Question

1. What are the commonalities you notice among your experiences of Bullying?

Answer 1

Bullying is a behavior that involves intentional and repeated acts of harming, threatening and humiliating others. The person who is on the receiving end of bullying has trouble protecting themselves as they hav enot done anything to cause the bully yo act like this to them. They may cause moderate to severe harm their peers, which must be controlled. In order to control such behavior, it is important to know the casue of the behavior. There are certain commonalities that psychologists have found among the bullies, generally.

Bullying starts at a very early age. According to some psychologists it starts as early as the age of being a toddler or a pre-schooler. By this age, they start to form a pattern of the way they speak to others. Whether it is offensive, or threatening. If this remains unchecked, then the person tends to grow with this. Therefore, in early stages of development, it is important for caregivers to supervise the play and interaction of their ward with their peers.

The other commonality found among bullies is the fact that they believe that their peers like them for what they are and how "strong" they are. They are not able to take perspective of their peers that they are not liked by their peers.

They also have a low self esteem. An unsupervised upbringing causes a person to become a bully as they tend to have a low self esteem. Those who have a low self esteem feel the need to constnatly defend themselevs. Bullying is an aggressive behavior that results when a person feels the need to defend themselves and belittle others to bolster their self esteem.

Bullies also seem to have the tendency to be in charge of someone. They feel the need of being in power or control of someone. Since they have had a difficult upbringing, where they were not in control and were submissive, now that they see a channel to be dominant and act out their need for control on easy target as per them.

Bullying can be of different types and all types of bullying seems to be a result of making oneself feel powerful and belittling others. Which is nothing but a way to bolster their self esteem.