What to Do When You, or Your Child, Is the Target
We tend to think of bullying as something that happens to children. But adults get bullied too, by colleagues, supervisors, or even family members. When it’s happening to you, it can be frightening. And when it’s your child who’s being bullied, you feel angry and perhaps helpless. You want to protect them, but you may not know how.
What Is Bullying?
It's an expression of power. The bully is often someone who feels inadequate, but who tries to deal with that by dominating others. Often, a bully has himself or herself been bullied by an adult during childhood and tries to cope with that by internalizing the pattern and inflicting it on others.
How Does it Manifest Itself?
Childhood bullies typically use physical force: pushing, shoving, hitting, or insulting.
And sometimes adult bullies do the same. But they more often engage in subtler attacks: they may criticize, tease, humiliate, sabotage, condescend, exclude, ostracize, spread rumors or engage in online harassment.
What Can Help?
Feeling an inner confidence, which enables one to confront the bully. For example, to help children, the Gracie Jiu-jitsu Academy (and I'm sure other entities as well) teaches children that by learning some elementary jiu-jitsu moves, they will have the inner confidence that enables them to stand up to a bully. And, of course, your support; and intervention, when appropriate.
For adults, too, inner confidence can help. Depending on the nature of the bullying, one's response may range from ignoring it to confronting it.
How Can an Inner Guide Help?
- It can instill a feeling of confidence.
- By using subliminal perceptions, it can understand the bully's feelings and intent.
- It can determine the best response to a given situation of bullying.
If you already have an Inner Guide and are giving it regular time to work, it will help you when these situations arise. And if you don’t yet have an Inner Guide, I’ll soon be offering a new way for you to acquire one.
