Image via Wikipedia
Bullying: Series Continued.
- #144 Leave Space In Your Beliefs To Grow
- #163 ”He’s Never Hit Me.” Abuse.
- #251 Just Ordinary Bullying – The Bully and The Bullied
- #253 How to Be A Friend To Yourself When Thinking About Your Bully
- #254 Free To Do Self-Care, Despite Our Bully
Being a friend to ourselves in the context of bullying has been one of the most difficult things to get positive about, to talk about with hope, to feel empowered and to claim our freedom to self-care.
Why is that?
How do we claim our freedom to self-care?
We talked a lot about kids, many of us hopeless to a degree about their vulnerability to bullies. But what about adults? What are some examples of empowered adults in the context of being bullied?
Our own Sarah McGaugh of birdinyourhand blog-site asked yesterday,
What should we do to keep from getting angry when we are forced to interact/negotiate with a bully? Say, in the line of work, when we have to sit in a meeting with them or something. Some people come into those situations with only fight in them. Usually in my previous position I was fairly good at diffusing them…but I would still feel the anger over it. How do we not let a bully get into our inner world, and still deal with them?
How can we respond?
I would love to hear from you.
I have no idea, I usually just retreat.
Me, too, Cindy!
Actually, I guess that’s not really true. I’d like to retreat. Conflict terrifies me so when I’m bullied or confronted or threatened I find myself figuatively covering my face and shrinking. Even now, as a 70 year old grandmother, being emotionally attacked is one of my worst fears and the thing I am least able to handle. Strangely (or maybe not), watching or hearing someone else being verbally or emotionally abused is almost as difficult as going through it myself. No, I don’t retreat. I just take it – and hate it -and do nothing to help myself. I don’t know how. It’s part of self care that I haven’t learned…yet.
hey nancy. just checking in. r u doing alright? u r unusually sparse round the likes of here, cowgirl! hugs
Sarah asks an insightful question to examine because we have no control over the actions or thinking of the bully. His actions are unilateral and arbitrary. It is an INVASION of our person. This invasion occurs and attaches itself. It becomes part of our inner and external world whether we like it or not. One strategy would be to create a public outburst of letting the bully know, in an enraged fashion, that you will not submit to being his prey. Create an audience. Go public. When his actions are exposed to the entire group he will inherit the condemnation of the entire group. When we have allies, we are not alone. When his actions affect one, he has attacked all (kinda like NATO) and will be confronted by all and under those circumstances. I suggest the bully will retreat and ply his sickness in another place, upon other people. One may also ally oneself with a different bully and encourage him to bully your bully. Just don’t be a participant. It would be advantageous to have a Sicilian bully on your side as they are artful in the “protection” game. I am half Sicilian and half Roman but am not a bully, however. There is strength in numbers. Another source of insight would be to acquire literature along the subject of “how to survive in prison” written by inmates. I think learning those A,B, C’s are a source of empowerment.
what a great book to reference in your comment carl! thank u. i’m very interested. maybe i can get my hands on it. thank u especially for your thoughtful comments and connection. keep talking.
Hi! I did a post on bullying a few months back, when the case of a suicide in Texas occurred – and a wonderful response that became a viral YouTube hit happened as a result. My post can be found here:
http://paulatohlinecalhoun1951.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/like-a-junk-yard-dog/
Bullying is such a difficult, and indeed a tragic problem. Don’t know if you saw in the news recently about the plea bargains by the young people in Massachusetts who were charged with harrassment of a classmate which ended up with her suicide. Somewhere along the line, we absolutely MUST take responsibility for teaching our children what is acceptable behavior and what is not. We are NOT required to LIKE everybody, but as a Christian I believe that we are called to LOVE everyone – meaning that we are to treat everybody in the way we wish to be treated. I cannot accept that anyone would ever want to be bullied, harrassed, browbeaten or “teased.” It can be, to some, intolerable.
“teaching our children what is acceptable behavior and what is not. We are NOT required to LIKE everybody…”
– yes and yes! thank u paula. not liking is different from though from bullying or acting on our negative feelings. thank u for connecting on this. u do write beautifully and i’m really glad u linked this for us to share. keep on.
I don’t really know the answer to bullying. I think it helps not to allow the bully to succeed. This was my tactic and it worked, but there is one reason why it worked. The person doing the bullying wasn’t willing to resort to actual violence against me. This isn’t always the case. What does one do when a bully is a dangerous foe? I don’t know. It would seem that one would need to find a healthy distance somehow. As I pointed out about my grandson, there was no way to solve the problem but to absent himself from school. God made a way for him to do that, under the circumstances, and he is doing fine now. He made it comfortably through online school, earned his diploma, and went on to get more education, without being subjected to violence from bullies. I guess we can’t stop talking about the children in school, because this is such a prevalent and horrible scourge on society. As for adults, my opinion is to treat a bully with respect, but don’t allow yourself to be trodden under. If that doesn’t work because of threatened violence, get out of the way. What do you tell your patients? I agree that being a victim is not the answer. Just don’t be one. That’s easy to say, isn’t it? For some it’s not easy to accomplish. Blessings to you, Sana…
“my opinion is to treat a bully with respect, but don’t allow yourself to be trodden under. If that doesn’t work because of threatened violence, get out of the way.” Thank u for sharing your opinion carol. i value it very much and this one might, just might connect w someone out here who needed to hear what u said. “get out of the way.” keep on
I feel like I am being bullied by my husband emotionally. It happens quite often, mostly about financial situations. I don’t know how to deal with it because if I stand up and say something back, it only ends up in me being cursed at and crying. I thought I was getting better with the help of my meds, but everytime this happens, I fall so low.
i’m so sorry to hear this jjen. keep fighting for yourself. u r valuable, beautiful and created for love. please let us know how things go and know that we r standing w u.
This is very good information. I am just in the stages of recognizing that I have been “bullied” and accepting that I have endured emotional and verbal abuse as well. I have gotten strong enough now to want to do something about it, but I don’t know the steps or what to do. That is a good strategy to align yourself with a bigger bully, which I could do, but I felt at one time that both of them had ganged up on me and were bullying me. So how can you trust the bigger bully if they once allied with the less stronger bully? Even though the bigger bully is trying to make amends, I still don’t have trust. Neither sees themselves as bullies, and in there world, everyone else is wrong and to blame and they let them know it or take it out on them. But I know there is an answer. God has an answer. I am determined to learn to be a friend to myself and take my power back, if nothing more than for my kids.
Determined, I had to ck the blog post again n see now how u could gather we were talking about allying ourselves w a bigger bully. Lets go for allying ourselves w appropriate power. Carl mentioned his idea of community resources. What r some thoughts u hv on empowering yourself?
Pingback: http://jeffthomastech.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Bully1.jpg — Tech the Plunge
When I am dealing with a bully, I find myself reverting back to the small abused child within. I cower, I avoid the conflict, I do anything to not participate. That is when it is directed to me. However, I have one redeeming quality, when it is directed at someone else, I am literally a tiger in the making. I won’t put up with it. I will call the bully out on the spot. I will make myself the scapegoat.
One of the things that I have learned that does help is to go back when I am in a better place, and the bully has calmed down, and to talk about the incident. In the workplace, there is a lot of help you can get for a boss that bullies. It is hard to use that help, but it is available.
When I go back to discuss, I am calm. I never say “YOU DID THIS”. I always ask if we can talk and tell them how I am feeling and why.
I do not respond well to yelling at. Believe it or not, I have had bosses change their methods because of my willingness to go back and be calm. We can change our own part of the world one step at a time, and it does work. But with a bully, you have to stand up for yourself with calmness on your side and a willingness to go higher up the chain if needed. I would dearly love to talk about my daughter with tourettes who is bullied constantly. But that was not the question you asked, so I tried to answer. Kids who are bullies are cruel. And if they are not stopped, they grow into adults who are even worse.
Bullying is some sort of a psychological problem of a person who does it.They maybe haunted by their past life and taking revenge in form of doing it themselves to others under their control. This is the product of negative amyglada, why not transform this negativity into positive appreciation and understanding of one’s weaknesses