Bully

Today, I’m going to talk about bullying. I’m sure we have all come across bullies at some stage in our lives – be it at kindergarten, primary school, secondary school, college, university, work, social settings such as gym, places of worship, and even among our family members or relatives. A bully is an abusive person who bullies others to assert authority, who intimidates others for his own interest, or who seeks to hurt others. A bully to me is either a coward, an insecure person with low self-esteem, an attention seeker or all of these. He becomes a bully either through his environment e.g. being raised by either bullying parent(s) or among bullying siblings/friends. They adopt this abuse and in turn bully others (maybe as retaliation?).

It can happen at home...

...or at school, workplace, social gathering place etc

Bullying may involve verbal harassment or physical assault and may be directed towards a particular group of people based on prejudice towards race, religion, culture, sexuality (gender-orientation or sexual preference) or ability. There’s also indirect bullying where the bullied victim is threatened into social isolation or being ostracised and it may be as damaging if not more than direct bullying. So these types of abuse – physical, mental/psychological, verbal, non-verbal (demonstrated via action such as silent treatment) and sexual – are all forms of bullying.

Who do bullies bully? Like I mentioned above, it’s to assert authority, to intimidate others or just plain cruel desire to hurt another. The bully is actually a coward who’s insecure enough that he has to resort to this despicable act to assert himself. So those abusive parents that we read about are just plain bullies, although they are actually quite pathetic to resort to bullying their own child(ren).

I’m no expert (nor trained) to provide advice on how to address this menace but there is an abundant of information available online on how to deal with it such as this. We also play a role: children/students can be advised not to bully their siblings or peers or even animals. We can also deal with the bullies, probably provide them with the counselling, advice and guidance they need, and above all, it must be impressed on them that bullying is not acceptable. Help them build their self-esteem for one and give them attention they crave for.

Because it’s not just the bullied who need help but also the bullies.