d hung the moon. But this is by design — they need to be envied to mask what’s really happening on the inside. The real reason they act superior to others is their own deep insecurity and envy of other women.
Most mean girls have multiple victims
My bullies wanted to steal the joy that was left in me because they were internally miserable. Beyond their mocking laughter and sadistic smirks, I never once saw the mean girls in my life genuinely smile. I only saw perpetual pouts, judgmental side eyes, and cold glares through lifeless eyes. If mean girls continue to latch onto other mean girls and feed on each other’s negativity as their source of empowerment, they will never become empowered women capable of standing alone. They dig their own graves — no one enjoys walking on eggshells around cutthroat girls and women, whether at school, in the workplace, or in their personal lives. As time robs them of friends and their victims move on, they’re only left with those cold eyes reflecting back at themselves in the mirror.
Not Everyone Turns Out to Be a Mean Girl
No matter how many female friendships have turned sour, I’m so glad I put my heart out again. I cherish the female friendships I have today. We are low maintenance, understanding that we all have our own lives. Some have kids, some are freshly married, and others are focused on their careers. The best female friendships are the ones where I don’t have to hold myself back for fear they might ruin our friendship and become my bullies over trivialities.
Kindness Always Wins
If the mean girls who targeted me knew the extent of the suffering they caused me, they’d probably be satisfied. I doubt I ruined any of their lives; they moved on without a care in the world. Yet, there I was, living in isolation for fear of upsetting more people. I blamed myself heavily for my reactions to their abuse. But the people in my life who knew what I had been through kept reminding me: “You did nothing wrong. You did everything right.” Because abuse is never the fault of the victim. I put in a lot of hard work with some professionals who are trained experts in helping victims of bullying, and the type of somatic therapy that helped me the most in this regard was EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy). I remember when the professional — who helped me process the memories, emotions, and self-guilt — looked me in the eyes and told me, “One day, you will thank them all.” After my hard work, I no longer feel the need to prove any of my bullies wrong. I can rest my head on my pillow each night, knowing that regardless of the ways I was treated, I chose love and forgiveness in the face of the evil committed against me.
Mean girls cannot fathom that other women can be successful without being mean girls— because the only way they know how to achieve their success in life is by hurting innocent women who get in their way. Only weak women bully other women. Strong women don’t revel in others’ weaknesses; they rejoice in uplifting their gifts. Strong women don’t loudly support women’s causes in public but privately bully the women in their lives. Strong women support other women regardless of social, political, or religious differences. Strong women know that every woman is allowed to shine her light without threatening her own.
The only thing that makes the mean girls of the world powerful is the power that we choose to give them. Rather than feeling humiliated by them, victims should laugh off their immature behavior and embrace humble flattery that we’re living rent-free in their heads, even if they’re operating off the blatant lies they tell themselves about us. I now know that if another woman is angered by my existence when I am not doing anything wrong to her, it is her issue, not mine. I will never again bow down to women who act like the queens of the world but, in actuality, are internally angry about the fact that the world does not bow down at the feet they’ve used to trample the bright lights of other women.
I would rather stand alone than participate in being a bully or a bystander. In the future, if I ever have to choose between fitting in with a group of women who bully other women to be admired by others or being on the outside, mocked by them as a “God-Damn Independent,” I’ll choose to be a God-Damn Independent any day of the week.
Photo by Anastasia Shuraeva on Pexels
For the longest time, I thought I was inherently “messed up” and broken beyond repair. I spent about a decade running around in circles in the medical system trying to figure out what was “wrong” with me and how to “fix” it, managing all this while attending school and holding full-time jobs. I thought the way I felt in my body was “normal” because I had no sense of what the other side was. My complex trauma symptoms manifested as crippling anxiety, depression, obsessive compulsive symptoms (in the form of religious and moral scrupulosity), extreme dissociative symptoms, insomnia, sleep paralysis, night terrors, and narcolepsy. My symptoms began at age 13 and continued into my mid-twenties. In general, I endured multiple types of traumas throughout my formative years, including numerous situations of both individual and large-group interpersonal cruelty, some of which caused me to have to switch environments. Due to what I was going through, my body couldn’t fathom what was happening, and my nervous system shut down. I felt guilty for simply existing. I saw danger everywhere, operated in a panicked survival mode, and lived in fear, anxiety, and isolation. I did my best to appear “normal” on the outside, keep a smile on my face, and control what was happening on the inside, distracting myself with extreme workaholism and doing nice things to serve others. I took active steps to keep branching out in confidence again, but these traumas kept piling onto each other and overlapping, so I couldn’t fathom what was going on. I wasn’t ready to give up yet, though, because I knew my family and friends would be distraught if I did. The most difficult and heartbreaking part of my story is that the two communities I set out to seek healing in—religion and the medical system—caused further trauma when some religious leaders, congregation members, and medical professionals chose to take advantage of my vulnerability for their own motives. In most of these situations, I didn’t even realize I was a victim until outsiders pointed it out for me and that my vulnerability and naïveté made me a target of malicious people. Each future situation of being targeted was just salt on the wound of the original incident. As an extreme empath, I absorbed the negative emotions of others as if they were my own, and I did not know how to release them from my body. In my solo healing process, I had to quite literally disappear from everyone and everything to protect my vulnerability and allow myself to process what I had been through during my formative years using my own mind and body without the persuasion or invasion of others.
What I went through all those years was so severe, and my symptoms and physical body reactions as a result were so excruciating that I went as far as to see a neurologist, concerned that my symptoms were the result of some sort of nervous system disorder. However, he returned with no paperwork in his hands to inform me that there was nothing wrong with me but that I was simply completely traumatized, and my body reacted accordingly. I finally realized that my symptoms were not the result of an inherent mental or physical illness and began to take a trauma-based approach to my healing after many years of believing that I was “sick” for the rest of my life. My true progress began when I finally rejected the lies that were told to me that I would have to “manage my symptoms” for the rest of my life and made the decision to believe for myself that I was fully capable of healing from my excruciating pain, even if others did not believe in me. I still do have tough days and moments, but I have gotten to a place where I am consistently living a quality of life that provides peace and comfort in my mind and body since I have given myself the tools to overcome my tough moments when they return.
Many C-PTSD survivors receive numerous diagnoses before ever hearing anything about complex trauma, and some are overmedicated to try and “fix” their symptoms, usually to no avail and with further side effects. I was told I would need to “manage my symptoms” and be on medication for the rest of my life. It was all lies. Today, I am on zero medications (including sleep medications) and am completely divorced from the disease management system.
I am excited to share many tips for natural, somatic, and holistic healing that have helped me overcome my complex trauma symptoms, such as extreme dissociation, excruciatingly painful flashbacks, severe sleep challenges, anxiety, hypervigilance, worthlessness, and more. I began to pursue unique methods of healing after many years of not seeing much progress through westernized care, and this was the catalyst for fast-tracking my healing. I have so many exciting tips to share related to grounding, nervous system regulation, somatic healing, and more to offer survivors other ways they can learn to regulate their nervous systems on their own without spending any money. I aim to help survivors overcome their feelings of self-guilt, blame, and humiliation and help them realize that their bodies had normal reactions to abnormal situations.
I am on a journey of rediscovering who I am at my core after letting so many other people infiltrate my mind for far too long. The five most important things to me in my life (in order of importance!) are: my health, my happiness, my family, my friends, and my creativity. My parents, my sisters, and my friends are my absolute rock and biggest cheerleaders. They were cheering me on all those years, fully believing that I was capable of overcoming my excruciating pain, even when I did not believe so myself. While I was repeatedly able to forgive others and extend the olive branch, I was never able to forgive myself. My loved ones kept telling me that there is nothing I need to feel humiliated about and that I should be able to see what everyone else sees in me. I have finally given that kindness to myself and have started to see what other people saw in me all along.
I am so glad I didn’t give up when my pain felt unbearable. I know what I’ve survived. I know the work I’ve put in to overcome it. I know that I still chose to keep a smile on my face and be kind in the face of it all. In reality, it’s because I didn’t want another person to go through even one ounce of the suffering I was in. I am finally living a life of consistent peace and contentment, and I am sharing my story from the other side. My story is not a story of defeat but a story of victory.
I have enjoyed embracing the free spirit I always was and adopting a simpler life to focus on the things that are meaningful to me. I am still healing every day. I believe our healing is a lifelong process. I made the decision to escape my version of the rat race (big city life) and move to my happy place. I am catching up on many hours of much-needed rest and spending lots of time outdoors. I am reconnecting with the people I lost while I was in isolation. I invited the passion that saved my life growing up—dance—back into my life. I am passionate about fighting for other survivors in any way I can.
I hope that by sharing my story, I can convince other survivors that there was never anything wrong with them to begin with and that they are capable of living healthy, happy, and fulfilled lives. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I did not become a voice for the voiceless and share how I overcame it. I aim to live my life in love of both others and myself, understanding that everyone has a story of their own. I am grateful to the CPTSD Foundation for giving me an opportunity to share my story.
“My story isn’t sweet and harmonious like invented stories. It tastes of folly and bewilderment. Of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves.” ~ Hermann Hesse
