Dear Lloyd:

“The bullying stopped in reality, but continued in my mind far beyond that time”- bullying gets recorded in the brain, the words and the emotions involved: shame and hurt and anger. And when the bullying stops, the recording gets replayed again and again.

This is how the brain works.

When your father told you that nobody likes you, it doesn’t sound so bad now, does it, it doesn’t read like severe bullying, like that which you experienced at school. It doesn’t sound like it now. But for a boy, his father is god. If you don’t remember now seeing your father as god, it is because you forgot.

Young children naturally view their care taker/ parent as god.

So when god says something, the child listens. And believes.

Fast forward, you are now a grown (very young) man, you remember he said: nobody likes you! You see a man in your mind’s eye saying this, your father at the time, long ago.

Back then, it was a boy hearing these words from god.

See/ hear the difference?

anita