Bullying and its effects.

     Bullying can have profound effects on a person’s health; and there are many types of bullying.  What I mostly want to talk about are bullies who are also adults.  Though when most people think of bullies they think of children, this is false.  Adults can be bullies to each other, and though it may come as a surprise, some adults can be bullies to their own children.  Bullying can lead to depression, social anxiety, general anxiety, nightmares, and it perpetuates the cycle of bullying.  Bullying is based on an imbalance of power, both real and imagined.  If one person wields more power than the other, or if one person perceives the other as more powerful, then there is the potential for bullying. 

     Not all relationships with a power imbalance lead to bullying.  This is what makes it particularly difficult to imagine a parent bullying their child.  There are different types of bullies; some do not care at all about the feelings of others and seek only to cause pain; some may not even mean to bully; some may use language to bully others; and others may resort to physical means to bully others.  Some examples in the real world would include a boss who makes a sarcastic remark about the speed or skill at which a task is being done.  This is bullying, even if unintentional, and words hurt more than people realize.

     How many times have we been told “sticks and stones may break our bones, but words can never hurt us?”  Those of us who have been at the end of a verbal bully know that this isn’t true.  Words can leave a mark just as deep, if not deeper, than physical wounds.  We carry those words with us for our entire lives, and if it is a parent doing the verbal abusing the damage can be especially wounding.  I am not trying to discount the experiences of physical bullying and abuse, which is heinous in and of itself.  Those that are unfortunate enough to have undergone physical bullying know that it rarely travels alone and is accompanied by other types of bullying.

     Physical bullying by an adult can be administered to a child as a form of “discipline.”  It is often said there is a fine line between spanking and child abuse.  Studies have shown, over and over, the negative effects of spanking on a child.  Also, hitting a child with a belt, paddle, or switch is without a doubt child abuse, as is a hit or slap to the face/head.  It is especially damaging to young children when they do not associate the spanking with the action they were doing.  This is not a matter of opinion: http://www.legal-info-legale.nb.ca/en/spanking_disciplining_children.  The intent of the discipline doesn’t matter, physical discipline is often bullying.  The child is helpless, and this type of bullying leads to a distrust of adults and a view that adults want to hurt them.

     It is sad to report that unfortunately there is very little a person can do about an adult bully.  They are often set in their ways and have their behaviour so ingrained that there is no desire to change.  They also have very little desire in “talking it out.”

     I have been bullied many times, many ways, for many years.  These events have crushed my self-esteem, and made it difficult to form loving attachments.  That is not to say that I wasn’t, at times, a bully myself.  To those people, I would like to deeply apologize for my actions; it is only upon being an adult and fully being able to understand the ramifications of my actions that I can see how much damage I have caused.  We are often told to ignore bullies and they will go away seeking more “fun” prey, and what they do is predation, but by then the damage has, more often than not, been done.

     What recourse is there for those who have been bullied?  Report the bullying, and people need to take it seriously.  It is a very serious event with long term, and deep running, effects.  As an individual undergoing bullying, stand tall and look them in the eye and tell them to stop.  This may or may not work, however, and especially if a child is being bullied by an adult may make matters far worse than originally suffered.

     Have you ever been bullied?  Are you currently being bullied?  How did/do you deal with bullies?

--JJM