The bully is bullying you because he/she is getting off (enjoying) your reaction.
Change your reaction.
Crazy as it sounds, this method works.
When the bully strikes next, do the opposite of what it is the bully expects you to do.
Guessing what the bully expects
This is not easy because bully's belong to a freak world of their own, so guessing what they expect you to do is pretty unfathomable.
Basically, the bully has a strange personality which has been shaped through his/her upbringing and they really do think they are normal.
If you mimic them - say back the same things to them or do the same things to them.. . they get more riled up.
Why? If they enjoy it ... so why?
Because for the bully it is a one-way pattern.
Like this: They're supposed to abuse, critise, use sarcasm, make commands, etc, to you and you are supposed to cringe in fear.
Change that pattern.
Here's what you do:
Next time the Bully starts at you and you feel the emotional pain. Get away for five minutes or more and analyse what the bully said or did. When you are calm and at a time when the bully is calm. Refer back to the previous incident.
These are your tools (weapons if you like) so memorise these phrases.
- People don't always hear what you hear
- People don't always think what you think
- People don't always see what you see
- People don't always feel what you feel
- People don't always notice what you notice
- People don't always smell what you smell
- People don't always remember what you remember
The idea is not to give the bully a lecture on this.
The bully behaves like a two year old but doesn't have the brain of a two year old. They know the factors listed above but they choose to ignore them so that they can enjoy annoying the living daylights out of you.
For example:
Bully might say, "Your room is dirty and horrible!"
It is tempting to say "Well don't go in there then." or "Your room is worse." But remember that the bully is after getting a certain response from you. Maybe they expect you to rush in and clean it to their satisfaction. Maybe this line has worked for them in the past.
It's no use saying "I think my room is great!" either and... whatever you do do not offer explanation, "I was going to do it but my bicycle broke down and then I had to help my friend find their Mum." Bullies love crawling explanations, it gives them a power rush.
You need to get the bully thinking. Bully's actually have never come out of the junior primary stage of thinking, (even old ones) so get your bully, or bullies, out of that stage and to a higher level of mental maturity.
Try to think of it this way... The bully is just airing their bad opinion because they are miserable and were bullied themselves as a child. The bully actually thinks of themselves as a kind of Hitlar, a Sergeant Major, a Captain of the Enterprise (Staring in Star Trek and on a mission to save the universe).
Method
Retire for 5 minutes, analyse the problem. The idea is to change the response so that the bully doesn't get what they want. Actually, by leaving the room you are probably giving the bully an expected response but it is really hard to stay in the same room with a bully, so you may need to get out for 5 minutes just to think about how to respond.
Whatever you do you must - change the response you give.
If you previously ran and cleaned your room, don't clean it. Even if you think it is dirty too and you don't like it dirty. Don't clean it. You must stop giving them the expected response and you have to figure out what the Bully expected you to do or say.
In further analysis of bullying behaviour I have to say that I think many bullies actually pick on a factor which they know will aggravate you.
Eg; Bully is aware that you yourself hate having a dirty room and that it may be bothering you that you havn't had time to clean it.
So they deliberately pick on this in order to hurt you.
Bullies will often use this ploy to distract you to get you to do something else because they are trying to do something. It is a distraction technique and often it comes from techniques used by their parents on them when they were very small.
As an example, suppose you have something the bully wants, eg: a nice boyfriend/girlfriend, the bully may have no success in getting the attention of the boyfriend/girlfriend, so they will try to distract you so that you appear totally looney to everyone else.
If you get angry and shout, your nice boyfriend/girlfriend might leave you. So this is what the bully aims to make you do.
It is not that the bully wants to see you unhappy or alone. The bully wants your boyfriend/girlfriend for themselves. Bullies are usually really up-themselves and so get off on the idea that they are some kind of personality magnet. Getting your friends, your boyfriend, your girlfriend is for them, its for the way it makes them feel. They don't care about how you might feel.
Bullies do not have empathy
Bullies are like cats, very self interested. They only worry about the effect things have on themselves. Actually cats are more sensible.
They derive their enjoyment out of seeing your pain and so the best thing is to not let any personal information slip out.
Or you can let slip 'opposite' things if you are very clever. That way when the bully comes to annoy you about something they think you are passionate about, it won't annoy you at all and probably you forgot the false rumour you started, yourself.
eg: I put out a false rumour that 'I like strawberry jam', OK
Bully comes to annoy me by saying "All the strawberry jam in the local supermarket has been discovered to be tainted."
I've probably forgotten what I said about strawberry jam because it wasn't important in the first place.
Try it for experiment. You will see that the Bully leaves off that particular tack because he/she is not getting the reaction they wanted.
Bullies are trying to hurt! They know they are hurting. Its what they want. They enjoy it.
I am sick of the 'Be kind to bullies attitude' which persists.
Bullies are the ones who should be in the psychiatric hospital seeking treatment, not their victims but how do you get them there? They know they're being nasty to others alright but they don't want treatment for it.
How many bullies do you see lining up at the psychiatrist's door? None!
It's because their victims are being nice to them and allowing them to persist with their childish rubbishing behaviour. Unfortunately this means that there is piles and piles of data on therapy and treatment for victims but practically nothing on what to do with the ones who have been causing the problem in the first place.
Many bullies will go to a lot of trouble to try to make you look stupid or to try to make you look what they think is stupid.
For example: Bullies will deliberately set you up to photograph you with an expression on your face which they think is ugly. You might not understand what they are doing because, as I said before, very little data is available on what makes Bullies tick.
Bullies may get someone to hit you and then take a video of it with their mobile phone camera or record the sound of your voice when you get angry about something they have deliberately done to 'set you up.'
No one is really sure why they think that making a video of you hitting someone who has just hit you or recording your voice when you get angry, proves to anyone at all that you are a bad person. They will of course edit the bit where you got hit, so all that is on the video is 'you' hitting back or edit out the stuff they were doing to you to make you shout before they recorded the sound of your voice. They then tell lies about this to try to make you look like an aggressive person.
To most of us this is strange and perplexing behaviour and there is no logic to it. That is because you and I are not bullies, so how can we know why they do this?
One way is to ask them. I really think it is time to find out why bullies do this. If we could find out the reasoning behind it we could do more to change it.
One main thing is that bullies are paranoid. That means they think that other people are 'out to get them'. They think you are doing bad things to them in the first place probably because they do bad things so they just think the rest of us would be doing bad things too.
Don't test them out on this, it makes them worse. The best way to deal with a bully is to leave them alone. This is why they have a habit of trying to steal other people's friends, because they are really sad people who have no friends and basically they are upset about not having friends.
They have a chip on their shoulder and don't feel wholy and totally complete without friends. They seem to need things to make them feel important.
Belittling others makes them feel big.
Being sarcastic makes them feel good.
Calling you stupid makes them feel clever.
Making you run off to clean your room makes them feel powerful.
When the bully finds that their usual approach isn't working they will change their behaviour.
Hint: Don't use sarcasm. Even if the bully is sarcastic, and you will clearly hear that in their tone in an audio conversation. Pretend to take it as a straight remark. This approach stops bullies using sarcasm with you because when it ceases to work, they stop. The bully will still use sarcasm, with everyone else, but not with you.
http://www.misinterupted.blogspot.com/
