Bully food behaviors don’t always lead to bullying, but they always limit friendship. Bully food is any behavior, thought, feeling, or belief that feeds into the cycle of bullying on your end.

The list is long, and it includes: worrying, fearing, trying to impress or please, be perfect, obey the bully, avoid them, it’s thinking things like I’m not good enough or I’m so pathetic I deserve this, and feeling anxiety, sadness, bewilderment, hopelessness, self-consciousness, or anger all because of the belief that somehow it’s you who must live up to others’ standards never the other way around.

Bullies sense this belief because it’s what generates all the bully food behaviors.

How do you turn it around? Simple, you break the habit of self-qualifying.

Self-qualifying is trying too hard to feel good enough. We don’t think we’ll  ...