Heart pounding in your chest when you look at or think about someone?  It might be love..

or it might be fear.  How you interpret that pounding is context.

To face your fears and disarm the power of bullies you have to shift your interpretation of that pounding from fear requiring flight…..

• to acknowledgement requiring mindful action…
• and then to love seeking an opportunity for recognition.

Facing fears is knowing your self and then seeing, understanding, and clarifying how you fit into the situation you are facing.

This is best done, gently and quietly, allowing your heart to guide your actions.

Fears derive from  a lack of knowing…

• a habit-reaction to another experience that feels similar…
• control or mis-allocation of energy toward protection…
•  mis-understandings.. of yourself and expectations, or  of another and expectations (or both)
• an inappropriate paradigm that doesn’t take into account the whole picture of ‘what is’.

Love is indeed the best treatment for fear.

But getting from the fear to love can be blocked or feel impossible if you haven’t developed your internal path to grace.

To a lesser degree getting from anger or insecurity to forgiveness and gratitude is also difficult.

These steps can help.

• Set aside time to discover who you are through breath, meditation, journaling. yoga, and other creative pursuits.
• Practice using the four agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz, to reset your placement of power august 15, 2012 post four agreements plus one (this strongly diminishes your sense of fear).
• Set your internal personal goals as paramount for your energy and behavior so that you are not spending oodles of time meeting others expectations but rather directly focusing your energy and resources on what brings you joy.  This returns you to empowerment rather than a sense of smallness and disempowerment. It moves you out of reactivity and into proactivity.
• Accept that your path to ‘greatness’ doesn’t follow the same path as others and embrace your friends’ successes with the sense that this increases your chance of greatness too (rather than experiencing the sense of competition or limited chances to greatness).
• Focus love and compassion toward yourself and others.
• Release the need to prove your point.

Be willing to adjust your position as you receive new information.  Be free to grow, change, and uplevel your understanding and consciousness.

• Receive criticism from others as if it is coming from someone who deeply and truly loves you, this shifts your receptiveness, because it disallows a sense of defensiveness  – then you can ascertain if there is a grain of truth in it or of no value.

The idea of someone trying to overpower you is co-created.  You and she co-create the drama.  You can disarm the overpowering fear by following these steps.  In most circumstances this will free you to create a different more equally empowering situation.  If it doesn’t, if the other person really wants control, just remember you have free will in how you want to participate.

You cannot engage your free-will when you are in a reactive mode.  Pay attention to what causes reactivity in you. Heal that and you can remove the target from your back for those who are consciously and unconsciously engaging in this fear promoting behavior.

This will free up a huge amount of energy for you to create precisely what your heart desires.

Make real efforts to not act as if you are somehow more evolved than another, that actually is a provocative/bullying tactic. in love and light, bg

Gineris, Beth. Turning NO to ON:  The Art of Parenting with Mindfulness, 2011; Turning ME to WE:  The Art of Partnering with Mindfulness, 2013.