Tag: bullying prevention

Will We Ever Stop Bullying Completely? Here’s Your Answer.

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Everywhere you look, you see slogans like, “Stop Bullying,” “Eradicate Bullying,” “No Bullying,” and other slogans. Not that that’s a bad thing. It’s actually a great thing with great intentions behind it.

We’d love to think that we could someday. Again, the above slogans are well-meaning and come from a good place, so I’m certainly not against such slogans.

However, the question remains. “Will we ever stop bullying completely?”

The reality is, no. We will never be able to completely annihilate bullying. Why? You may ask? It’s because bullying is an unfortunate and ugly part of human nature. Understand that we live in a fallen world and, in a fallen world, bullying will always exist.

This is not to say that bullying is okay, because it isn’t. In no way is this an excuse, but humans can be horrible predators. Yes. We should hold bullies accountable for their rotten behavior. But we should also teach targets of the mindsets of bullies and how they operate.

We should teach targets on how to reframe the attacks and psychological warfare that bullies launch against them.

For example, when a bully puts down and tries to define the target, we should teach the target not to think thoughts like:

“I must have done something wrong or to make him (the bully) angry”

or

“There must be something wrong with me.”

Instead, we should teach targets to think these kinds of thoughts when they’re attacked: 

“The bully is doing something wrong,”

“There’s something wrong with the bully, not me,”

“The bully is the one with the problem.”

“The bully is the one acting like a fool and I don’t want him around me.”

Here’s another Example:

If you’re a target of bullying and a bully calls you a wimp, you should counter the bully’s attack by saying:

“No! You’re the wimp! Otherwise, you wouldn’t feel the need to be so loud, obnoxious, and rude!”

Always counter the bully’s attack, then call out his/her behavior.

This is how you reframe the bullies’ attacks and save your self-esteem. We must teach targets to see through bullies’ facades and acts of toughness, then counter them and call them out. We should also teach targets to stand up for themselves in case the bullies become violent. Only then will targets reclaim their power and cease to be targeted.

With knowledge comes empowerment!

Reasons You Should Never Be Afraid of Conflict

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Let’s face it. Conflict is a part of life and something we all encounter at many points in our lives. Many targets and survivors of bullying are deathly afraid of conflict. Why? Because they’ve had so much of it forced on them in the past by bullies who just refused to let them be. Also, many targets and survivors are traumatized by the bullying they presently suffer or from past bullying.

Understand that these poor souls haven’t yet dealt with the hurts they still have, and they don’t yet know their worth and the good they deserve. Many targets and survivors of bullying suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Because of this, they’re still stuck in survival mode.

As a result, target’s cave in and give in to bullies to appease them just so they’ll shut the hell up and go away. And people do get tired of hearing self-entitled and self-indulgent bullies bitch, rant, and beat their chests when they don’t get their way.

So, the unspoken message is, “Look! Just take what you want and get lost!”

I can understand why targets and survivors end up being this way. It’s because a person gets exhausted when they’re constantly have to battle and struggle to take back their autonomy, their self-determination, their personal power, their safety, their dignity, and their right to exist. They get worn down, they get weary, and all they want is for people to leave them alone and let them have some peace.

However, this can become a problem. If you go out of your way to avoid conflict, people will soon mistake you for being weak and they’ll walk all over you. You must set boundaries. There are times when you must say no. There are even times when you may have to show your ugly side to get your point across and let people know that no means no and enough is enough.

Understand that this requires guts. It means you must step out of your comfort zone and take risks. You must risk hurting others’ feelings and making people angry. You must risk being lashed out at and retaliated against. Moreover, you must also risk losing relationships and no, none of it feels good.

In short, you must stand up for yourself and that means facing conflict.

Think of it this way, if you’re a target of bullying, you’re going to face conflict no matter what because people will bring the conflict to you. Hiding from it does no good because it will eventually find you. When you are a target of bullying, conflict is unavoidable and certain.

In other words, run from conflict and you’ll end up running from it for the rest of your life!

So, why not face it head on, better yet embrace it and stand up to people, then you can feel better about yourself later knowing that you finally grew a spine and told them where to shove it. You may face retaliation for it, but you would face it anyway because, right or wrong, bullies will always find some justification for attacking you.

With knowledge comes empowerment!