Don't Pick on Me: How to Handle Bullying

Changing How You Feel About Yourself

To stop being bullied or to stop being a bully, things need to change for you in your inner world as well as in the outside world. The idea of having an inner world may be new to you – it means the private and personal space inside you where you have your own thoughts and feelings that other people do not know about. Outside world changes you can make are discussed in Part Four of this book. These changes tend to be of a practical kind and are to do with learning self-protection and strategies to stop bullying.

Making changes to your inside world is more difficult and takes longer because it involves changing the way you feel about yourself and how you deserve to be treated. One example of such a change that has already been mentioned in Part One is the possibility of getting rid of the bullying and critical voice inside you that can tell you it’s your fault when you are badly treated.

Sticking Up for Yourself

As mentioned before, people who are bullied often imagine that it must be their fault that they are being bullied – that they must be a weak person who has brought it on themselves. If you feel small and weak this can make you less likely to tell someone about the bullying as you may think that having to ask for help proves that you are weak. In fact, you have simply not been helped to learn how to stick up for yourself.
People who are bullies often behave in this horrible way because, underneath all the swaggering and the aggression, they lack self-confidence. If they can control other people by frightening or hurting them, this helps them to feel more powerful, confident and secure. They have not been helped to learn how to stick up for themselves either!

Here is what happened to Niti and Mark:
Niti’s class is in the middle of a spelling test when the boy sitting next to her, Jason, asks in a whisper how to spell ‘acknowledge’. Their teacher, Mr Greenacre, does not allow people to help each other in tests so Niti just shakes her head at Jason. Suddenly Mr Greenacre shouts out, ‘Niti, I saw you helping Jason. No marks at all for either of you.’ Niti tries to explain that she didn’t say anything, but Mr Greenacre won’t listen. Jason doesn’t say a word. After the class, Niti talks to her friend, Sonia, about it. ‘It’s really unfair,’ says Sonia, ‘you weren’t breaking any rules. You should have stuck up for yourself!’

When Mark gets to school, he sees Peter in tears – Peter’s cat died that morning. This reminds Mark of how he felt when his dad had his pet rabbit put down because they weren’t allowed to keep pets any more by the landlord. To shut out these painful feelings, Mark starts making fun of Peter: ‘What a cry-baby! Did diddums’s catty-watty kick the bucket, then?’

Mark doesn’t know that it’s OK to feel upset and angry about the dreadful thing that happened to his rabbit; he needs to stick up for himself by finding a better way of dealing with these feelings – a way that doesn’t hurt someone else.

Both Niti and Mark need to stick up for themselves. So, how do you learn to stick up for yourself?

If you want to stop being bullied or if you want to stop being a bully you need help from someone who will always be on your side; someone you can rely on. That ‘someone’ is you.

No one knows better than Niti and Mark that what happened wasn’t their fault:

Niti didn’t break the class rule.

Mark didn’t deserve to have his rabbit put down and his grief at losing his pet ignored.

Niti and Mark can begin to stick up for themselves by keeping this in mind when the adults either won’t listen or won’t understand how difficult and painful the situation is.

Relying on Yourself

Of course, this is just the beginning. Niti and Mark may want to stick up for themselves by speaking up for themselves. Speaking up for yourself can be a hard thing to do if you aren’t confident about your own good qualities and your own strength. After all, how will you feel if you speak up for yourself and it doesn’t work? Perhaps Mr Greenacre will still refuse to listen; Mark’s dad may tell him not to be such a baby about the rabbit. Things won’t always go your way however unfair it is.

When this happens, what you need is to feel secure and confident inside yourself that you like yourself and that you understand how things really are. Even if Mr Greenacre won’t listen or won’t believe her, Niti knows that she didn’t break a rule and that what happened wasn’t fair. Even if Mark’s dad doesn’t understand how Mark feels about his rabbit, Mark knows how precious his pet was to him, how cruel it was that it had to be put down and how angry and upset he is about it. Like Niti and Mark, you will often need to be your own good friend on whom you can rely to understand how things really are for you, even if no one else does.

Learning to stick up for yourself isn’t something that happens overnight. Any kind of change in the way you think about yourself and in the way you behave takes time. So, stick with it.

Learning to Feel Secure and Confident

Inside Yourself

To feel good about yourself inside doesn’t mean that you have to be:

• physically stronger than everyone else;
• cleverer than everyone else;
• the same as everyone else;
• richer than everyone else;
• able to make people do what you want.

The kind of power that feeling good about yourself gives you is personal to you. It doesn’t depend on comparisons with other people.

This is the inner power that will begin to grow and eventually enable you to stick up for yourself when other people try to bully you. If you find yourself wanting to bully someone else, your inner power will help you find a better way of coping with difficult feelings.

Inner power can become part of you and stay with you all your life. And it will keep on coming in handy. Bullying can happen in adulthood too!

To feel secure and confident inside yourself:
• understand your feelings;
• be responsible for your feelings;
• be responsible for your behaviour;
• develop and use your inner power.