Shannon Kaiser takes listeners on an intimate journey through her childhood, to uncover the root of bullying and her self-sabatage. Listen to this story as she shares tips to help you find lasting self-love and acceptance in your own life.
The Awakened & Aligned Podcast with Shannon Kaiser
Turning Pain into Love
Hello friends at ShannonWithPlayWithTheWorld.com and I'm happy to talk to you guys today. In fact, I'm going to do something a little different and I'm going to share a story that I just wrote. Not everyone gets a chance to see my articles that get published because they get published in specific magazines or blogs that not everyone has access to. I will be posting this on Play With The World, but it's something that's really important to me and really dear and true to my heart because it's a situation that still goes on in life and the fact that there are children out there who are suffering because of the bullies at school and even the bullies are suffering because they just want to feel loved and so they lash out and it's just this vicious cycle. So this is really about bullying and the effects that it has on us throughout our life, but more importantly as adults, what can we do now to really help spread the word and not just the word but really help children who are in need and help ourselves, that inner child that still wants to be loved that's within all of us. It's called the journey is the reward, turning pain into love. Trauma can come in many different forms and the severity of it depends on many factors, but one thing is true of all people who suffer a traumatic experience. It changes us and the way we look at the world. I remember standing in line in elementary school. We were in line because we were going to get our picture taken and our document our health information for our student ID. The other students were standing in groups of two or more. They were care freely laughing and smiling with one another. Not me. My eyes were zoomed in on the cold tile floor. I was alone and I was filled with anxiety. I was in line to weigh myself in front of the entire fourth grade class. I was crying hysterically on the inside. I was so terrified of the results that would soon follow. I stepped up onto the sterile white box and the teacher announced loudly 145. The chatter in the room jolted to a halt and all eyes fixated on me. I was paralyzed like a deer caught in headlights. I stood on the scale terrified as my peers and my teacher looked at me with disappointment, shock, pity and disdain. The average fourth grader weighs about 70 to 80 pounds, which put me in at a whopping 75 pounds overweight. This was twice the size of my fellow classmates. A boy snapped out loud, "You are a whale!" and the whole boom roared with laughter. Like any good girl, any strong little girl, I held back my tears. They kept growing on the inside. I held back my tears until I got home and I connected with my best friends. Clean up butter cups, ice cream and potato chips. Food became my source of comfort. It was a way to avoid the feelings, the overwhelming feelings of unworthiness. After all, my teacher and parents didn't seem to understand me. They thought I was just needing to count calories or just curb my appetite by using some willpower. Come on Shannon, just do a little better than that. I assumed the problem was with food, but my endless appetite had nothing to do with food and everything to do with a desperate attempt to feel safe, accepted, to feel appreciated. It was an empty void that lived inside of me throughout my entire youth. No matter how much I ate, I could never quite fill myself up or get enough. This bottomless pit of feeling unworthy, of feeling unloved and underappreciated and misunderstood, it stayed with me throughout my entire childhood and the larger my weight, the more I was bullied. I never felt comfortable in my own skin and the cycle continued through my childhood and into early adulthood. The compulsion and compulsive overeating turned into an obsession to control my surroundings by flipping to anorexia and bulimia. The more the outside world reminded me of how unworthy I was, the more I resorted to self-sabotage. I was living a traumatic rollercoaster of fear, denial, and toxic self-abuse. As I grew older, over time, I recognized that the root of my issues was not the outside world, but my own beliefs about myself. If I believed I was ugly, fat, and unworthy, then the world would respond in the exact same way, therefore, if I wanted a different life experience, I would first need to change my own personal beliefs. I took responsibility for my life, and I slowly but surely, things started to change for me. I lost weight. My relationships became more fulfilling, and the most important, my connection with God deepened. I learned to recognize that my past doesn't create my reality, nor does it need to define my future. The reality is we all have traumatic experiences that happen to us, but with each moment, we have a choice. We have an opportunity in life. We can grab a hold of the bars of the rollercoaster of life. We can squeeze our eyes shut and kick and scream on the way down, or we can throw our hands up in the air, open our eyes, and embrace the experience to its fullest. I understand that we are humans, and we're doing the best we can. I don't blame anyone from my childhood, but I do make an attempt to help the next generation in the best way I can now that I'm an adult. As a teacher, I make a conscious effort to lift up, to empower, and support my students. Today's youth, they do not have to suffer through bullying, through feeling of inadequacy, feeling unloved, or even feeling unsafe. We as adults have the responsibility to show them love, to show the light, and show them light, and treat them with open arms and a warm heart. I hope that you can join with me in truly accepting the power that is in and within each one of us when we feel lost and when we feel alone, it is because we're not connected to our true self, and we feel lost and alone because we haven't asked for a higher power to help us. This is a very common, common theme that happens, and it's going on right now. Today's youth doesn't have to suffer, and you don't have to suffer as an adult. I've learned that the greatest gift we can give to the world is to love ourselves and teach love by being love. [BLANK_AUDIO]