Is there ever a time when you should surrender to a bully? The answer is yes, or at least make it look like you’re surrendering to them. In life, there are times when we should pick and choose our battles- to decide whether to fight back or leave well enough alone. It is a must when your bullies are extremely powerful because it isn’t smart to fight them and give them a chance to defeat you.
Sometimes real power comes with swallowing your pride and giving in to them first. When you do this, you’ll only enrage the bullies and throw them off-kilter because they were looking for a fight and so sure they’d get one but didn’t.
There’s no point in fighting an unwinnable battle. Showing weakness can be a strength if you know how to use it correctly.
When you surrender (or make it look as if you do), you give yourself time to recuperate and time to torture and irritate your bullies subtly. You can sneakily sabotage your bullies in ways they’d never expect nor detect. Maybe you can get what you can out of the surrender, then fight later when your bullies are not so strong. Believe it or not, bullies do eventually lose power.
You don’t surrender because you give up. You do it to humor your bullies and lull them into a false sense of complacency- to fool them into thinking they’ve won. Understand that bullies are continually trying to show dominance and superiority, and if you make it look like you surrender to them, it’ll be so easy to trick them.
Being submissive to them (for the time being) makes them feel satisfied and powerful. In this, the bullies become easier targets for a later countermove or indirect ridicule.
For example, You surrender, and the bullies let you walk away. But as you turn and walk away, you can cut a silent fart in their general direction, and they won’t think it came from you. They’ll only be looking at each other and wondering who dealt it.
Silent ridicule works wonders for self-esteem!
I think it’s best to just get safely away from your bully as quickly as possible. Why waste anymore time being submissive to a bully? I tried that with my ex husband, it didn’t work. It’s better to build self esteem based on truth of who you are not silent ridicule. One doesn’t need to put someone else down to make themselves feel better or build self esteem. One doesn’t need to waste time with silent ridicule having this session in one’s head when you’re most likely pretty awesome in reality. If one does this to their bully, aren’t they just becoming a bully themselves in a way? Isn’t the best way to combat bullying to make the decision to never be a bully, and discourage bullying from others?
I agree wholeheartedly. But sometimes, you can’t get away from a bully. I did this in school many times- fake a surrender, then hit them with a surprise when the time was right. At that time, I wanted to transfer and get out of that environment. But that door hadn’t opened yet.
I don’t believe that you’re being a bully when you do this. Sometimes you have to do what you must do to protect yourself. And there were times when I’d fake my submission, then quietly disobey them. 🙂