Why am I picked on?

Many of us remember times when we felt that others "picked' on us. We were made fun of for the clothes we wore, our haircuts, the music we listened to, our family backgrounds, our religious beliefs, our stature, our race, and so forth because the list seems to be endless. When I was a child I was picked on for being skinny, small, strange, shy to mention just a few reasons given and every time I was made fun of, it hurt. We all long to belong, to be accepted and included by others and when our efforts of socialisation are rejected, we often feel tempted to conclude that there is something wrong with us. Maybe some of us try harder to conform with the accepted "norm"; we make sure we have the "right" clothes, listen to the right music, look the right way, speak the right way but if we still fail to be included and accepted, what else can be done?

If I fulfil all the exterior criteria and still fail to be accepted, then what else is left except for the interior one may conclude. Who I am is not acceptable, so I must change me then. Or.....if others won't accept me for being me, then I won't accept them.

Way back when....our ancestors needed to belong to a clan, group, herd, tribe to stay safe, and to be excluded from the tribe meant vulnerability. Failing to meet the requirement for inclusion in the group could mean death(tigers, or other predators) and this may be the background for our primary need for acceptance. As the cliche says: "there is safety in numbers". So the fear of rejection in the
"old days" was a very real and practical issue of survival, but what about today? Being rejected today although free from tigers(for most of us)still threatens our survival in the form of alienation, loneliness and disconnectedness. Being rejected by our family, peers, community, or society for most of us is tantamount to being unlovable, and without love(in the broadest sense of the term)no human can survive. So how do we defend ourselves against this "predator" then?

We become strong, we find our own strength. "How"? you may ask, so allow me to define what I mean with strength: to be able to stand up for yourself and your beliefs, to stay true to your character, to hold on to your dignity, integrity and creativity. To resist the temptation of giving up your individuality for the safety of conformity and inclusion in the tribe(cool group).

If someone "picks" on you, what does that say about the person(s) doing so? What would motivate anybody to belittle someone else? If someone is insulting or belittling us, I would suggest that it's the reflection of a weak persons attempt at strength. A person with a healthy self-esteem(positive regard)have nothing to gain by excluding or "picking" on someone, rather, to do so would hurt the self-esteem. Our self-esteem is dependent on how much we like ourselves and our actions/behaviours, so to build our esteem, we need to maintain our core values and ethics, to stay true to our character.

Like Victor Frankl said: "between an event and a response is an opportunity for choice" so if someone picks on us, we have a space between the "picking" and our response to it to decide how we will respond, and therein lies our opportunity to stand up for ourselves with dignity, integrity

and self-respect.