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

Bullying is a broad term.  We could call it “dirty,” meaning non-specific.  Here we’ve spent several days discussing it and stil trip on the dirt.  What we want to do is tease life-threatening events included in the broad category of bullying apart from the…, I don’t know, can we call them lesser degrees of bullying?  Anything that isn’t perceived as life-threatening can lay in that heap, let’s say.

Image via Wikipedia

Each of us must figure out where we are in these two categories.  What type of bully did I or do I have?  (I have to smile when I say “My bully.”  Sounds like a teddy bear or blankie.  And it sooo is not!)  I think when we can do this, we can know even more about our self-care options.

There is a main category named, “Bullied.”

Event perceived as life-threatening -> you folks on the right.

Event perceived as non-life-threatening -> you folks on the left.

On the right, we have some who have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and some who don’t.  I’ve seen mothers get it after a traumatic birth and post-partum period when their baby might have died.  I’ve seen people get it from watching terribly violent movies.  Of course we’ve all seen or been survivors of abuse, war, or other near death experiences who become angry, irritable, nervous and suspicious of others.  We’ve watched our once cuddly personality disappear.  Everyone in this system is hurt and hurting – bully and bullied and those connected to either.

Not all survivors go on to develop PTSD after life-threatening events and we can’t clearly say why.  These people on the right straddle the line with those on the left.

We also have current events and past events.  We can number there order of passing in our lives.  For example,  1.  saw our mother beat up for years by our father, 2. watched Silence of The Lambs, 3.  excluded and conspired against in high school by mean click, 4.  neighbor strong-arms you into getting rid of your dog and paying him money for perceived damages.

PTSD can set in at any point on that time line because of the conditioning/changes the life-threatening event did to the brain.

Those on the left didn’t get much attention today.  I’m sorry about that.  You guys are just as important but my agenda today was to clarify.

Questions:  How does this clarification help you, if at all?  How would you try to define bullying?

Self-Care Tip #255 – Know what type of bully you had or have to know how to approach yourself in friendship.