A Month of Mays: May We Understand Why Bullying Happens
Bullying is a big concern for parents of school-aged children. It is certainly something that I keep an eye out for with my own children, and I’ve also witnessed a handful of incidents while they play after school. In the 12 years since the time my oldest entered PreK, I’ve also noticed that the number of discussions about bullying has increased in the general public. But the current climate wants to treat bullying as something that a small number of troubled kids do. Adults seems to expect the children to stop bullying by simply telling them “Don’t be a bully”. In my view, nothing will change unless this approach changes.
Bullying is rampant, not just within the classrooms, but pretty much everywhere. In our homes, in our workplaces, in our houses of worship. Have you ever noticed that most people can remember being bullied at some point in their lives, but hardly anyone would admit to being a bully? If we really want to stop bullying, we need to teach everyone how to recognize their own inner bully first.
Why We Are All Victims of Bullying
Like I mentioned in my earlier post, we’re all hypocrites. I believe everyone, including good people with good intentions, displays bully-like behaviors sometimes. No matter how civilized we’d like to believe we are, our behaviors are heavily influenced by our survival instinct. Our brains are naturally on high alert for anything that makes us feel insecure. When we feel threatened, we go into fight or flight mode, and a bully is someone who has gone into the “fight” mode. We might physically hurt someone or emotionally hurt someone. If we don’t feel that we can win the fight, we might choose the “flight” mode. But this doesn’t get rid of our insecurity. So, later on, we’ll find someone else who appears weaker and “fight” them instead to assure a sure “win”. As is the case, we’ve all been a bully at some point, and we’ve all been on the receiving end of bullying also.
In the End, It’s Up to Us
There’s a bully behind every bully. If you’d like, you can continue blaming generations after generations of past bullies for your own bad behavior. But that has the potential to subject the future generations to bullying that stemmed from you. I don’t want you to beat yourself up for being a bully, but if we want to stop the chain of bullying, then each of us has to take responsibility for our choices and actions. We have to say sorry when we’ve hurt someone. We need to learn to forgive those who hurt us. Before that happens, some of us may need to forgive ourselves for inviting bullying by appearing weak. We also need to learn to manage our insecurities. For that, we need to accept our own weaknesses and “negative” traits so that we don’t feel threatened when someone else finds them.
More we forgive and accept ourselves, more confident we become. And more confident we are, fewer triggers causes us to lash out. We become more capable of forgiving others, and we hold on to fewer resentments. To put it simply, in order to stop bullying, we need to recognize our own inner bully and stop bullying ourselves.