Bullying

 Today's Topic, Bullying:

With kids starting back to school, bullying will inevitably be in full effect. As someone who has worked with children and young people, as well as been one and now raises two kids, I have seen a lot of bullying throughout the years. I even housed multiple pets at one period in my life that created their own hierarchy and structure of bullying. As of recently, I have expanded my understanding of what a bully means, however.

Did you know adults can be bullies? Oh yes, yes they can. I was sheltered by my friend groups in college and graduate school. There weren't many bullies, in class, at home, at church. Inevitably that led to young-adult-me assuming that bullying was a behavior that people outgrew, thank God. Unfortunately, I was wrong. It took me a while to remember what bullies were like, mainly because the idea of bullying a person is completely foreign and unnatural to me, as well as just morally wrong, or ungodly. Why would we want to tear a person down? Why would we want to make any and everything a competition? Why bully? Here are a few things I have learned over the years that answer some of those questions.

A bully is a person who belittles you or mocks you, in private, or in public, albeit often covertly, in attempts to make you feel bad about yourself. The motivation of a bully ranges. A person may bully as to make him/herself feel stronger and more like a winner. A person may bully out of jealousy of another person. A person may bully because he or she has been bullied and thus models the style of relating. Bullying is a choice, however,  and whether a child, young person, or adult chooses to bully should not matter, all bullies are broken people with broken styles of operating. Therefore, bullies should be called out properly, in the right time and place, ignored often, and pitied much of the time. 

Here are examples of bullying. Bullying is making fun of someone for doing something completely normal, for no reason except because it helps manage one's own inner unpleasant feelings. Bullying is gaslighting a person. Bully is threatening a person. A bully will invalidate real-life experiences and truths as a way of gaining power and control and confusing a person. A bully will say things with the hopes of instilling fear or weakness in another person. A bully will call you names or tell you things about yourself which are completely untrue, even when the bully knows they aren't true or if any and everyone around can see they aren't true. The bully does this literally just to make a person feel bad, usually targeting the most empathetic and sincere of people who care about others and are extremely willing to be self-aware and humble. 

Bullying is attempting to hold power cards in a relationship or conversation. A bully will use circular conversations to keep a person off-guard and confused. They will always answer a question with another question, often unrelated, or with an answer to a question that you didn't ask in order to redirect a conversation where they want it to go. A bully will say something they know is false just to disturb you or redirect a conversation. A bully will deflect all blame and leave a person feeling like he or she is the crazy person in a conversation for trying to have rational logic and fluid give and take.  

Bullying is constantly finding a way to blame a person for the regular circumstances of life in order to put a person down and raise the bully's own sense of self in comparison. A child is crying, and the bully will blame you even if you had nothing to do with it. Bullying is projection. A bully is a person who projects his or her own inferior feelings about him/herself onto another. 

A bully is a person who reminds you that he or she could kill you without leaving a mark, or completely destroy you because of his/her strength, but that he/she won't because he/she is noble and self-controlled. A bully will block you in a room, so that you can't get through the door, bump into you and deny it, even hold you down so that you can't move, but then if you fight back, the bully will call you abusive, thus projecting his/her behavior upon you. The bully is the violent aggressor, being the first to threaten a person's physical safety. Fighting back against a bully is not abusing a person. It is surviving. Once again, in this situation, the bully calls the survivor aggressive and abusive as a result of projection. Bullies are actually the ones with no self-control, hence their inability to continue in the relationship or conversation without having to gain a power position over the one they are bullying. 

In this way, a bully really should be pitied. Bullies often attempt to bully those people whom they most admire and wish they were like. If a bully can overtake a person who is much stronger and intelligent than him/herself, the bully feels powerful and good about him/herself. Bullies often hate themselves. These characteristics are also characteristics of people with various personality disorders.   

Bullies come in all shapes and sizes. They come from all religious backgrounds, all socio-economic backgrounds, all races. Bullying is a product of a broken mind and a crushed spirit attempting to heal itself through maladaptive relational strategies. Bullies often succeed in presenting themselves to the world as put together and strong, but the truth is, eventually, bullies will fall apart and be exposed as completely powerless. No one can hold up such charades forever. Bullies don't prevail in the end. 

 

Look for the bullies in your life. Educate yourself. Use your empathy and prevalence toward self-reflection to analyze why it is even you are able to be bullied. Discover the bully, and then make proper changes in your own thought patterns to recognize that you actually hold all the cards. Stand up, look the bully in the eye, and then forget about him, (or her). 

Practical Help for Identification: Who is the person who has never succeeded in any of his/her attempts to accomplish great feats yet somehow manages to place him/herself in leadership or authority positions that they then utilize to amass followers and groupies? Who is the person or the people who though their own skills are lacking are hyper-critical of nearly everything you do? Who are the people who cannot experience joy with you in your life when you are held in esteem or excited? Who are the people who say that they love you but you don't really feel like it's true because of the way they treat you? These people are more than likely the bullies in your life. Bullies act like they have power, but the truth is they do not. The people who are bullied actually hold all the power. We, you and I, anyone who has ever been bullied, does not have to stand for it. We can use our voices to speak out against the bullies publicly or privately, or we can literally just walk away and say nothing. There are multiple ways to respond to bullies that can demonstrate the fact that you, I, we are people made in the image of God with rights to think and feel and believe and speak and exist and choose for ourselves, apart from the bully, in spite of the bully, without the bully even in mind.

This is by no means a complete manifesto of what a bully is. Much more can be said, more examples given, but in the end, anyone reading this who has been bullied should be nodding his or her head. I hope that anyone being bullied currently but unaware of it will, perhaps, learn something from these words. I am sure plenty of people who are bullies will read this and take offense at it, feeling targeted. The most narcissistic of bullies will think this is even written to cast shade on them personally and specifically when in actuality these facts about bullies are common knowledge, found in countless books, taught in schools. Average people, caring people, empathetic people need to be reminded of this knowledge though because we have a tendency to first attempt to pick apart ourselves before questioning the actions of others. So share this information. Make it widely known that bullies are not okay, and bullying is not okay. 

Today, these words are merely a short blog post from one mom, woman, sister, friend, PERSON, and survivor that says, "I once was blind, but now I see, the bullies around me." It is possible to live our lives out of the control of the bullies around us who leech off of us in order to nourish themselves. Surviving is admirable, but not when it is done by taking the lives of others. Bullies need help, but they should not help themselves to others. Bullies are not survivors. Bullies provide the circumstances through which survivors realize who they truly are though- their worth, their might, their beauty. For that reason, thank the bully in your life. He or she probably doesn't actually like him/herself that much. Pray for the bully in your life, and in the end, shake the dust off your feet in regard to everything that person(s) ever said to you. Move on, and live your life in the light of the knowledge that you can be happy, and cherished, and valued, and respected. You matter. Life can be okay. Bullies can be neutralized. In fact, a bully's biggest fear is that those they bully will realize all this. That's why a bully will hate these words. Bullies don't want to be recognized for what they are. Start to realize these things though, and the bullies in your life; pull away; stand up for yourself, and you will realize all the bullies in your life, even those you would have never expected. They'll be the ones who are most actively trying to take your life even as you gain your life. Ultimately, they'll be the ones you leave behind. They'll be the ones who in the end have nothing because they have lost the most valuable ones, you, through their inability to love not only you, but also themselves. So pray for the bully, as you walk away, as he/she laughs in your face. Take it and know the reason you can take it and do take it is because of how incredibly strong you are. The bully already knows this, which is why they are bullying you, if you remember. They don't want you to leave, but they know you will, so they bully you to make you feel less than, to make you stay, but you won't... and they know this too. They are holding on for dear life. Pity the bully. Pray for the bully. Love the bully, but walk away.