situation – firmly, confidently, directly and immediately. You won’t carry this book in your hip pocket for the rest of your life. But if you take on board the ideas and suggestions and use them with a firm commitment to becoming a stronger, more confident person, then hopefully you’ll live each day with purpose, poise and direction.
Now read on and get ready for your world and the world of those around you to be a much better, much happier place…
What Is Bullying?
Bullying is when a person or a group of people continue to pick on another person or group of people to upset or hurt them. The hurt can be physical harm or, by the use of words written or spoken directly or indirectly to the recipient, make them feel sad, hurt, ashamed, rejected or humiliated.
AND WHAT IS NOT BULLYING?
If a one-off argument takes place, this is not normally considered to be bullying, especially if the two people are considered to be of equal power in a social sense.
THE BYSTANDER?
A bystander is someone who is aware of the bullying happening but doesn’t intervene to stop the bullying. Away from where the bullying takes place, the bystander might sometimes talk in a helpful manner to the recipient.
AND THE ‘INSTEPPER’?
This person steps forward in an active manner and by actions or words attempts to both stop the bullying and support the recipient.
WHAT TYPES OF BULLYING ARE THERE?
There are basically three types of bullying.
1. Overt bullying
This is direct, in-your-face bullying with no computer screens, mobile phones, people or bits of paper in between the bully and the recipient. It can be physical or verbal. Physical bullying can include hitting, kicking, pinching, pushing or damaging the property of someone else. Verbal bullying can include put-downs, racist or homophobic comments, insults, teasing or verbal assault. Sometimes it can even be a facial expression.
2. Covert bullying
This is more subtle and harder to detect. It is not physical, more out of the way and hidden. It is intended to harm someone’s social reputation and/or humiliate them. People don’t readily acknowledge that it exists because it is out of sight. Some common examples include:
3. Cyberbullying
This is bullying that occurs via information or communication technologies. It can happen via the Internet, text messages, email, social networking sites and other programs where images and text can be stored and/or shared. It can be overt or covert. It can happen at any time, be public or private. The audience to the bullying can be just the recipient or much, much broader.
The Effects of Bullying
People respond to bullying in many ways. Sometimes the response is immediate, such as when being physically bullied. People are obviously aware of the hit, shove or trip. However, in lots of situations, people don’t always know they are being bullied until later on. This can happen if the bullying is low key and hidden, such as a series of personal ‘put-downs’ or social exclusion. In these cases the victim may believe that they are at fault but they don’t know what they are doing wrong. It can sometimes take a while for a person to recognise they are being bullied.
Initially bullying affects a person’s sense of self. ‘I’ve felt okay before, so why am I starting to feel bad… I really must be a social loser?’ or ‘What’s wrong with me that people are acting like this towards me?’ When this happens, victims become very aware of their behaviour and psychologically ‘zoom in’ to everything they say and do, so as not to stand out in any way. As you can imagine their anxiety thermometer gets very hot.
When a person thinks that it’s their behaviour that is ‘causing’ them to be bullied, the easiest way to deal with it is to ‘avoid’ – hang out in the library, the toilets or even not come to school in the first place. They feel like a failure and would rather be on their own than ‘cause’ someone to make or think negative comments about them or attack them physically. Together with avoiding certain situations, when a person ‘thinks’ about what is happening, they can feel nervous, teary and shaky. Their heart might race when they know they have to walk past the place where the bully usually hangs out. And they may also spend long periods of time on their own, thinking about what they may have done wrong or why people are being so mean. They might even imagine how to get revenge. All this thinking and worrying can certainly make a person feel very tired, which again makes it hard to think clearly and look at options and plan what needs to be done.
It’s not hard to imagine that when you’re feeling worried and tired your concentration and interest in your schoolwork or hobbies may be affected. Your marks may drop and you don’t have the motivation to complete your homework, which will only add to the problem as now you have your teachers and parents on your back! Often all of this leads to sleeping and eating problems. What else needs to go wrong? It’s reasonable to say that when a person is being bullied nearly every aspect of their life is affected, especially if it is over a long period of time. Depression and anxiety are common, indeed quite ‘normal’, responses to being bullied.
The Scenarios and Strategies
The scenarios are all set out in a standard and similar pattern. The story is told, before a variety of strategies are suggested. The strategies written are guidelines only. You might find there are similar strategies in a number of the stories. Hopefully this will be reaffirming for you. The scenarios don’t have to be read in any particular order. You can search via the titles in the contents to look for something that might be relevant to you, or browse through them – they’re in no particular order, but cover the range of common bullying situations described in the earlier section on types of bullying.
Sometimes the strategy is simply a continuation of the story. Perhaps the character in the story has thought through the situation and taken a course of action that requires no intervention or assistance from someone outside. By their words and/or actions, they are demonstrating a worthwhile strategy to help them resolve the problem.
#1
Simon – who gets an
orange thrown at him
by a group of boys
Type: Overt – Physical
‘Sorry!’ I
