‘Want to know why bullies are quick with weaponizing mental health? Here are all the reasons bullies use mental health to discredit you and damage your reputation.
Using your mental health as a weapon is probably the first thing your bullies will do when you get fed up and begin standing up to them.
Therefore, in this post, you will learn all about weaponizing mental health and the reasons your bullies use it against you.
Once you learn this must-know information, you will be able to boldly and confidently call it out so that you can protect yourself against it.
This post is all about weaponizing mental health so that you’ll have the knowledge to protect yourself from bullies who use it against you.
Weaponizing mental health
Have you noticed that bullies usually pull the mental health card anytime their victims stop taking their crap? Moreover, have you ever wondered why? Are you one of those people bullies and others have unfairly painted as a mental case? Here are the reasons bullies do this.
1. The mental health label is the easiest and most effective label to stick to you.
Sadly, a label like this tends to have loads of staying power. Why? Because it’s the hardest to disprove. This goes double when the object of it is being bullied and mobbed.
Moreover, the “mentally unstable” label is worse than the label, “criminal.” In other words, criminals are treated better than those with mental illness because of the stigma behind it.
Therefore, the mental health label is the most damaging to your reputation.
2. Bullying, especially if it’s chronic, can make a person an emotional wreck.
…and rightfully so. Hence, another reason the mental health label is a clever label for bullies to pin to them.
Understand that the natural human response is to react and defend yourself when attacked. Therefore, people can easily mistake any form of self-defense for mental illness.
when bullies label you as unhinged, it doesn’t mean they actually think you are. In fact, they may know good and well that you aren’t mentally ill.
Remember that bullies are big cowards. Therefore, if they really and truly thought you were loco, they wouldn’t mess with you at all. Moreover, they wouldn’t come near you.
Weaponizing Mental Health:
Bullies abuse you, then use your reaction to their abuse to paint you as someone who’s unhinged.
Instead, they would do everything they could to stay out of your way and avoid poking the bear. They’d go out of their way to be on their best behavior around you. Why? Because they know that a person who’s not right upstairs could rip their heads off and poop down their necks.
In fact, that person could go postal and wipe them all out, then go home and eat a sandwich.
If a person with any common sense knows someone who is factually and utterly batshit nuts, their first instinct is to walk lightly around them. In other words, they do their due diligence to keep from setting that person off!
Therefore, the mental health label is used to make the person look bad. Again, anyone who’s bullied is likely to be emotional. And who wouldn’t be if they suffered constant bullying?
So, the victim’s emotional reaction to the abuse just makes it easier for bullies to stick that label on them. Put another way, the bullies use the victim’s emotional reaction to their abuse as confirmation that the person really is a nutcase. And sadly, it sticks.
3. To discredit you.
Your bullies are smarter then you think. They know that eventually, you’re likely to get fed up with their crap and either report them or stand up to them. Moreover, you just might expose them and cause them to lose face.
Therefore, your bullies will claim you’re a mental case. And why not? If everyone thinks you’re stark raving mad, who’s going to take you seriously when you report the bullying?
In other words, if you have a reputation of being a nut-ball, the less likely anyone will believe you when you go to them for help.
4. Weaponizing Mental Health:
To Silence and subdue you.
The mental health label does two things. First, it makes you afraid to stand up to your bullies or speak out about their abuse. Secondly, it keeps their reputations spotless why trashing yours
Bullies aren’t clueless. They know that if people think you’re bananas, they won’t believe you. Moreover, they figure that you may make a few attempts to report them, only to be rebuffed. Once enough people either ignore or rebuff you, you’ll eventually grown too afraid to open your mouth.
Therefore, they use the mental health label to shut you up and keep you under control.
Also, you’ll also be too afraid to fight back. Why? Because, if you do, you know that the bullies will only use the label to reverse roles and play victim.
Then, others will only assume that you went postal and either hurt those poor, innocent bullies, or you just threw a temper tantrum and began shouting and cursing people out for no reason. All because you’re just “bonkers.”
5. A mental imbalance is the most difficult to disprove.
In other words, your bullies can never prove you’re mentally unstable. However, there’s no way that you can prove for certain that you aren’t.
Therefore, this is why bullies use this label the most. Also, it’s the most common form of gaslighting. “Mentally imbalanced” can be used as a last resort when bullies run out of options and can’t pin anything else on you.
Think about it. They can’t as easily label you a whore if you haven’t slept around. Just the same, they can’t as easily label you a criminal if you don’t have a police record to prove it. And they can’t easily label you a thief if you never took anything that wasn’t yours.
Whereas, you can’t as easily disprove a mental instability.
People have a strong tendency to see the worst in others. Therefore, the burden of proof lies with you.
Again, this kind of label is easiest to pin on you. It shouldn’t be this easy. But it is.
6. Weaponizing Mental Health:
Bullies use the mental health label as a last option
In other words, when bullies have nothing on you, they’ll often label you as mentally imbalanced. Again, they may not be able to prove it, but you can’t disprove it either.
7. To make you doubt your own sanity.
If bullies can cause you to wonder if you really are coming unglued, the more likely others are to believe you are.
Therefore, don’t you doubt your mental abilities for a second!
Bullies Don’t Think You’re Mentally imbalanced. They Think you’re weak.
In fact, your bullies most likely know that you’re just as sane as the next person. They also know that you aren’t strong enough to keep them away.
However, here’s another things that bullies also know.
Weakness and helplessness have a certain allure and appeal. And this allure and appeal raises the chances of others coming to your aid. Therefore, your bullies are afraid that others just might feel compelled to come to your aid.
Realize that helplessness sparks a natural tendency to want to take care of the helpless person. On the other hand, people are less likely to help the person they deem loony.
Bullies instinctively know this. Therefore, they label you mentally unstable to strip you of the allure and appeal of weakness and helplessness.
Weaponizing Mental Health:
There’s a method behind the label of mental instability
Again, in labeling you a nutcase and making it stick, bullies are better able to avoid accountability. Moreover, if they can dodge responsibility, then they get to continue abusing you freely and with impunity.
Therefore, if you’re aware of the motives behind that label, the better you’ll be able to catch it and counter your bullies with it.
Bullies will often bait you into looking unhinged.
For example, your bullies provoke you into a reaction. Next, others walk in on you as you’re telling your bullies where to stick it. In other words, these so-called witnesses only catch the tail end of the confrontation.
And sadly, they draw the wrong conclusions. Therefore, if this happens to you, understand that this is what your bullies were counting on!!!
Bullies do this all the time to discredit their targets and cover their behinds when they know they’re wrong! Why? Because, if the bully can make you look loony, then who’s going to believe you when you report their abuse?
Moreover, who’ll take you seriously the next time you let the bully have it? They’ll only sigh and think, “Uh-oh! There she goes again! She’s having another mental episode! That person has gone completely batsh**!”
Weaponizing Mental Health:
How to Counter the Mental Health Label
The first and most important way to counter this form of gaslighting is not to fall for it! Simply look them in the eye, and tell them,
“You’re wrong, and you know you’re wrong! I’m not going to debate this any further with you!”
Then walk away and leave the bully standing there slack-jawed.
If the bully follows you and asks, “What’s your problem?” don’t explain it to them. They’re not five years old, they already know, and you don’t owe them any more than what’s necessary. The trick is to say as little as possible.
Or, you can simply tell them, “You know what my problem is!”
The bully may continue to follow you and ask, “What did I do to you?” You can then say, “You know what you did! Now get bent!”
Don’t beat around the bush. Get to the point and say it like you mean it. Be firm but don’t yell (yelling makes you look like a basket case).
The bully may not change their ways and their attitude toward you. But I promise! You’ll feel so much better about yourself knowing that you put your foot down and looked less “unstable” to any bystanders!
‘Funny How Bullies Magically Become Board-Certified Shrinks.
Moreover, they can do it overnight, without reading a single word out of a psychology textbook. As we all know, bullies are legends (or Doctors of Psychology) in their own minds and they only make themselves look dimwitted when they “diagnose” anyone they cannot manipulate.
Weaponizing Mental health and the use of Pop-Psych.
This little phenomenon is called “pop-psych,” and, in all it’s entitlement (and embarrassment), empowers bullies to conduct, “remote analyses” while holding little to zero education in the field of Psychology.
Therefore, if you’re a target of bullying whom bullies have diagnosed, you can counter these accusations of insanity by reading a basic psychology 101 textbook, then asking your bullies questions that challenge the narrative.
Let’s use the scenario below as an example:
Jack: “Don’t hang out with Jill. She’s nuts.”
Kelly: “Nuts? That sounds like a pretty serious accusation. Nuts in what way?”
Jack: “Uh…I don’t know. Like schizo or something.”
Kelly: There are five categories of schizophrenia, which one do you think she falls into?”
Jack: “Uhhhhh…paranoia?”
Kelly: “I’ll have you know that paranoia is a common trait in many psychopathologies.”
Jack: “Uhhhh. I dunno. She’s talking about people talking about her and thinking they’re after her or something- that’s nuts.”
Kelly: “Jack, have you ever considered that possibility that Jill may be a target of bullying?”
Jack: “Oh, no! We’re not allowed to talk about that.”
Kelly: (Rolls her eyes and scoffs at Jack, then walks away.)
When bullies use pop-psychology, they do it out of ignorance and entitlement. They use mental health and mental illness as a weapon and end up making themselves look ignorant.
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The more we understand the ins, outs, and reasons behind the use of this label, the better we can defend against it.
Therefore, calmly call this out and keep your wits about you. Also, continue showing your bullies up through your calm behavior.
It may take a while, but eventually, the label does get old and wear itself out. And when that happens, it will lose it’s effect.
This post was all about Weaponizing mental health so that you can know why bullies do it and what it’s designed to do.
Related posts you’ll enjoy:
1. Smear Campaigns: 4 Tactics Bullies Use to Sully Your Reputation
2. Baiting: 5 Ways Bullies Bait You Into a Reaction
3. The Bullied Brain: 7 Ways Bullying Effects Mental Health
4. Unhealthy Ways to Deal with Bullying: 11 No-No’s to be Aware of
5. Signs Someone is Gaslighting You: The 13 Must-Know Symptoms