Bullying Is Not Just Physical

Tweet

I was bullied a lot at High School. It was usually physical, and involved being punched or kicked around. There was some name calling but usually it was only a threat when it got physical. In the 70's I was looking forward to taking part in our annual schol walk. Having participated in previou years. Friends going on the walk warned me that the bullies planned on throwing me in the canal and claiming that I fell in. As long as someone completed the walk, I could still collect the sponsorship money. I didn’t have to walk myself. I dropped out at the last minute. Finding I wasn’t there, the bullies got really angry. They were so intent on putting me in the muddy canal they ended up throwing someone else in instead, which ruined his clothes as the canal was extremely muddy. I felt really bad that in avoiding conflict, someone else had to suffer, but I realized that bullies don’t really care who they hurt. They need someone to target and don’t really care who it is. It is often less personal that it initially appears and the bullying victim is often just one of multiple targets they have. The worst part of being bullied is how friends who see it going on don’t do anything to help. They don’t want to get involved, or become targets of the bully themselves. They won’t break up a fight or act as witnesses to events they plainly aw with their own eyes. Some will also be friends with the bully, and excuse his or her behaviour as ‘just his way, or his treatment of you as just a bit of fun. Many bullies have back up, so if you do seem in danger of successful retaliation or defence, their lieutenants jump in to help out. A counter attack might even get you reported to the teachers, staff, family or other authorities as though you are the one bullying. Friends suddenly get shocked to find you move from passive to aggressive. The reprisals by the bullies can then get really nasty. My teachers saw the boys rough-housing as good character building with the bullying victims as just not tough enough to make it. They turned a blind eye to and even encouraged bullying as a brutal exercise in social Darwinism. Towards the end of my schooling many bullies left as they had little interest in actual education. School actually got pleasant for staying on for the optional extra years of the sixth form. Bullying today takes different forms. Unwanted physical contact is rare, other than from patronizing social well-being staff who think stroking me like I’m a pet should pacify me. Bullying is mostly from people who give a superficial sense of liking me while continually interrupting me in mid-conversation with others, effectively derailing others from being able to speak. If someone gets a name, date or detail slightly wrong, this is seen as an excuse to derail them from the conversation, and usurp them to be able to dominate the listeners, who rarely correct the behaviour. Other friends who have met them feel as if they have encountered elitists who are reluctant to even giving them the time of day. A few friends have felt that my other friends make them so unwelcome that they have no desire to meet them again. I realized that some of my friends, not all by any means, have their heads so far up their own backsides that they can’t see daylight any more. One friend openly stated his resentment that it wasn’t fair that I have more friends than he does, and that was at one of my own birthday parties. It was as if he saw me as competing with him for affection from others. He has snubbed invitations sent out since then, which I am grateful about. I do frequently find myself cut off from group activities, isolated, pushed into a watch but don’t try to join in role and sometimes virtually sent to Coventry and isolated. This was particularly bad with my family. My sister ultimately refused to even have me round for Christmas, forcing my Mum to decide between us, me out on my own for dinner with a nine of my sister’s brood was the choice my mum felt compelled to make. My sister made me easily expendable. Minor mistakes from the past are often re-dredged up and thrown back in my face with one friend of friends I still have to tolerate today. Strangely, some such bullying as he peddles in wilful predatory pedantic talking at people rather than to them or with them monologues can get so under my skin that even when the bully isn’t present and hasn’t been seen for months, I still sometimes feel as if he are present jeering at every mistake I make, and eager to exploit any moment of discomfort and distress I feel. It is as though they are living rent free in my mind. By the time I do encounter him again, I feel additional bitterness about stuff he never even did. Trying to talk to the bullies or deal with them is likely to backfire when so many friends seem to fawn on their every word. Reaction by me would make me look like the unreasonable one. Without such power over others the bully would be easy to deal with. It can end up becoming a no-win situation. Be bullied, marginalized, alienated and treated like a fool at every turn, but put up with it, or protest, react, respond and retaliate and cease to be seen as the easy prey for the self-appointed group alphas who others fail to see dominating their every activity too. You have to turninto a monster to fight back and that just frightens off everyone who previously liked you. That is the kind of bullying I hate the most. The thug who wants to push people in a canal is an amateur by comparison. Youtube - Arthur Chappell