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You know how jokes are often funny because
they are based in an ugly truth? I had a new
realization of that phenomena while watching
Bill Maher's new stand-up comedy special "The
Decider" on HBO the other night. Bill was
talking about various recent sexual abuse scandals
and was comparing the complaints made against
Michael Jackson to complaints made against various
Catholic priests with the aim of suggesting
that what Michael allegedly did to his victims
was gentle compared to the treatment received
by victims of the priests. Seemingly out of
nowhere, he started talking about a time when
he was a child and was rather viciously beaten
up during an incident of playground bullying.
As part of his punchline, he commented that
he would have gladly subjected himself to the
worst abuse Michael has been accused of perpetrating
rather than having to endure that single beating.
The comment resonated with me, probably because
like Bill, I too was bullied as a kid, and also
found the experience to be pretty ugly. I don't
think I'd ever choose to subject myself to Michael's
ministrations in order to have escaped my own
bullying experiences (you gotta have standards
in life), but I know I would have given a lot
to have been able to stop them from happening.
The bullying I was subjected to did not occur
on the playground, but rather on the school
bus. I can vividly recall days when I would
have to launch myself out of the school bus
door and run as fast as I could up the hill
to the shelter of my house. A group of older
neighborhood boys would be after me for reasons
that were never entirely clear. I was younger,
more sensitive, certainly more vulnerable and
not talented at fist fighting. Most days I'd
make it home safely, but some days I'd end up
belly up on the grass trying to fend off blows
and kicks while a ring of kids jeered and cheered
that day's aggressor. A blow to the head and
you'd see stars like in the cartoons.
I'm 40 years old now; it's been something
like 30 years since that sort of thing last
happened. Still, the experience has not left
me, it sucked so much. I don't think about it
much these days, but I know that having lived
through those experiences has shaped me as an
adult, and not for the better.
The experience of getting your face smashed
in by bullies (or taunted by them, or pushed,
or shoved, or excluded, etc. ) has got to be
an almost universal sort of thing; something
that many others who have endured similar experiences
can perhaps recognize and respond to. In this
spirit, I offer my self-disclosure (and hijack
Bill's) as seed for discussion.
There are lots of programs designed to help
schools and other institutions prevent bullying.
It's kind of a hot topic these days in a small
sort of way. Hopefully the things that researchers
have and will come up will help limit the scope
of the problem in the future. However, I'm quite
confident that it will never go away entirely.
It seems to me that bullying is just one of
those things that are just a part of human nature.
Something that can be suppressed but not eliminated.
Where I want to go with this essay is not
to talk about how to make bullying stop, but
rather, to explore the sorts of damage bullies
do to their victims, and to discuss a few paths
through which some of that damage can be, at
least in part, undone.
Bullying is Abuse
Here's a few statements to get us started: 1)
Bullying is a form of abuse, and 2) Bullying
is a narcissistic sort of act. In making the
first statement here, I mean to say that both
bullying and traditional forms of abuse are
selfish and/or sadistic, destructive, and often
violent acts perpetrated upon victims who do
not in any way, shape or form deserve to be
treated in that manner. In making the second
statement I'm suggesting that ring-leader bullies
(those who organize bullying) are behaving as
though the emotional and physical health of
their victims is not important or is at least
less important than their own desire for the
thrill of aggression and dominance. Narcissists
treat other people as though they were objects
either to be used, or discarded, and the bully
both uses his victim (for purposes of self-gratification
and aggrandizement) and then discards him.
Now, children are fairly narcissistic by their
very nature. Children are not born appreciating
that other people are actually just like they
are with their own needs and independent rights.
A long period of development must occur before
children grasp that the other people around
them have needs and interests just like they
do and need to be accommodated and accorded
respect. The golden rule of treating others
as you would yourself like to be treated makes
no sense to a young child who has not yet matured
to the point where this basic appreciation of
the individuality of every person has been grasped.
Instead, children need to be held in line with
what amount to incentives (and sometimes punishments)
for acting as though other people matter. So
by saying that bullying is a narcissistic action,
I'm not at all saying that all bullies are narcissists.
Adult bullies who have not outgrown their childhood
narcissism probably do qualify, but little kids
are just going to be that way. This is why I'm
not terribly optimistic that we can solve the
problem of bullying in our time.
Bullying Causes Long-Term Emotional
Damage
The experience of being bullied can end up causing
lasting damage to victims. This is both self-evident,
and also supported by an increasing body of
research. It is not necessary to be physically
harmed in order to suffer lasting harm. Words
and gestures are quite enough. In fact, the
old saying, "Sticks and stones may break
my bones but names will never harm me"
is more or less exactly backwards. For the most
part, physical damage sustained in a fist fight
heals readily, especially damage that is sustained
during the resilient childhood years. What is
far more difficult to mend is the primary wound
that bullying victims suffer which is damage
to their self-concepts; to their identities.
Bullying is an attempt to instill fear and self-loathing.
Being the repetitive target of bullying damages
your ability to view yourself as a desirable,
capable and effective individual.
There are two ugly outcomes that stem from
learning to view yourself as a less than desirable,
incapable individual. The first ugly outcome
is that it becomes more likely that you will
become increasingly susceptible to becoming
depressed and/or angry and/or bitter. Being
bullied teaches you that you are undesirable,
that you are not safe in the world, and (when
it is dished out by forces that are physically
superior to yourself) that you are relatively
powerless to defend yourself. When you are forced,
again and again, to contemplate your relative
lack of control over the bullying process, you
are being set up for Learned Helplessness (e.g.,
where you come to believe that you can't do
anything to change your ugly situation even
if that isn't true), which in turn sets you
up for hopelessness and depression.
At the same time, you may be learning that
you are helpless and hopeless, you are also
learning how you are seen by bullies, which
is to say, you are learning that you are seen
by others as weak, pathetic, and a loser. And,
by virtue of the way that identity tends to
work, you are being set up to believe that these
things the bullies are saying about you are
true.
It would be great if the average person was
possessed of unshakable self-confidence, but
this just isn't how identity works. Identity
is a social process. Other people contribute
to it. Particularly when people are young and
have not yet survived a few of life's trials,
it is difficult for people to know who they
are and what they are made of. Much of what
passes for identity in the young (and in the
older too) is actually a kind of other-confidence,
which is to say that many people's self-confidence
is continually shored up by those around them
telling them in both overt and subtle ways that
they are good, worthy people. This is one of
the reasons people like to belong to groups
– it helps them to feel good about themselves.
Bullying teaches people that they are explicitly
not part of groups; that they are outcasts and
outsiders. It is hard to doubt the reality of
being an outcast and an outsider when you have
been beaten or otherwise publicly humiliated.
It takes an exceptionally confident (or otherwise
well-supported) person to not internalize bullies'
negative messages and begin bullying yourself
by holding yourself to the same standards that
bullies are applying to you and finding yourself
a failure. In other words, it is rather easy
for bullying victims to note that they have
been beaten up and then to start thinking of
themselves as weak, no-good, worthless, pathetic,
and incompetent. These are the sorts of thoughts
that lead to depression, or, if they are combined
with revenge fantasies, to anger and rage feelings.
Where the first ugly outcome of bullying unfolds
rather immediately in the form of a wounded
self-concept, the second ugly outcome unfolds
more slowly over time. Having a wounded self-concept
makes it harder for you to believe in yourself,
and when you have difficulty believing in yourself,
you will tend to have a harder time persevering
through difficult situations and challenging
circumstances. Deficits in academic performance
can easily occur when bullying victims succumb
to depression or otherwise become demoralized.
They certainly also occur when victims ditch
school to avoid bullies. The deficits themselves
are not the real issue. The real issue is that
if deficits occur for too long or become too
pronounced, the affected children can lose out
on opportunities for advancement and further
study, and ultimately, employment. I've read
retrospective studies where people report having
left school early so as to avoid continued bullying,
and this of course will have altered and limited
the job prospects they have available to them
as adults. Leaving school may be a dramatic
(if occasionally realistic) example of how early
bullying can affect one's life, but there are
surely other ways that anger or depression caused
by bullying harms and developmentally delays
people's progress.
Inevitably, it is the sensitive kids who get
singled out for teasing; the kids who cry easily;
the easy targets. Targeted as they are, many
sensitive kids learn to think of their sensitivity
as a bad thing and to avoid it, and/or channel
it into revenge fantasy and anger. This doesn't
much work when you are a kid (it is difficult
to reinvent yourself without actually moving
to a new place), and it can have negative consequences
in adulthood when the same children, now emotionally
avoidant or angry or cynical adults, find themselves
having difficulty entering into or maintaining
loving and warm intimate relationships.
A similar form of damage comes when bullied
kids internalize negative attitudes concerning
aspects of themselves that set them apart from
others, such as their sexual orientation, minority
group membership, or religious affiliation.
In such cases, bullying sets up a peer pressure
to reject aspects of one's self which are fundamentally
not rejectable, and thus a potentially lifelong
tension gets set up inside that person. If anyone
out there has a better idea for how someone
can end up become a homosexual-hating homosexual,
or a jew-hating jewish person or other seemingly
self-contradictory person I'd like to know about
it.
The following list, culled from my reading
on this subject, summarizes some of the effects
bullying victims may experience:
In the short term:
• Anger
• Depression
• Anxious avoidance of settings in which
bullying may occur.
• Greater incidence of illness
• Lower grades than non-bullied peers
• Suicidal thoughts and feelings (In one
British retrospective bullying experiences survey
I came across (of unknown scientific value),
20% of the sample attempted suicide secondary
to having been bullied, whereas only 3% of participants
who were not bullied attempted suicide).
In the long term:
• Reduced occupational opportunities
• Lingering feelings of anger and bitterness,
desire for revenge.
• Difficulty trusting people
• Interpersonal difficulties, including
fear and avoidance of new social situations
• Increased tendency to be a loner
• Perception of self as easy to victimize,
overly sensitive, and thin-skinned
• Self-esteem problems (don't think well
of self)
• Increased incidence of continued bullying
and victimization
A few interesting observations of factors
that seem to lessen the negative impact that
bullying has on people have come to my attention
during the process of cataloging the ways that
bullying can mess you up. For instance:
Perception of Control
A 2004 Spanish college student sample study
suggests that there is a direct relationship
between victim's perception of control over
their bullying experience and the extent of
long term difficulties they experience as a
result of bullying. This is to say, that bullied
students who believed they were able to influence
and/or escape their bullies reported fewer negative
long term effects from having been bullied than
did students who felt helpless to influence
their situation while it was happening. Perception
of control (and not reality of control) was
key in this study, as no relationship was found
between the various ways that students coped
with being bullied and how they turned out.
I can see the outline of a mechanism working
here (where students who believed they still
had control over their situations avoided developing
learned helplessness and therefore had less
of a chance of experiencing depression). However
the study doesn't really help us to know what
to recommend that people do to lessen their
chances of long term problems. Remember, it
didn't matter what the students actually did;
it only mattered what they believed.
If we go with the idea that believing you
have control over events is important then the
thing to do if you are being bullied is to keep
persevering in your efforts to stop the bullying
as though those efforts will result in your
being able to get the bullying to stop. No single
thing you do may actually stop the bullying
from happening, but the effect of continually
working under the assumption that you haven't
tried all options and may still get the bullying
to stop may do the trick. And, of course, you
might actually get the bullying to stop because
of something you do or don't do.
Rather than try to control the past (which
is impossible), it might make more sense for
hurting victims to get themselves to focus on
what they can control in the present, for the
benefit of their future happiness and fulfillment.
As the poet George Herbert's classic phrase
wisely advises us, "living well is the
best revenge".
Early Exposure
The age at which kids are first bullied seems
to be important according to some research.
Young children who are first bullied during
their pre-teen years appear to be less negatively
impacted in the long term than are children
who are first bullied as teens. People first
bullied as young children report experiencing
higher long-term stress levels than do people
who were never bullied. However, people who
were first bullied as teens report more long
term social withdrawal and more reactivity to
violence than other groups. There is a greater
tendency towards the use of self-destructive
coping mechanisms in the first-bullied-as-teens
group, and an interesting but hard to make sense
of sex difference, where women tend to become
more aggressive as a result of their bullying
experience, and men to demonstrate a greater
tendency to abuse substances. I can't help but
wonder if the increased independence and emancipation
that teens enjoy makes them more likely to experiment
with and then get locked into maladaptive coping
strategies like substance abuse than their younger
peers.
Social Support
Finally, multiple researchers point to the protective
effect that a good social support network has
with regard to bully victim's short and long
term outcomes. Having supportive family members
and peers around who can be confided in when
one has been bullied and who can offer support
and advice tends to lessen bullying's impact.
There are a number of reasons why it makes
sense that a supportive social network should
help, but one of them deserves to be made explicit.
Namely, that when a bullying victim is surrounded
by and bought into a supportive social network,
they are receiving many positive messages about
their worth from network members, and there
are thus fewer opportunities for bullies' negative
messages to find purchase and grow to take over
self-esteem. If bullies can only succeed in
harming people physically; if they do not succeed
in harming them emotionally or harming their
identities, then relatively little lasting damage
can be done.
Undoing the Damage
If the primary damage that bullying causes is
damage to identity and self-esteem, then taking
steps to repair identity and self-esteem are
in order for people looking to heal from past
bullying experiences. What needs to heal, in
most cases, is not the physical body, but rather,
identity and self-concept. Bullied people need
to learn how to feel safe again in the world
(or safe enough). They need to learn that they
are acceptable people who have something to
offer other people. They need to feel in more
control over their moods and urges. They need
to feel again that if they set their mind to
something that they can hope to accomplish it.
These are not modest goals, by any chance, but
they are the sorts of things that bullying victims
need to think about working on.
I'll refer people to our topic centers on
Depression and Anger Management for ideas about
how these problems can be treated. Cognitive
Behavioral Therapy is likely to be of particular
utility with regard to depression and anger
that is secondary to having been bullied because
mood problems that have originated in this way
are very likely to have come into being as a
result of victims having become convinced that
they are worthless and incompetent. In the language
of cognitive behavioral therapy, these would
be thought of as dysfunctional core beliefs
which could be addressed and repudiated using
cognitive restructuring techniques that encourage
people to closely examine such beliefs and dispute
them when they are found to contain exaggerations
and distortions (which these sorts of beliefs
surely will).
Social withdrawal problems and social anxiety
also can be very profitably addressed within
the context of cognitive therapy. One of the
really nice things about a therapy setting is
that role playing can take place between therapist
and patient so as to provide anxious patients
with opportunity to practice and improve how
they will interact in feared but desired social
situations. When basic social fears and skill
deficits have been addressed, it should become
easier for socially withdrawn people to find
the connections they need to finally feel fundamentally
accepted by others.
I typically hate the overused word "empowered",
but I'm going to use it here, because it really
fits here. People who have been bullied have
been fundamentally dis-empowered. Their feelings
of personal safety have been violated and their
belief in their own competency and adequacy
has been brought into question. Such people
may exist in a state of perpetual avoidance
and paralysis. In order to feel good about themselves,
they will need to break through that paralysis
and engage in something that helps them feel
like they are gaining in power. Not power over
others, but power over themselves. No other
people can do this for them. Each paralyzed
person has to decide to empower themselves.
There are a million avenues one can go in
to fulfill an empowerment goal, the one that
is right for any given person being a function
of that person's talents and opportunities.
Anger can be productively funneled into a competitive
endeavor (such as education, business, sports,
gaming or some other means of becoming excellent)
or a creative expression. Fears can be faced
down and courage can be found. I, as author
of this essay, cannot offer specifics on how
this can be accomplished as the right path for
each person will be individual, but I can say
that it is more or less as simple as picking
out a goal you desire to accomplish (which will
assert yourself) and then deciding to make it
happen. As with any self-improvement goal, it
is good to start small, and to dissect larger
goals into their smallest possible elements,
so that each step you take on the way to a big
goal is manageable. You can read more about
this process in our Psychological Self-Tools
self-help book.
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