Your ability to take a hit does not mean you have to place yourself in the ring. A person’s ability to stay strong in the face of adversity does not remove your responsibility of acting with justice.
Over the weekend, one of my Instagram videos received significantly more views than I’m used to. As of writing this, it has 80 thousand views and 650 comments. While I am grateful for the impact this video made on my exposure, that’s not what this blog is about.
This blog is about empathy.
After reading many of the responses to my video, I felt overjoyed by the amount of support I was shown. However, the internet always shines a light on the darkest parts of humanity. There were many moments throughout the past few days when I felt disheartened, angry, and self-conscious. I read many comments regarding my appearance, the way I walk, the proportions of my body, and the oddity of my features. Almost like an animal at the zoo, I felt as though I was on display for the world to mock.
Easy is not a word I’d use to describe this week. Informative, on the other hand, is fitting.
I believe I’ve discovered the foundations of a process for going from emotionally dysregulated back to peace and rationality. From there I could focus on empathy and understanding. Finally, I could make a decision that felt right for me and set a goal for myself.
This blog will be split into three sections, each describing the feelings I had, questions I asked, realizations I made, and impulses I prevented during each stage of this process. I’ll share my process from reading comments, to feeling distress, to looking inward, attempting to empathize, then acting. My thought is that by laying this process out in a logical order, I’ll be able to do the same thing much more quickly if needed in the future. The added hope is that it will help you do the same.
As always, I don’t have all the answers, but I hope my expedition to try finding them in my life inspires you to start the search in your own.
If you enjoy these blogs and feel compelled to support my work, I’d greatly appreciate your generosity!
https://buymeacoffee.com/bryce.czekanski
Prioritizing Yourself First
Sunday morning, after waking up and going through my morning routine before work, I checked my Instagram. The night before, I posted a video introducing myself and the topics I enjoyed talking about on my page. This was the 198th video on my page (the 365th on my tik tok). The most views I had received on a video before this was around 3000 and when that happened, I was hyped.
When I opened Instagram, I had received 100 followers, a couple hundred likes, and a whole bunch of comments. The video was at twenty-five thousand views. I was in shock. There was a lot of excitement coursing through me and astonishment. Before I could take a moment to calm down, I opened the comment section.
There were many comments in support of my page. Tons of people were introducing themselves, saying they were glad to find my content, and excited to learn more. My mind unfortunately could not focus on those comments though when so many others were pointing out all my differences – walking on my toes, height, joint differences, proportions, everything.
One individual in particular was quick to vocalize his opinions and assumptions about me, but I’ll speak to this in the next section.
After reading these comments, I felt anger burning inside my chest. I also felt incredibly self-conscious and downtrodden. The comments kept coming and I couldn’t stop reading. I was practically shaking as every neuron in my body fired signals begging me to fight or flee. My anger wanted me to respond back to all these comments, to prove myself, to fight against what I felt was rude and disrespectful. My sadness wanted me to wallow in self pity, to tell each of these people how much their comments hurt my feelings.
Luckily, I didn’t have time to do any of these things because I had to leave for work.
It doesn’t matter how you manage to prevent the impulses of your emotions as long as the prevention happens. This has been so important for me to learn. Your mind and body have grown used to responding in certain ways to specific stimuli and emotions, but if you’re tired of how you act in dysregulated states, you need to find ways to snap out of the loops as soon as you notice them starting.
Removing the thing that triggers emotions and impulses allows you to prioritize your return to a regulated state. In this case, putting my phone away cut off the supply of stimulus and thus prevented additional negative thoughts and emotions. They did not go away immediately, but they didn’t continue receiving fuel.
I have my friend and coworker to thank for helping me see a different perspective. He helped me remove the seriousness and laugh at the situation. After showing him some of the comments, I realized had it been him who said these things, my response would’ve been completely different. The context was dictating my response. Simply the fact of the words coming from strangers triggered a core wound of mine – I’ve always believed I was different because of my disease and thought people judged me because of the way I looked.
After my shift, I took some time to sit with myself and reflect. My goal was to understand what I was feeling and why. As rationality came back, I could see the situation for what it was, a bunch of words, written by random people, about a guy they don’t know. They were just words, but for some reason, they evoked emotions within me and it was my responsibility to understand why.
This is what I mean by prioritizing yourself first. Take a step back from whatever is bringing about all this distress within you and listen to yourself. If you can’t sit in silence at this moment because of another responsibility, do everything you can to focus on the task at hand. As soon as you have a moment alone, dive into what’s happening within you. These emotions and responses will continue unless you figure out why and work towards understanding and adjusting them.
My response, as I said a moment ago, was because of that core wound. I felt sad, angry, and judged because all I’ve ever wanted was to be accept, seen as “normal”, and to have my personality and character be what people notice, not my disease.
When I read the comments, I felt the need to prove myself, but to who? Why do I need to convince these complete strangers of my value? I don’t. If they can’t look passed my features and listen to my words, my content isn’t for them.
This stage of my process is kind of like the hyping-myself-up portion. I take some time to forget about everyone else’s potential feelings and intentions then focus fully on my own. This has always been difficult to do because I feel selfish, but with practice, putting myself first, especially in situations like this helps me remember who I am and makes it easier to empathize with others more easily later on.
The action can wait. Take some time to figure out what you’re feeling and why before you do anything. I’ve often found that no action needs to take place at all, like with most of the comments, the best thing for me to do was not respond, then eventually I forgot about them completely.
Empathizing with Them
One individual’s words held an air of malice, like he wanted to hurt me. He called me weak, saying Stoicism does nothing to make a person strong. He made assumptions about my life – I’m lazy, live with my parents, have no job, live off disability, lack discipline, etc. After reading his words, the need to prove myself tried its hardest to dictate my actions, but I wouldn’t allow it to. Other people defended me and called him out, which I appreciated, but I chose to hold myself back until I knew what was best for me.
Two days after this all began, I felt at peace again. My impulses to check comments subsided and my attention focused on the people who vocalized their appreciation and support. With each new video I posted, this one individual found their way into the comments, spitting more hate and false assumptions. I took some time to consider the words in their comments, the assumptions they were making, and why they may believe these things about people with disabilities. My hope was to respond in a calm way and offer them the chance to get to know me, but when I posted the comment, they responded similarly as before.
From there, I made the choice to block them. My peace was more important and they would only be a distraction to the people who truly wanted to watch my videos and share their perspectives in a welcoming community.
This is when I discovered new depths to my core need of closure. A part of me wanted to talk to this person, ask them questions, understand their perspectives, and potentially show them why their comments were unfounded. Blocking them removed that possibility, so I sought closure within my mind.
As I performed my evening routine of cooking and cleaning, I consider potential thought processes, beliefs, motives, and wounds of this person and a possible childhood that could’ve led to the habits and impulses shown within the comments of my videos. How could a person think so poorly or someone they don’t know? Why do they assume these things about me because I have a disability? What would it take for me to have to act in the same ways?
Imagine a child who is in an emotional state. They go to their parents seeking guidance, but the parent dismisses them or tells them to “grow up” or “get over it”. The child still feels all these emotions, but doesn’t know what to do. This energy releases itself into other things all with the goal of trying to receive some form of attention and care from their parents. As they continue to grow up, they find it hard to feel acknowledged by their parents, so they have to perform more dangerous things or act out more drastically to even see a glimmer of care.
Now, they’ve built these habits of acting out when their emotions are out of whack. They go out on their own and need to find a community of people who thinks like them, understands them, and accepts them for who they are (just like each of us does). As you can imagine, they find similarities in some of the worst communities both in person and online. In these places, they can say whatever they want and do whatever they want completely unchecked. Their beliefs and disregard for other people’s opinions continue being promoted.
My belief is that they subconsciously develop a hatred towards people with a disability because they think these individuals receive handouts, free attention, more care, and more love. This child struggled their whole life to feel like their parents cared about them and then they see a person with a disability being defended by strangers, receiving benefits from the government, and care from the people around them simply for being born. “Why do they receive all this special treatment when I have to work for everything? I didn’t ask to be born either, but now I have to work myself to death while they get off easy?”
Now, this may not be how this person’s life actually played out or the basis behind their comments, but the possibility of it is enough for me to empathize. Simply understanding that it is possible for this to have happened shows me that more potential realities are also possible. It’s not me removing blame from this person’s actions, but realizing that they likely aren’t aware of the impact their choices have on other people.
I truly believe if a person knew a better way to act, they would do it. Their actions are rooted in core beliefs, core wounds, and unregulated impulses. All I can do is try my best to offer them the same justice as anyone else and observe their willingness to learn a new perspective.
This person entered into my comments looking for a fight because that’s the only way they know how to feel some form of attention. The issue is, I’m not a fighter. They repeatedly made the claim that I should be able to handle words if I was a Stoic. Here’s the thing, I can take a punch, I’ve taken many in my life, but just because I can take a hit doesn’t require me to put myself in the ring.
Moving Forward
Now I’ve empathized with myself and the other person, my mind is clear, I see the situation for what it is, I’m at peace. What’s next?
I’ve jumped right back into posting, writing, and interacting with followers, but this time with even more confidence and focus. As I scroll through new comments, the ones offering support and love are highlighted while the ones that aim to tear me down or poke fun at me are quickly brushed aside. All of my attention goes into the people who find value in my content.
This past week has also shown me the progress I’ve made on my impulse control, emotional regulation, and empathic practices. I’m proud of myself, but I also know there’s room for continued growth. This process took about four days to return to peace, which is way faster than it used to take, but I know I can improve.
With time and introspection, I’ve become more in tune with my thoughts, emotions, and perspectives, so I can more quickly look inwards and vocalize my needs. I’m at the point now where I want to start focusing on the other person, how they feel, and their needs. This isn’t to say I’ll disregard my own thoughts and feelings, but having this attunement to them allows me to not be overwhelmed by them when someone else’s thoughts and emotions need to be heard. When someone is comfortable enough to share these things with me, I want to be able to accept them with grace, hear their needs, and help however I can.
I’ve had a couple people message me asking about my perspectives on managing specific emotions. Being able to formulate my thoughts on emotions and impulses has come with a lot of practice, but now I can more easily relate it to their personal experience. I put myself aside and ask them for more specifics on their situation. After asking myself so many probing questions, I’m now able to ask them the same things to help them understand their own experience and find ways to start learning from them.
With practice, I know this process will become much easier and I’ll be able to help more people. That’s all I could ever hope for.
Final Thoughts
Throughout the week, I had quite a few people reach out about these comments and each of them said the same thing: I can’t believe there are people who can be so rude. I don’t understand how someone could act like that.
I’ve realized that I’ve been thinking the same thing my entire life. I’ve never tried to understand how someone could act like that. I was content with separating their actions from mine, saying “I’d never do anything like that.”, believing we’re different, but this week taught me how similar we are. Our actions may be dissimilar, the beliefs opposing one another, but the way they formed isn’t all that different and commonalities can be seen.
You’d believe the exact same things as them had you been through what they have. You can say you’d be different, you’d overcome what they did, challenge the beliefs, but you wouldn’t have.
The beliefs we hold are built from the moment we’re born and every day they are challenged, adjusted, proven, and disproven. The task is to discover which of the beliefs you hold are yours or someone else’s. Did someone teach you to believe that or did you make the choice through experience, testing, and observation?
I’ve realized how many beliefs I held that were not my own, nor were they true. Believing I wasn’t valuable, believing I was unlovable, not worthy of peace, deserving of distress, and so much more. These beliefs were built before I had a choice, but now I can challenge them, look back at where they came from, decide if they’re accurate or not, and see if they’re serving me any longer.
This is true for each of us. There are circumstances we had no say in, core events that shook us down to our soul, moments of pain but no way to vocalize it, times of fear with no one to protect us… these are the times that built our worst beliefs about love, empathy, and affection. These beliefs follow us everywhere and are always seeking proof. Until you become conscious of them and challenge them, they will rule your life .
Their circumstances formed their beliefs and your circumstances formed yours. Consider what it must’ve taken to form a belief like that and be grateful you didn’t have to go through it.
My hope is that if I take the time to think about these things, try to relate to them, and try to understand them, maybe I can help them see things differently.
I cannot imagine mocking another human being for having a disability, but that’s because I was fortunate enough to be raised the way I did. But I can understand why you might believe the things you do. So, I forgive you, but I’m not going to fight. I’d like to be the one who challenges your beliefs about the strength and courage of someone with a disability, but I’m not going to do it with hatred. If you want to talk, I’m here to talk.
September 20, 2026
