Sticks and stones .....

So how do you handle personal insults?  Head in the sand?  Buckets of tears?  Anger?  Resentment? ..... do you take on the people head on?  Do you try and justify why they said it? Do you let it eat away at you?  Do you allow them to get away with it?  Do you fall for the overused excuse that they are allowed to have an opinion?  What is your way?

3 weeks ago I met someone I never knew before.  It was providence.  We discovered a mutual and burning dislike of adult bullies.  He is a person in a position of authority, and within 5 sentences to each other we discovered our common interest in this.  So we have spoken again about it after that, and we intend to work together on something to do with this very phenomenon.  

The American Psychological Association defines this kind of bullying as “a form of behaviour in which someone intentionally and regularly causes another person discomfort, insult or pain”

I want to highlight 1 of the 5 types of bullying discussed on 2 sites - 

Social bullying - “Covert bullying is harder to recognise as it is usually carried on continuously behind the bullied person’s back.  It very often manifests itself in what may seem like simple sharing between two or more people, but when it escalates to a level which starts affecting the bullied individual, it becomes unacceptable, unkind and morally wrong.  This form of bullying includes discussing a person continuously with one or more others in a negative way,  referring to someone in a demeaning way in conversation with others and/or being judgemental about personality traits in another.  When this happens on a continuous basis, it goes beyond simple discussion or light commenting and crosses the line to adult bullying”.  

What interested me even more (as it is something I have started to discover in conversation with others), is that these bullies are not perfect people.  Not emotionally, not intellectually, not morally, not in any way.  They are ordinary people, with good days and bad days, good habits and bad habits, good traits and bad traits.  Yes, they are just like everyone else.  Yip, hard to believe hey. 

Recently someone told me that I can be quite nasty.  Accepted.  I do not walk around with a halo attached to my head.  And in this case nastiness is a defense mechanism to protect myself.  However there is a massive difference between nasty and the kind of continual judgement that people that I chatted to, were referring to, These dear folk break down others over and over and over again, demean them, judge them and discuss them - over and over again.  Once is a once-off, ten times is concerning, continually......that is a pattern. 

Talking to your family about another person, or talking to a counsellor or a close friend, this is normal life.  However when that discussion is to only find fault - GET. A. LIFE.  Or better still, make sure that your own life is beyond reproach.  An interesting point is that once a person thinks you are accusing them of adult bullying, they get quite vicious in their reaction.  It says more about them than you.  Their arrogance and ego would never allow them to believe that anyone would stand up to them.  Do not let them confuse you into believing that “having an opinion” and “insulting you” are the same.  Talking to someone about a person for their opinion or  sympathy with your plight, is normal.  Using that on a regular basis to be mean .... makes one wonder if they are not justifying their own behavioural issues by focusing on another person.

So stand up.  And if you find yourself unable to, contact me.  And I will find you some help.  Some guidance.  Some coping mechanisms.  

So this is dedicated to all those people.  And to my new friend.  May the two of us have great success in our plan to write together and address this. 

C’est la vie dear readers. 

Till soon.