Life before 2008 19 Jan 2008 12:40 pm
A Bully’s Greatest Tactic…
is to get you alone.
“Meet me in the back of the bus.”
“Be at the back of the school at 3:30 or you’re toast.”
“Can’t we just meet somewhere and talk about this?” (accompanied by no break in the insults, invalidations, and interupptions….)
Their second greatest tactic is to get you to believe you are broken, wrong, ugly, etc.
Recently there was a major case in the news involving online bullying on a Myspace page that resulted in a teen’s suicide. A quick search of the words “online bully” and in the first set of results there is the headline, “Schoolyard bullies get nastier online…“. Why is that? Because they have more autonomy. Getting their victim alone is the primary goal because then they are free to do what they are most confident they can…manipulate and intimidate.
When they can’t gain access to their target, they get a sidekick to do their work for them. We sometimes call them “enablers”. They think their bully-boss is the coolest, the “right” one, the champion. They do the bidding so they can get what they most want…love and appreciation. These enablers fear they won’t get it if they don’t do the work, so they turn a blind eye to any wrongdoing and proceed. In the abense of a sidekick, bullies often turn to stalking…leaving anonymous notes, prank calls, hit-and-run type attacks.
These are people who don’t respond well to boundaries because they’ve never had any set for them. And yet, the only defense against them IS boundaries. It can run the gamut from refusing to discuss certain topics, to staying away from their stomping ground, to getting a police order so they leave *you* alone. Their lack of restraint and personal responsibility is what one is up against and without it, external forces are necessary to end the abuse.
The town grieving the loss of Megan has made cyber-bullying against the law. Hopefully, that is an “external force” that will speak the language loudly enough to would-be bullies. I wish them well. By setting boundaries the world tells bullies that we won’t be their doormats; that they can take their toxic behavior elsewhere. Terrorists can’t be negotiated with.
