Jay McGraw's Life Strategies for Dealing with Bullies by Jay McGraw

Author:Jay McGraw
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aladdin
Published: 2008-04-25T04:00:00+00:00

5

ARE YOU BEING BULLIED?

Now, as we talked about before, some of you probably don’t see yourselves as anything like any of the children mentioned in this book. Maybe you think some of the examples here don’t really describe how you get along with your classmates or with the children in your neighborhood. You’re not a victim for any bully, right?

Well, I’m not going to say for sure that you’re being bullied by anybody right now. Hopefully you aren’t and won’t ever be. But let’s just take a close look at how you’re treated by some of the other people around you.

Are there people who make you feel that you can’t be yourself around them, and that you need to hide your feelings or ideas just to hang out with them? Do you have friends you follow along with even when you may not want to so that you won’t have to worry about them freezing you out of their group? If so, you might be being bullied.

Are there people who make you nervous when they come around because you’re afraid they may pick on you? Maybe they’ve never done anything to you that you can recall, but they’ve made it clear that crossing them somehow is an unsafe idea. That is the sort of silent intimidation that can lead up to bullying.

Bullying doesn’t have to begin with a really hurtful action against you. Sometimes others test you. They take verbal jabs at you just to see how you’ll respond. They look to see how you carry yourself and who your friends are or aren’t. They size you up. And if they think they can take advantage of you, bullies will strike.

Many times bullies try to act at first as if they’re just joking around. They bump into you “by accident”—a lot. They push. They insult. They “borrow” and don’t return. But this sort of behavior isn’t done in jest, especially not if you don’t welcome it. It is part of the early stages of bullying.

Or maybe it’s a “class clown” type who is always making a crack about your clothes, your weight, your height, your hair color, your skin color, your religion, your country of origin, your parents’ country of origin, or anything else about you that he or she sees as “different.” Sure, at first it seems like it’s “just joking around.” But maybe it hurts deeper than you want anyone to know. And so you just hide the pain.

Maybe it only happens once. But maybe it happens a second time. And then a third. Are you being bullied? You sure are.

Bullying is really just any type of intimidation of one person by another. Bullies don’t have to threaten you with force. Maybe they can’t—maybe you’re even bigger and stronger. But maybe the bully is more popular and is using that popularity to leave you out of activities or social groups. If so, you’re being bullied.

You have the power to end bullying. But the first step toward taking control of the situation is to first acknowledge that it’s happening.

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