What To Do About Bullying: 30+ Strong and Practical Tips

What To Do About Bullying

Although in many ways, society has made progress in acknowledging the harm caused by bullying, unfortunately, aggressive individuals are also given fuel by the information age. The internet and mobile gadgets give harassers tools to spread hurt more quickly and widely than before. They can now mistreat others anonymously, which often gives them boldness to be more vicious than they would in person. And because their identity is hidden, it makes it difficult to confront or resolve.

Although bullying isn’t the main focus of this website, it is part of what falls under the broader umbrella of the blog’s theme: extraordinary friendships. As a parent, a teacher in the alternative school system and a person of faith, I take interest in the well-being of those who are marginalized or excluded from society and believe if we value human life, we have to ready ourselves to stand up for those who are oppressed–whether they be middle-school aged tormentors or adult bullies in the workplace.

This article, then, collects research aimed at understanding, preventing and responding to child and adult bullying. The sub-topics include raising awareness about mistreatment, exploring why people bully, identifying bad behavior and 30+ tips for responding.

What Is Behind Child and Adult Bullying

People are often targeted for mistreatment because they are identified as being different than the majority.

Differences may include:

• Skin color
• Cultural or ethnic background
• Body type or size
• Style of dress
• Mannerisms
• Speech patterns
• Religious beliefs or practices
• Economic standing
• Social or other status

What Is Bullying

We may not even like to use the term bullying because the word, in itself, has implications. Our discomfort probably stems from not wanting to admit that we are being accused of being a weak or inferior human being by another person.

Physical abuse is the easiest to identify and the most likely type of mistreatment to be reported. But social bullying also includes verbal and relationship abuse and other types of manipulation.

Because of our desire to avoid being the target of mockery or abusive treatment, we may even try to shrug off bad behaviors aimed to harm us. But any act aimed at harming us is worth identifying and trying to understand.

Bullying can be particularly harmful when it is prolonged over months and years of time. And unfortunately, this is often the case, as bullies–who are often angry themselves–may find a sad strength in continuing to make others feel inferior. If they get away with mistreating others a few times, whether it is blatant or subtle, on the playground or in the workplace, they will likely repeat the behavior.

In school or in a hostile work environment, behavior subtracts from well-being when:

• It makes a person feel afraid, helpless, inferior, hurt, hopeless, alone or shamed.
• It causes stress levels to spike or prompts anxiety cycles, particularly when it impacts a person’s physical health.
• It makes a person lose energy or motivation for socializing and causes them to withdraw from interacting with others.

This includes instances of bullying which happens online which may include posting threatening messages, personal or doctored photos, or untrue statements and accusations. This would include threatening emails or any type of effort to rally others against a person online. This could happen at the hand of a friend or a stranger, particularly if through using a false identity or other scam, they are able to trick you into revealing information they can then use against you.

Why People Bully

While we don’t often feel like empathizing with the mean kid on the bus or the attacking person at the office, trying to understand their possible motivations can help us choose the best response to their actions.

Often times, aggressive and manipulative behavior (including passive aggressiveness) is a learned behavior. Bullies often pick up poor social habits from childhood influences, including other children, relatives, violent media and aggressive sports or games. In competitive career fields, winning at the expense of others may be perceived as a valuable trait of the strong.

In addition, some perceived bullies may have deficits themselves. They may lack appropriate coping skills or have never acquired normal social cues. They may be extra sensitive, ultra-defensive and be prone to exaggerated displays of emotion. They could even have medically diagnosable disorders which impact their ability to experience empathy or remorse.

In some cases bullying is intentional and calculated, but consider that in many cases, the offending party does not wake up in the morning plotting to ruin his or her target. Sometimes the flaw feeding aggressive behavior is ignorance or lack of awareness. It is possible, in limited cases, that the person has been socially conditioned to believe his or behavior is normal and harmless.

They may accept common behaviors like acting aggressively toward other drivers, berating store clerks, and arguing over sporting competition as common place and may not notice if their own behavior is abnormal or over-exaggerated compared to the norm.

In addition, people may pick on you out of jealousy, a desire to look or be popular or to distract from their own flaws and inadequacies.

By changing your attitude towards bullying you can help regain a sense of control.

When we reframe the way we see aggressive people, choosing to see them as angry or wounded people rather than monsters who we should fear, it gives us perspective needed to stay calm and defuse the situation.

We have to accept there are things we cannot control in life, and that includes other people’s emotions and bad intentions. But we can control how much time we choose to dwell on the harmful things that happen to us and how much time we expose ourselves to people who take away from our well-being.

Some Tips to Keep In Mind When Bullied In School or In a Hostile Work Environment

• Whether the person being targeted is a child or adult, it can be helpful to talk to a caring person about your feelings. Bullies’ untrue statements often lose their power in the face of compassion.
• Proactively ask others to help support you.
• It is common to not have a good response ready the first few times someone mistreats you, but once a person shows a pattern of targeting you, you can prepare ahead of time what you will say the next time they try to manipulate you or make you feel inferior.
• Stay confident. Hold your head high. Look them in the eye. Don’t slouch or stare at the floor or pretend you don’t seem them. Bullies often thrive from preying on those who appear to already feel bad about themselves, because they are less likely to challenge the bad behavior.
•  Don’t show the person emotion. If they see they are frustrating you, it will likely further feed their drive to harm you.
• When possible, choose not to spend time with aggressive people and choose not to frequent places where they tend to congregate, whether it be a certain area of the lunchroom or the mail room at the office.
• When someone whose behavior is harmful is present, walk away.
• Work with others to assert a better standard for treating others in your school or workplace. Send a group message that bad behavior will not be tolerated.
• While it is difficult, try hard not to take it personally. Mean people are not the authority in life and just because they assert their words confidently does not make them true. It actually makes them mean.
• Do not allow people to make you feel as though you deserve to be bullied or that you are somehow inferior or unworthy of belonging. If you attempt to generally care for others, and they are attacking, your behavior is actually superior to theirs.
• Even if they point out a valid weakness in you, keep your strengths in mind. No person, including your attacker, is perfect. They display a combination of strengths and weaknesses just as you do.
• Go to an authority. If the previous suggestions do not reduce or eliminate the behavior, go further. Seek help from a teacher or boss, an HR representative, legal counsel or–in extreme cases–law enforcement.
• Find healthy ways to deal with stress such as exercising, praying, journaling or breathing deeply.
• If you speak to the person, try not to sink to trying to be harmful. State calmly that you are not interested in being around someone who acts like they do and walk away. This sends them a message that they do not control your emotions, nor can they imprison you in a harmful situation.
• Have realistic expectations. A bully is probably not going to stop a lifetime of conditioned behavior because you confront them one time. Continue to confidently dismiss, avoid and report harmful behavior as often as needed.
• When you see bullying happen, as a child or an adult, don’t watch, laugh or ignore. If you do, you become part of what harms the person and you affirm the person’s aggressive behavior. This may give them the fuel they need to target others, including you, at a future date.
• If you witness someone being mistreated, interrupt it. You don’t have to interrupt it loudly or even directly. Create a distraction, change the subject, tell the person being targeted that someone wants to see them. Walk up to the person being targeted, stand next to them and engage them in conversation.
• Ask the person acting aggressively to stop on behalf of the person being targeted.
• Comfort the person who has been publicly shamed or put on the spot.
• Both children and adults should avoid isolated areas and children should try to avoid unsupervised areas. Most, although not all, bullies purposefully look for chances to manipulate others when authority figures are absent.
• If you are a student or employee, ask your principal or employer what their policy is for addressing bullies. If they do not have one, ask them to develop a plan for how harassment will be handled.
• Share tips about how to cope with aggressive individuals with others being targeted.
• Look for ways to make new friends, particularly seeking out people who are like-minded or who have similar interests. No person can be liked by everyone. Choose to find people you enjoy spending time with and avoid those who take away from your well-being

What To Do If you Have a Tendency to Be Aggressive

You probably don’t label yourself a bully, but you may recognize you have some traits or habits that can make you appear like one. Do you always think you’re right? Do you get unnecessarily loud? Are you prone to physical outbursts where you slam doors, throw or break things or make physical contact with others? Do you overreact, choosing disproportionate reactions like calling people names, belittling them or swearing when you are frustrated?

The truth of it is we have probably all harmed someone else at one time or another, and in that moment, could’ve been perceived as a bully by others.

If you know you sometimes display aggression or meanness, seek counseling as well as support from friends. Ask peers who exhibit good self control for tips on how they keep their cool in irritating situations. Try to pause and think carefully before reacting and if you know you will act unadmirably if you speak, explain that you need time to process your thoughts before responding. Distract yourself from dwelling on a person who irritates you or makes you mad. Check your phone, doodle, write to do lists, think of good memories, plan something you’d like to do later. Don’t allow yourself to simply sit and fester about your dislike for someone until you explode.

Apologize to those you have made feel uncomfortable. Staying connected to those you hurt forces you to empathize with how they feel after being mistreated and makes you less likely to do it again in the future.

You don’t have to like or admire everyone, but strong people don’t gang up on the weak. They find ways to act civilly toward everyone, extending respect and maintaining peace. Limit the time you are around those you are tempted to be unkind to.

Remember, you may be hurting others, but in the end, you’re losing people’s respect and acting in a way that is unadmirable. You’re allowing yourself to develop habits that may eventually get you into more explosive confrontations or may warn you consequences like suspension, expulsion, termination or legal prosecution.

What To Do When the Bullying Happens Online

• Don’t respond to aggressive or inappropriate messages online. Erase them or block them if you have the ability. If not, report them to the administrator of the social network or site where they are posting messages.
• Remember, the bully is looking for a reaction. They draw a sick sense of power from feeling like they made you feel bad or angry. If you don’t respond, you sometimes deflate their motivation for acting out.
• Print off or save harmful messages so you can use them to prove bad behavior if needed. But put them away somewhere where you won’t see them and don’t revisit them. Re-reading or even re-thinking about assaulting behavior is bad for your well-being.
• If behavior is threatening, contact the police.

Current Laws on School Bullying:

Several new bullying, harassment and intimidation laws went into effect July 1, 2010.

NRS 388.122 – “Bullying” is defined as a willful act or course of conduct on the part of one or more pupils which is not authorized by law and which exposes a pupil repeatedly and over time to one or more negative actions which is highly offensive to a reasonable person and is intended to cause and actually causes the pupil to suffer harm or serious emotional distress.

NRS 388.123 – “Cyber-bullying” is defined as bullying through the use of electronic communication.

NRS 388.124 – “Electronic communication”, as mentioned above, is  defined as the communication of any written, verbal or pictorial information through the use of an electronic device, including, without limitation, a telephone, a cellular phone, a computer or any similar means of communication.

NRS 388.125 – “Harassment” is defined as a willful act or course of conduct that is not otherwise authorized by law and is highly offensive to a reasonable person; and intended to cause and actually causes another person to suffer serious emotional distress.

NRS 388.129 – “Intimidation” is defined as a willful act or course of conduct that is not otherwise authorized by law and is highly offensive to a reasonable person and poses a threat of immediate harm or actually inflicts harm to another person or to the property of another person.

NRS 388.135 – Bullying, cyber-bullying, harassment and intimidation are prohibited. A member of the board of trustees of a school district, any employee of the board of trustees, including, without limitation, an administrator, principal, teacher or other staff member, or any pupil shall not engage in bullying, cyber-bullying, harassment or intimidation on the premises of any public school, at an activity sponsored by a public school or on any school bus.

Want to read more? Meet 10 Expert Authors on What What to Do About Bullying. See advice from these leading experts here or follow these links to resources for what to do about bullying, websites about bullying and quotes on bullying.

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