Bullying is so often thought of as a youth problem. Nearly every school in the country has a written anti-bullying policy and there are literally thousands of school based anti-bullying programs. Kids as young as 10 are committing suicide from bullying and estimates are as high as 60 percent of middle school kids report being bullied. It is estimated that schools that put in anti-bullying programs have a 50% decrease in bullying, but that is still a lot of kids bullying, being bullied and witnessing bullying.
It doesn't really get any better when the child reaches college age. There are still bullies out there tormenting students as they try to learn. Some reports say that as many as 23% of students are bullied by peers and 18% report being bullied by a professor. Bullying can be physical, verbal, social (exclusion, etc), or sexual. Cyber-bullying (those behaviors done online) and Hazing (bullying with the "consent" of the victim in order for the victim to gain admission into a group) also need to be mentioned. Bullying is often done to someone perceived to be different from the bully- racially, socially, in dress, in economic status, differently abled, clothing style, and intellectually. Since no two people are alike, bullying can happen to anyone.
I would love to report that bullying stops when students finally graduate and enter the career field. But that is not true. Last July, Forbes magazine mentioned that nearly 75% of workers had been impacted by workplace bullies. Impacted does not mean actually bullied, they may have been the victim or may have witnessed the behavior. Women in the workplace are more likely to bully other women and in general carry an unconscious bias against women. Additionally, bosses, like professors, can often be the bully.
And in our recent political times, bullying happens right on the streets between total strangers. People are getting attacked for their head gear, their religious clothing, their perceived genetic history. Even our news organizations are beginning to look like bullies instead of simply reporting the facts of what happened. We need more of those trained by Walter Cronkite and his "That's is the way it is" wrap of of the news. Clearly all the anti-bullying classes are not helping a whole lot.
So there must be hope when one retires right? Move into one of those wonderful senior communities and live in peace with everyone else? Nope! Not at all. I have been teaching health literacy classes for seven years. One community asked me to create a class for senior on senior bullying, not elder abuse, not caregivers harassing their clients, but one senior picking on another! After creating it, it became my best selling class. Every senior community has scheduled it. I have had communities that never pay for programming for their residents pay to bring this class in. While only 10-20 percent of seniors report being bullied, that number is likely to be inaccurate due to health concerns and fears of reporting.
We must find ways to really get a handle on bullying. The power struggle and self-esteem the bully is aiming for when he attacks must be replaced by concern for each other and a attitude of win-win. Why? Because it impacts health... the health of the bully, the health of the victim, and the health of the witnesses.
Bullies tend to have low self-esteem. They struggle with depression and anxiety. Bullies are 5 times more likely to become a criminal and 6 times more likely to end up in jail. Bullying is estimated to be a factor in 2/3's of school shootings.
Victims may not have started out with low self esteem, but being bullied can get them there quickly. Then they will struggled with depression, self-harm and suicidal thoughts. Two out of every three victims becomes a bully to someone else. When as a society, we don't make an effort to protect the victims, they begin to adopt an understanding that this behavior is ok. Learned helplessness or aggressive, violent behavior can happen to victims. They begin to struggle with relationships. Especially if their friends witnessed the bullying and did not intervene to protect them. Drugs and alcohol may become their friends.
While we don't have a lot of research on the effects of witnessing bullying, we can look at the new studies on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES) and Trauma for an idea of what happens when children witness violence. The Centers for Disease Control reports people exposed to "violence in childhood increases the risks of injury, future violence victimization and perpetration, substance abuse, sexually transmitted infections, delayed brain development, reproductive health problems, involvement in sex trafficking, non-communicable diseases, lower educational attainment, and limited employment opportunities.Chronic abuse may result in toxic stress and make victims more vulnerable to problems such as post-traumatic stress disorder, conduct disorder, and learning, attention, and memory difficulties."
We must start to solve the problem of bullying. Teachers and staff cannot continue to suggest ignoring the bully. We must move to make the victim feel safe. We must put into place 0 tolerance policies that don't require the teacher to see the bully act. But we must also help the victims become bully-proof. And we need to empower witnesses to help.
Nick Vujicic, in his book Stand Strong, had six suggestions to make yourself bully-proof or at least bully-resistant.
1. Choose Your Path- know your personal spiritual values and stay true to them
2. Create Your Safety Zone- inner security and strength can help make you bully proof
It’s a safe space in your head where you can go to get refreshment and ignore the bully
3. Build Your Backup- strong and supportive relationships
Based on mutual respect, trust and encouragement
Best way to have good friends is to be one
4. Defeat the Bully Inside You- don’t allow yourself to beat yourself up.
5. Rise Above- you can call the bully on their bad behavior. If they apologize, offer forgiveness
6. What if you could find ways to learn and grow from being bullied?
Have you been bullied? How did it impact you? Have you seen yourself becoming a bully yourself? Do you have a good idea on how to improve this situation?
References
https://www.trade-schools.net/articles/bullying-in-college.asp
http://stopbullyingnowfoundation.org/main/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/pragyaagarwaleurope/2018/07/29/workplace-bullying-here-is-why-we-need-to-talk-about-bullying-in-the-work-place/#40fb5c4c3259
https://www.socialworktoday.com/archive/exc_051513.shtml
https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/childabuseandneglect/fastfact.html
Nick Vujicic Stand Strong;You Can Overcome Bullying (and Other Stuff That Keeps You Down) Waterbrook Publishing 2014
No comments:
Post a Comment