Month: August 2021

Sometimes, Bullied People Bully People

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bullied victim sad crying

Bullying hurts. It’s not the physical beatings in the locker room. It isn’t the trippings in the hallways nor having your books knocked out of your arms. Neither is it the name-calling nor the threats. It’s not the rumors, the lies, and smear campaigns, nor is it the setups to get you into trouble, the jokes or pranks.

It’s the cumulative sum of all factors:

It leaves the target feeling that he’s lost all control over his life and that he no longer has a say in what happens to him- it’s the feeling of having power over nothing!

Is it any wonder that in an attempt to snatch back control over something, anything, many targets soon begin to bully those who are even more vulnerable than them?
Through their own victimization, targets learn that to keep from feeling so powerless, they must bully too. In bullying them, bullies unwittingly teach their targets how to bully.

We call these people bully-victims– people who are both bullies and are targets of other bullies. They bully to feel better about themselves and to ascend a few rungs up the social ladder.

Nobody wants to be on the bottom. Everybody wants to be better than somebody. It’s a sad part of human nature.

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Just as people are fighting like crazy to stay on top, others struggle to keep off the bottom. As it is quoted, “Sh¬** rolls downhill and lands at the bottom.”
Person A at the top bullies Person B, who is second from the top.
Person B then bullies Person C, and so on.

And down the pecking order, the nastiness rolls until it lands on Person Z at the bottom. Then, everyone bullies Person Z because Person Z is defenseless! There’s no one for Person Z to bully because he’s the one with the least power of all the others.

Anyone on the bottom is going to catch hell because they’re powerless. And that person will likely be kept on the bottom because no one wants that position. Therefore, everyone keeps Z down to ensure that none of them ever take Z’s place.
That’s how it works, folks!

As long as someone else is on the bottom, it keeps you and everyone else safe from being there. It’s why bully-victims get bullied by pure bullies, then go on to select their own victims to degrade and humiliate.

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However, must of the time, this doesn’t turn out good. Because sometimes, bully-victims become worse off then pure bullies or pure victims.

Pure bullies are people who don’t get bullied by other people.

Bully-victims are both bullies and victims of bullying by other bullies. And they bully far more than the pure bullies do because they have more to prove.

Bully victims are far more hated and ostracized than pure bullies or pure victims. They’re lonelier and have few friends or none at all.

Bully-victims often resort to trickery and deceit. Many are pathological liars, cheats, fakes, and sneaks. They believe that humans are the lowest forms of life on earth. Bully-victims tend to be Machs.

Understand that bully-victims need help. They need someone to get it through their heads that just because people are bullying them doesn’t make it okay to turn around and bully someone else.

But tell them lovingly and with patience because they’re badly hurting inside themselves and need someone to listen to them and gently guide them in the right direction.

Beware of Energy Vampires!

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Bullies are notorious energy vampires. An energy vampire will suck the oxygen out of every room they walk into. Their emotional default is always set on negative, forever having a problem for every solution. Where there’s positivity, they rain on it with their negative toxicity.

Anytime you’re striving for something, or winning at something, they always seen to trash it with statements such as:

“You can’t do it.”

“That’s not for you.”

“You’re too fat.”

“You’re too skinny.”

“You’re not pretty enough, smart enough, strong enough…” etc.

“You couldn’t possibly…”

When they find out you’re working toward a goal or planning for your future, these types of people will come up with all kinds of reasons why you won’t succeed. And if you do succeed at something or score a big win, they’ll say things such as:

“That was only beginner’s luck.”

“That was only a freak accident.”

“You just got lucky.”

“It won’t last.”

“It’s about time because you never won at anything before.”

No matter what you do, energy vamps will find a way to pee all over it.

Understand that energy vampires try to zap your energy because they never accomplished anything and they’re afraid that you just might reach success and make them look and feel bad. The best thing to do is to avoid them at all costs before they drag you down and rub their negativity off on you.

With knowledge comes empowerment!

Why Many Targets of Bullying Find it Necessary to Lie

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I’ve never told one lie in my entire life, and that’s no lie!

Ha! Shyeah, right!

Let’s face it, we’ve all told some big ones in our lives, myself included and yes, even you have. No one is perfect and there are many reasons why people lie- too many to list.

As we all know, bullies and abusers are notorious liars and they do it without even a shred of conscience. The scary thing about it is that they’re good at lying, and their talent for telling such convincing falsehoods is what makes them so dangerous. And why not, bullies and abusers have been telling fibs all their lives.

They’ve had so many years of practice, they’ve gotten deception down to a fine art. In other words, they’ve become masters at it!

We also know why bullies and abusers lie. They don’t only lie to cover their butts and conceal wrongdoings, imperfections, and shortcomings; but also, to discredit their victims, defame others, assassinate people’s character, and ruin their reputations and lives.

However, many targets of bullying also lie. But they lie for totally different reasons.

Targets of bullying don’t like having to tell falsehoods. In fact, they hate it! But they do out of fear and terror. They lie out of desperation. You see, a person who is under the threat of being harmed will do anything to remove that threat. And if they have to lie to save themselves, they’ll do it.

Many targets of bullying must tell lie after lie just to survive! Sadly, most people who are bullied feel like they must lie to protect themselves because they know that truth could get them hurt. Or they lie to make the bullying stop.

Sadly, lying becomes a survival method and, even worse, a terrible habit that’s hard to break.

I must confess that this was me years ago. During the years I was bullied, I felt I also had to lie to ensure my personal safety, and it sucked. A lot of my relationships suffered in the process, and I lost a lot of people.

After years of being bullied, I became a very sneaky and wile person. I used craftiness and cunning to get through a normal school day. I felt I had to use trickery and con games just to survive each day and I’m not proud to admit this today.

If there’s one thing you should remember, it’s this: The people you feel you must lie to have power over you. They control your life. In other words, by lying, you make yourself a subject.

Here’s another thing you should remember:

People with any common sense can tell when they’re being played. And lies have a way of unraveling. Falsehoods are also hard to maintain, and you must tell another lie to cover up the first one. In other words, it’s a lot of work to maintain a lie.

Eventually, I came to realize these important facts. There finally came a time when I began to ask myself these questions:

“Who are these people that I should have to lie?”

 “Why must I work so hard to hide stuff instead of being myself and being free?”

“Who do I have anything to hide from?”

“Why should I give up my power to people who have no business having it?”

That’s when I got sick of it and said, “screw this!”

Lying is too much work and it’s stressful too. And it’s a shame that more don’t learn that lesson. I’m so glad that I now have the confidence to be honest without feeling the need to apologize for it.

Today, I know that I have nothing to hide from anyone, and that means I have nothing to lie about. If they can’t handle the truths of my reality, then screw them. They don’t pay my bills, nor do they sign my paychecks. They have no authority over me and no bearing on my life whatsoever.

And even if they did, I wouldn’t feel the need to lie to them about anything.

Being myself and standing in my truth allow me to relax and live in peace and harmony. There’s no need to scramble to cover up any lies and it’s the life I love and want to continue to live.

With knowledge comes empowerment!

7 Statements Bullies Make When They Can’t Come Up with a Good Excuse for Their Rotten Behavior

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Any time a bully is asked by others why he/she behaves the way they do toward you; the bully will often come up with something that sounds plausible and makes sense. And let’s face it, we’ve all met people who instantly give us the heebie-jeebies, or whom we were suspicious of, and we didn’t even have to see them do anything for it to raise our alarm bells. The person didn’t even have to speak. He/she may have even been a nice person and very well-behaved, but still, we just didn’t feel good around the person.

Therefore, these explanations are so plausible. Because some people, regardless of whether they’ve done anything wrong, just seem to creep others out and we should always follow our gut instinct.

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But! Because these explanations are so plausible and relatable, they can also be used by bullies to deceive others into shunning or even abusing you. Because if one person makes the statement that a certain individual gives them a bad feeling, and the person saying it happens to be a trusted and highly thought of person, (as many bullies are because of their ability to charm and draw others to them) those listening will automatically think, “Whoa! If so-and-so gives Becky a bad feeling, then what have I been missing here?”

And the others will automatically become suspicious of the person too. Remember that moods, emotions, and behaviors have a highly contagion effect, and tend to spread over a group, community, or population like a brush fire!

1.“She just rubs me the wrong way!”

2. “I just don’t like him.”

3. “I just get a bad feeling about her!”

4. “There’s just something about him that I don’t like!”

5. “She just gives me a bad feeling!”

6. “I just don’t feel good around him!”

7. “Something about her just scares me!”

Positive teenage student boy keeps hands folded, tooth smile imagine himself an angel with fluffy wings behind back and a halo above head. Super power, inner strength and innocence concept.

Here’s the thing. When the bully is highly thought of and well-trusted, the people who like and trust that bully are likely to doubt their own senses and go with the word of the bully- simply because they trust their judgement. Put simpler, they will trust their judgement more than they do their own.

Realize that this evil individual is trying to be slick! There’s a purpose for this and it’s to cast doubt on you in the eyes of others and to provoke suspicion. Nothing more. And all it takes is a seed of doubt to begin a long smear campaign. The best thing to do is to see it for exactly what it is- a smear campaign in the making and watch the bully escalate it from there.

Watch the bully try to “create” bogus stories. She will also create proof to back it up by baiting you into a verbal altercation or fight to get a reaction out of you. Then she can use your normal reaction and spin it to fit her twisted narrative. That’s how this scenario works, so be on the lookout!

If possible, the best thing to do is to avoid this person altogether and save yourself a ton of drama. Remember- out of sight, out of mind.

With knowledge comes empowerment!

The Thirteenth Takeaway from Being Bullied

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positive happiness self love acceptance care put yourself first

When I posted “My 12 Takeaways from Being Bullied” today, perhaps it should’ve been titled with a thirteen instead of a twelve.

Later, another takeaway came to mind that I hadn’t thought of and failed to mention. But before I tell you what it is, allow me to elaborate a little first.

Many of my bullies in school were the most irresponsible and incompetent people I’d ever met. They were spoiled, coddled and babied which caused them to be self-entitled, demanding, arrogant and ignorant. Many of them would get into trouble with the school, juvenile authorities, or the police. And they would do these things repeatedly.

Any time they got themselves in a jam, here come Mom and Dad to the rescue. Their parents would either pull a few strings or pay through the nose to pry little junior’s butt out of the crack he’d gotten it stuck in.

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If they made a bad grade, the parents would come to the school and chew the teacher out for giving the grade. Or the kid would cheat their way to a passing grade.

Many of my female bullies would end up pregnant, some repeatedly, and their parents would swoop in to fund their abortions to keep her from bringing shame to the family. What’s even funnier is that some of these kids were those no one ever in a million years thought would end up in such predicaments.

This is not to say that I look down on anyone who goes to jail, who has gotten PG out of wedlock or has had an abortion because we all screw up- and screw up BIG- at some point in life. So, understand that I’m not judging anyone, nor am I expressing any views.

The point to this post is this: They never learned to take responsibility for their own lives. And why would they if they were never made to?

I look back now and realize that it’s no wonder most of these people had the attitudes they had.

With that said, here’s my 13th takeaway:

I learned early on that I was the only person responsible for my own safety, success, and future happiness, no one else! And I had to be willing to do whatever it took to bootstrap my way back up. And it was the same with my other siblings.

There were no freebies nor piggyback rides.

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If I screwed up (and I did many times), my parents didn’t bail me out. They stood back, let me fall flat on my tookus, then expected me to pick myself up afterward- all by myself! And they did it to teach me responsibility for my actions.

And when you’re a kid, you don’t realize the tough love and good intentions behind it. You don’t see the eventual payoff. You don’t think about how this will mold you into a much better person and make life much easier for you in the future.

All you’re looking at is the here and now. All you see is what’s in front of your face, which is every other kid getting to do whatever wrong they want and getting a pat on the head and a proverbial get-out-of-jail-free card while you’re having the book thrown at you. And no, it’s not fun. In fact, it downright sucks!

But! Though it may not have felt good nor seemed fair at the time, through it all, I learned independence. I learn self-control. I discovered my own strength and that I was unstoppable!

positive motivational

And if I can go through six long years of brutal bullying and remain standing, then nothing is impossible, and there’s no limit to the heights I can achieve.

The majority of people who are bullied are those who come from families who’ve instilled morals, integrity and the importance of accountability in them. These people are often the brightest, most hard-working, decent, caring, and, most of all, bravest people around.

When you’re bullied, you learn to overcome so many obstacles and move on with life. And you learn by yourself. You learn to fight like the dickens for your safety, well-being, and your happiness. You also learn that if you want anything in life, it’s up to only you to put in the effort to get it.

In closing, I want to thank my bullies for showing me my own strength and for giving me the grit to stay in the fight, to adapt, to overcome, and to win!

Bullies Will Sometimes Use Tactics That Are Outrageous, Outlandish, and Unheard Of

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bullied victim trapped spider's web

Understand that outrageous tactics are deliberate, and there’s a reason behind them.

Bullies employ these shenanigans on their targets to gaslight them. They already know their tactics are so disgraceful and outlandish that they’re beyond all comprehension. They also know that people would have a difficult time believing it if it were spoken of.

However, if something is beyond all comprehension, you have to ask yourself how anyone could make this stuff up? And so many people in power forget this.

Understand that the use of tactics that seem a bit outlandish is a subtle form of gaslighting. These astonishing actions are meant to confuse and silence the target. Because when things that happen are so far outside human comprehension and experience, they’re the most difficult to talk about because “these kinds of things just don’t happen.”

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Any member of authority to whom the target reports it is likely to tell himself:

1. “No! It’s a mistake!”
2. “There’s no way something like that can happen! It couldn’t have!”
3. “Wow! That sounds so far-fetched! It can’t be true!”

Again. Understand that bullies do these things deliberately! They design their tactics to be “shocking,” “unbelievable,” and “over the top” in case the target speaks out. It’s a way to bewilder the target and make him too scared to talk about it. And if he does report it, it’s likely to leave potential listeners too bewildered to believe it.

They force victims to doubt their perceptions and their sanity. Because if the tactic is so wild and unheard of that, we can hardly believe it ourselves. And if we can hardly believe it, how can we expect others to believe it when we tell them?

bullying outrageous outlandish unbelievable shocking WTF W

You must realize that bullies are slick and inventive! If you’re a target, you will know your bullies are employing such tactics when, at any time, you ask yourself such questions as:

“Whoa! Did this just happen?”
“Did she really just say that?”
“Did he really just do that?”
“Did I just see that?”
“Did I just hear what I thought I heard?”
Or you’ll think statements that begin with, “She did NOT just…”.

Another clue is that you ask yourself,

“Can I tell anyone else about what these people are doing without being laughed at and told that it’s all in my imagination?”

shock embarrassment unbelievable outlandish

And these questions will gnaw at you. Also, you’ll wonder if you really were imagining or seeing things. Remember that the purpose of gaslighting is to make you doubt your perceptions and what you experienced.

If you experienced these things from bullies, know that it wasn’t all in your head. There is a way to speak out about it and do it with confidence and conviction. And when you speak up, put some conviction in it.

Here’s another way you can respond if the person you talk about this too doubts you’re telling the truth or suspects that you’re being “crazy.” You can simply say,

“You can’t make this stuff up!”

That’s the best thing to say any time you witness, hear, or experience these types of bully tactics.

Being Predictable Is Bad for Targets of Bullying

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Chess board and text “Strategic plan” Business planning concept

Being unpredictable can be your best weapon against bullies. Anytime you are predictable in a climate of bullying, you’re a sitting duck. Bullies will soon know what gets you upset, what will get you to fly off the handle and do something irrational and how to sabotage you socially and academically. You must be versatile if you expect to throw the bullies off-kilter.

Predictability is human nature. People are creatures of habit and have a need to see familiarity in the actions of others. If you’re a target of bullying, any predictability on your part will give your bullies the idea that they have control of you.

Understand that the reason bullies have so much power over you is that you’re too darn predictable. You make it too easy for them to predict what you’ll do. Because they’ve studied and picked up on your habits, they have the foreknowledge of what your reaction will be. And they’ll weaponize it every chance they get!

bullying strategy plan game table goal

But when you flip the script and begin deliberately exhibiting behavior that has no consistency and no objectives, you automatically throw your bullies for a loop! Take your unpredictable behavior up several notches and bullies will be intimidated.

Now. Before I go on, let me mention that here’s one good thing about your predictability- you’ve gotten your bullies so used to your patterns that you’ve lulled them off to sleep, which will make any versatility on your part all the more powerful once you start deliberately changing your reactions to their attacks.

So, here goes:

If you’re a target of bullying, you want to make it look you have no clear strategy. You must scramble your behavior patterns and your reactions to confuse the bullies if you want them to back off. And when you do, not only will it confuse them, it’ll scare the stupid out of them!

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I’ll use a scenario with one of my old classmates as an example:

Just two years ago, Carol, one of my old classmates, attacked me online after she found out that I was collaborating with a producer out of New York on a screenplay adaptation of my first published book.

Let me start by saying that we hadn’t seen each other since high school. Back then, I was quiet, shy and timid girl, but with a hair-trigger temper when I was pushed too far. That’s how Carol had remembered me.

And had she verbally attacked me back then, I either would’ve walked away from her without saying anything back to her, or, on a bad day, I would’ve fought fire with fire- screaming back at her, cursing her out and calling her every name but a child of God.

This time, I did neither. As you’ll see in the screenshots below, I reacted in a way she never expected me to.

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Carol expected me to fly off the handle, have a moment of sheer stupidity, and counter-attack with the same vitriol and craziness she dished out to me first. Then she could have used my counter-attack against me and made me look like the instigator. That’s exactly what she had plans to do, and I knew it.

However!

Instead of reacting, I responded.

I remained calm and told her how it was without name-calling, without cursing, and without using all caps. And boy! Did it throw her into a hissy fit! Carol literally FREAKED! ‘Had a complete meltdown online as she sent me hateful message after hateful message. I happily took screenshots and outed her all over social media before finally blocking her.

By reacting in a way I knew she never expected, I threw her off balance and not only instilled fear, but induced panic and rage in her. I shook her up so much so that she couldn’t think clearly nor rationally. She stumbled, making blunder after blunder.

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In being unpredictable, I forced her to give me the goods I needed to expose her with. She fell face-first into the trap I calmly laid for her, and I have to admit. Outsmarting her felt soooo good! Carol played right into my hands and didn’t realize her mistake until after she’d calmed down. But by then, it was too late. Carol had made herself look like a complete lunatic and had I acted as she had, I would’ve looked just as nutty as she did.

‘You see? When you deliberately respond in ways your bullies don’t expect, you throw them off-kilter and force them to react out of fear, confusion, even anger. And when a person reacts out of pure emotion, they make a truckload of mistakes, blunders, and gaffes, then end up making a colossal fool of themselves.

Even better, after I exposed Carol online, many other old classmates, out of loyalty to her, came to her defense and attacked me the same way she had. Although they knew that she was in the wrong and that she’d attacked me without provocation, their loyalty to their old high school buddy was much stronger than their sense of right and wrong.

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Carol’s, brother, sister and son also joined in the vitriol. They even went to the pages of my husband and my son and attacked them too. Carol’s allies didn’t private message them but went to their public pages where all could see. In doing this, they also exposed themselves for the idiots they were while we sat back and laughed.

That’s what reacting out of emotion does. It causes us to make dumb mistakes.

Needless to say, after I exposed them (or they exposed themselves) those people backed off quickly and I never heard from them again. Neither did my family. They now stay far away because they were surprised to find that I’m nowhere near as naïve as I was in high school. I stayed calm and was smart enough to deflect their attacks and use them against them.

Again. Understand that by doing something unexpected, you gain a huge advantage over your bullies. And when bullies can’t figure out what you’re going to do, it scares them to death and they’ll almost always react out of fear!

Nothing is more frightening than when you make a move nobody would ever expect. It’s the reason natural disasters are so scary because no one knows when and where they’ll hit next. It’s why deer hunters can track down their prey and kill them. They know the habits and patterns of behavior of the deer they hunt.

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Realize that habits and patterns are the worst things that go against a target of bullying because bullies pick up on your routines and use them against you.

In closing, you must learn to unsettle your bullies by allowing them to see you do things they’d never expect. If a bully launches an attack, you should counter-attack suddenly, without warning, in a way they’d wouldn’t expect you to, and when they least expect it.

You must purposefully mislead your bullies to trick them into an emotional reaction!

If you’re going to be predictable, don’t stay that way. Do it for long enough that your bullies get used to your patterns and are lulled into a false sense of security, then strike suddenly with something unexpected! And that’s how you get them to leave you alone!

Metaphors Targets Use to Describe Their Bullies

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I can tell you the metaphors I often used to describe my bullies at school. I often called them:

“Teenage Hitlers”

“Devils”

“Demon possessed”

I remember how they’d get in my face, nose to nose, and scream obscenities and curses while bushwhacking me with their funky breath and spraying me with misty micro-balls of their saliva. How their eyes would bulge so far out of their heads, you’d think they were going to pop out.

How they’d jump out of their seats at me, slinging textbooks and papers everywhere and sometimes flinging their chairs backwards!

I remember one bully picking up a metal waste can and hurling it at me with all their strength. The waste can flew past me, barely missing my head by less than an inch. How their faces would contort and how they’d fly into screaming tirades with long diatribes of obscenities, threats of bodily harm, and personal attacks. It was both bizarre and terrifying!

That’s what overt bullying looks like, especially to targets.

Overt bullying looks like angry and snarling faces that bare their teeth and spit on you as they scream, yell and threaten you while balling a fist in your face.

And they called me crazy? I see it so clearly now. They were the crazy ones.

Then, there was covert bullying.

I remember how the covert bullies would come to me with smiles on their faces. How they would act so sincere as they asked such personal questions about my private life. If I was dating, they’d ask such personal questions:

“Have you given it up to him yet?”

“Have you gotten horizontal yet?”

“Are you still a virgin?”

I didn’t answer those questions, of course. However, the questions alone made me feel violated. For them to think they could ask me such questions so openly made me feel disrespected.

The covert bullying looked like smiling faces with a gleam in their eyes as they hurled zingers and backhanded compliments. Covert bullying was the shaking of your hand with one hand and hiding the knife behind their back with the other. It was the tiny nibbles and little violations of my boundaries that would arouse my anger and provoke me to tell them to piss off, or to mind their own damned business.

I was very ugly to people when they’d pull this crap, and I reacted very harshly. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what the covert bullies were looking for- a reaction.

The overt bullies, however, were looking for submission and compliance, and if they didn’t get it, God help the person they wanted it from. And the covert bullies always became more and more overt as time went on. Until they too eventually became just as crazy.

Many of them were so unpredictable. They were like Jekyll and Hide, or like ticking time-bombs. The bullying I suffered was shocking and surreal.

It was as if they were all using black magic- like they had dark powers and they would unleash a legion of demons from the pits of hell. They could magically morph into whatever character they wished, it depended on the audience present at the time.

Understand that those metaphors are just a few examples of how all targets describe their tormentors and if they use those metaphors, listen to them because they’re not lying, nor are they “making it up.” You can’t make this stuff up.

And if you’re a target of this kind of evil, you should always stand up to the mini-micro violations because, if you don’t, the violations will only grow bigger until they become out of control. Never accept even the tiniest of offenses from a bully because if you give an inch, they will take ten miles.

If it’s overt, find a way to remove yourself from the situation for your personal safety.

Remember that you teach people how to treat you and you do it by what you’ll put up with. Always put yourself first and stand up for your rights. You’ll thank yourself for it later. I’m living proof of it.

Thank goodness I don’t get that behavior from anyone anymore because I know how to keep my cool and tell someone in a politer way to get lost any time they stick as much as a toe over my boundary line. And know that you won’t be a target forever either if you continue to stand firm and refuse to accept bad treatment.

Again, if you’re listening to someone who describes the bullying they’ve suffered and refers to their bullies as either of the above metaphors or even as dictators or tyrants, listen to them and more importantly,  believe them! They’re telling the truth and they know what they’re talking about!

With knowledge comes empowerment!