I came up with the appellation for this article with a children’s allegory in mind. I had just had a actually yucky antecedents with a mean person who decided that I was to be their ‘target de jour’ and after getting better from the attack, thought, “How can we edify children to avert mean people?” Then I believed that a simple but straightforward way to warn children about “meanies” would be to read them a allegory entitled, “Mean People Really Aren’t Nice To Be Around.” I extend an open enticement to any of you who might be angled to communicate such a book and spread it around…I have a feeling that adults, as well as children could greatly advantage from interpretation it.
Unfortunately, I was taught to be “nice” at all expenses (I’m guessing you can relate!) and have fallen casualty to one-too-many a “meanie” (or “bully” as they’re fashionably called today) in my lifetime. But as I become big and wiser, I am aloof to say that I am a casualty of “meanies” no more. I have learned, arterial agonizing experiences, that the bumper label I see on so many Westfalias driving along the West Coast is indeed true: MEAN PEOPLE SUCK.
One of my most painful infancy memories dates back to the aching age of eleven when I was in grade six. As you can probably remember vividly, animal a girl “tween” has got to be the worst initiation into becoming an adult known to womankind! In my grade six class, there were two “popular” girls I badly desirable to be friends with. I would have lopped off an arm if it meant they would want me to hang about with them and be part of their little ‘clique’.
Unbeknownst to me, these mean girls had an evil plan to lacerate the very little bit of self-esteem I had to bits and rub my face in it. To make a long allegory more bearable-what allover up afoot is that they each conjured to be my friend on a one-on-one basis (i.e., one would be my best friend for a week and loan me her favourite pair of architect jeans and tell me which boy in our class she wouldn’t mind live ‘spin the bottle’ with) and then they’d button off the next week and the other girl got to play “best friend” to me and make me feel like the most celebratory girl in the whole wide world.
During these dreamy weeks with each one, one girl would say horrible and nasty belongings to me about the other one and then try to get me to say equally horrible and nasty belongings about her too. I was mortified the earliest time this happened because I was taught not to say mean belongings about others, but desirable their approval so badly, that I complied and said the meanest belongings I could think of about my other “best friend” in behest to be accepted. Being a basically kind but somewhat naive girl, doing this tore me up contents because it felt so amiss to betray a friend, but I felt like I had to do what they were doing to avert behind them.
Well, after the two weeks of their brilliant “masterminding” were over, one day at recess, both girls dragged me by the lapel into an empty foyer and cornered me. They both took turns yelling at me for saying mean and nasty belongings about the other one, and then punched me a few age for good act so I got the “message”.
To this day, I’m still not clear what precisely they were trying to “teach” me, but I do know about the chronic shock that was caused in my body and mind as a result. Even writing about this makes me shake physically. After they allover beating me up, I remember leaving home (a 45-minute Head involving two subway rides and a bus), entering the front door of my house, hiking the three flights of stairs up to my room, and locking in my opinion in there for a number of days. I refused to go to school for an complete week and my mother was helpless in her attempts to find out how she could help me. I think I went into emotional shock and stayed there for days on end. It’s one of my very worst memories of growing up.
The reason I took a risk in describing you this sad tale is because as a woman-centered therapist, I have learned that we all have stories like this hidden in our subconscious. We have all been bullied by mean people and have chronic scars as a result and often, it has happened more than once in our lives. The good news is that as adults, we no longer have to be the victims of “meanies” and can deliberately choose to not allow bullies to harm us.
So to end this article, I’d like to leave you with five tips to help you buffer physically from mean people…
ESTHER’S TOP FIVE TIPS TO AVOID BEING BULLIED
1. Recognize the code of a bluster and avert them at all costs.
This refers to the familiar “red flags” to look out for when you meet anybody new who you automatically feel is not a good person to be airless too. Here are some ordinary “bully red flags”:
· They say mean and nasty belongings about other people and often
· They for eternity blame others for belongings that go amiss in their lives
· They show an amazing lack of compassion for other people or creatures in distress
· They never say sorry for mean or nasty belongings they say or do
2. Don’t hang out with mean people.
This sounds decorative simple, but is actually quite tricky at earliest if you were taught in infancy to put up with “meanies”. Here’s a good way to figure out if anybody you are hanging out with is a bully- read the “bully red flags” outlined above and stop hanging out with people who arrange one of more of these behaviors.
3. Stop animal a victim- do your familiar work.
If you have a history of animal bullied, you probably learned somewhere along the way that it was normal to be victimized. IT’S NOT NORMAL! If this is a combination for you and you find physically assiduously animal aggrieved by bullies, I strongly suggest you go for counselling with a therapist who has solid antecedents in empowering women to leave exploitative relationships of all kinds. Understanding the “source” of your vulnerability to bullies is the earliest step in benevolent them the old heave-ho for good.
4. Be self-assured but pick your battles.
Read whatever affair you can about developing boldness skills. Take boldness training. Familiarize physically with your essential earthly rights and learn by heart them. Learn how to base up for physically and how to accost others in a healthy way. This in itself will make you less of a aim for bullies. There is a caveat with this though: it is not a good idea to accost anybody who is mean to you- oftentimes, bullies are apt to attack you in return and you want to avert animal aggrieved even further. Most mean people are also complete exploitative and engaging in a healthy confrontation with such people is not realistic, wise, or productive.
5. Help others who are animal bullied.
One of the best ways I know of to practise new and healthy behaviors is to edify them to other people (being a therapist actually helps me help myself!). For example, if your babe comes home from school one day with a bloody nose and tells you that another babe hit him in the face, I’m guessing you would have an educational talk with him about how to deal with mean bullies in the coming (only after stomping down to the school and demanding that the staff there make sure that anything is done to make sure the bluster receives aftereffects for his unacceptable and violent behavior). By describing your beloved babe that he doesn’t deserve to be treated badly and that he can choose to not engage with bullies, you’ll probably also be reminding physically of the same thing. Chances are that you will practise anything you preached to your babe that week! Being a role model of anybody who doesn’t let people push them about is the best way to edify your babe to do the same.
Hope that helps!
Here’s to a bully-free year ahead….
Girl Tween News.