‘Want to know why bullying and ego are so tightly connected? Here are all the details you need to know.
Bullying stems from ego. Moreover, many bullies feel the need to get that ego boost at your expense because they can’t control their own lives. So they seek to get control of yours. If you’re a victim of bullying, especially if you have been for a long time, you too may feel as if you have no control over your life.
To take back your power, you must first know where bullying comes from and its underlying causes. Therefore, in this post, you will learn about bullying and ego and how they connect.
Once you learn all about these crucial details, it will compel you to stand up to your bullies once and for all and stop being the food that feeds their over-inflated egos.
This post is all about all the ways bullying and ego connect, so that you will get angry and take steps to grab your power back.
Bullying and Ego
If people are bullying you and have been doing so for a long time, you may feel powerless. You may think that you have lost complete control over your life. And, in truth, you have.
Powerlessness is the sense that you have no control over what happens to you. It diminishes your sense of security.
And for bullies to take away your power, they must crush your ego to feed theirs.
For Bullies to Feel Powerful, they must make you powerless.
In other words, they must chip away at your power and self-esteem for long enough that they reduce you to feeling like, “it’s out of my hands.” This takes time. But bullies are relentless, and worst of all, patient.
Bullies are empowered by stripping away your power. In fact, it’s the only way they can achieve power. When you stand up to them, they are left to deal with their own mental issues.
By riding roughshod over you, they don’t have to think about their own flaws and shortcomings. Instead, they can continue to convince themselves that they’re the alpha dogs.
Therefore, they gradually increase the attacks until they subdue you. Once they do this, you begin to feel like you have no control over your life. And, if you have that feeling for long enough, it can induce hopelessness.
This is what bullies hope for. Why? Because once they drive you to hopelessness, they’ll induce learned helplessness. In other words, you’ll likely stop fighting back and surrender to them. And that’s when they’ve got you!
Bullies know human nature like the backs of their hands. They know what works and what doesn’t. If they can’t get you one way, they’ll get you another.
Therefore, they’ll experiment with you by trying different kinds of attacks until they find the one that works on you. Then they’ll stick to what works.
Your bullies will slowly intensify their abuse to wear you down. And once they wear you down, you’ll likely give up.
Bullying and Ego:
Where do hopelessness and Learned Helplessness come from?
Hopelessness and learned helplessness don’t come from bullying and abuse per se. No. They stem from the inability to escape it.
In 1967, Overmier and Seligman conducted an experiment on dogs to prove that learned helplessness was a real phenomenon. They locked the dogs in cages and then subjected them to electric shocks.
Naturally, the dogs tried to run away – to escape the painful shocks. However, the two scientists prevented the dogs from escaping.
Therefore, when the dogs realized that there was no way they could run from the shocks, they began cowering and showing signs of depression.
The dogs endured anywhere from twenty-four hours to one hundred sixty-eight hours of imprisonment and shocks. Finally, the researchers opened the doors to their cages and allowed them to go free.
However, the dogs didn’t attempt to flee. The dogs were broken. They only continued whimpering and cowering in the corners of their cages, even with the doors wide open.
The same happens to you after you’ve suffered bullying for long enough and have no way to escape it. You lose hope, and learned helplessness creeps in.
As a result, you stop defending yourself because you realize that it does no good. Again, this is what your bullies count on. So, when you stand up to them, things usually get worse before they get better.
Bullying and Ego:
Your powerlessness feeds your bullies’ egos.
Power is addictive. And bullies are insecure people with fragile egos. They’re insecure people in control.
As long as they can keep you worn down, where you accept their abuse, they have power over you. And the longer they have power over you, the more addicted they become to it.
Again, their pathetic little egos feed off of controlling you. And the more they feed their egos at your expense, the stronger that power-addiction becomes.
However, once you get an ass full and decide to stand up to the creeps, you take back your power. Then your bullies become outraged. Why? Because you have taken away the very thing they’ve become addicted to.
“How dare you!”
What happens when you take your power back?
How does someone who’s addicted to drugs act when you suddenly cut them off from their drug supply? They climb the walls!
It’s the same with bullies when you defend yourself and take back your power – the drug they’re addicted to.
Therefore, to bring you back under their control, your bullies might put on the nice act and become apologetic. However, this doesn’t happen often because bullies are prideful.
In most cases, your bullies will increase the abuse. They will reinforce their power by punishing you for defending yourself. For instance, verbal bullies begin verbally assaulting you and you counter them with a good burn.
Your bullies may dial up the abuse by giving you a good beating. It’s a fact that most verbal bullies become physical bullies. And this is why.
Also, many bullies will come up behind you and give you a hard shove if you turn your back and walk away from them.
They become even more abusive to bring you back under their control. Moreover, they will gaslight you. If they don’t deny the abuse, they’ll try to convince you that you brought it on yourself.
Bullying and Ego:
This is why you should never stop standing up for yourself.
When you stand up to bullies, you are setting boundaries. Bullies despise boundaries of any kind. Remember that bullies have gargantuan egos. They think that you should give them carte blanche to walk over you any time they feel like it.
Therefore, expect them to try to wear you down with endless attacks at first. Because, believe me, they will! And, no matter how exhausted you may become, don’t stop fighting for yourself.
You must continue to defend yourself. Because if you give up because you’re tired, the bullying will get worse. As long as you stay in the fight, you have a good chance of wearing your bullies out instead.
Trying to keep someone down is hard work, especially if they defend themselves. When you stand up to bullies, you don’t make it easy on them. Instead, you make them have to work.
You must be a force to be reckoned with.
Therefore, you must be such a huge challenge for them that they get tired. In fact, you must be willing to inflict a lot of pain on them in the process.
Therefore, the worse they bully you, the worse you fight back. When they attack you, you counterattack them harder. When they hit you, you hit back harder.
You must give your bullies consequences they’ll never forget. Moreover, you must inflict so much pain on them that they won’t even think of messing with you again.
Why? Because bullies don’t respond to politeness. You can’t reason with bullies. No amount of diplomacy will stop them. Bullies only mock you, then keep right on bullying you.
The only thing bullies respond to is strength and power. When you handle them with strength, that’s when they pay attention. When you impose painful consequences on them, they’ll listen up. Believe me!
You must make yourself too painful to deal with. You must be too much of a problem to handle. Only then will your bullies decide that you aren’t worth the trouble and leave you alone.
Why? Because, when you can make them think, “Oh, shit! I don’t want none of that,” that’s when you won’t have to worry about them ever coming for you again.
Bullies are cowards. Bullying is what cowards do. If you can make them fear you, they won’t even look in your direction. And if you can make bullies not want to mess with you, then no one else will either. This is how you earn respect.
This post is all about bullying and ego so that you will be motivated to stand up to bullies.
Related posts you’ll enjoy:
1. Causes of Bullying: 9 Proven Factors That Trigger Bullying
2. How to Overcome Learned Helplessness: 5 Ways to Empower Yourself
3. Effects of Bullying on the Victim: 13 Symptoms of Bullied People
I know this all too well. When your ego is crushed you get a feeling of total helplessness. Excellent post.
Thank you so much, Michael!
🙏🙌🏻
Aum Shanti
Thank you, Shanti!
Bullies always want to make someone feel lower than them. It is how they keep their perceived “power.” This is why it is vital for victims to stand up for themselves and learn anti-bullying techniques sooner than later. If the bully is able to wear you down for months or even years, they can keep that “power” for extended periods and in some cases even forever. But for some bullying victims that know the techniques or simply stand their ground, the bullying stops and the power is taken from the bully. You become the one with “power.” Everyone reading this, be that one and then teach it to someone else.
Absolutely, Bradley. And they do it because that power is what feeds their ego. The ego is always hungry. You cannot satisfy it for long.
Bullies can control their own lives, but choose not to, and instead control those of their targets.
Great point, Sara!