We all have a choice with bullying.
We can confront it or we can try to avoid it.
But when we are a 'victim' of bullying, very often the more we try to avoid it, the more bullying follows us everywhere we go.
In my experience the 'Victim State' is the end result of any avoidance strategy.
There are many ways of avoiding a problem with bullying, but avoiding the problem does not take the problem away.
Avoidance strategies do not work because they do not take away the problem and they do not heal the issue.
The problem remains and it continues to affect you.
This applies to all problems.
The more you hide, the bigger the problem gets.
The more you run, the more the problem follows you and the bigger it often becomes in your mind until you feel powerless to resolve it.
Bullying continues until you make it stop or until the people bullying you decide to stop.
They may stop if, or when, someone else - a bystander or an adult [or group of either] tell them to stop.
They may stop of their own accord.
But they may not.
They might feel they have no reason to stop.
They may well have become comfortable in their role.
It may have become normal for them to bully and for you to play the 'victim.
' They might feel you haven't given them any reason to stop.
They might feel they are gaining something from the situation, for any of the reasons listed previously.
You must take charge of the situation and make the bullying stop.
You must make it impossible for the bullies to carry on hurting you.
In order to do this you need to first acknowledge that they are hurting you.
This requires you to take a new attitude towards the problem.
I will tell you how to develop this later on in the book.
Before that I would like to take you through some of the 'Avoidance Strategies' that people typically use in response to bullying.
Denial It's far easier to pretend that the bullying isn't happening than it is to confront it.
People deny the problem to themselves and to others.
They deny because bullying can be very frightening.
To even admit that you are being bullied can be extremely daunting.
I've spoken to thousands of young people in schools since I started my work and I know that this fear is very real.
I also remember a few occasions from my own experiences where adults gave me the opportunity to disclose the problems I was going through and I remember clearly that I did not take those opportunities.
My fear, my shame, my embarrassment, my feeling of powerlessness all held me back.
Instead I made up some excuse because I felt ashamed at feeling scared and didn't want anyone to know the pain I was in.
When people did ask if I was ok, I would smile and say yes.
Sometimes people did speak up for me, but rather than use this as a springboard to change my thinking, I continued to deny the problem to myself and others.
In doing so I cut myself off from the support I could have had to sort the situation out.
Whatever you are going through.
Wherever bullying is taking place, I want you to know that you are extremely fortunate.
There is an enormous amount of help and support available for anyone on the issue of bullying.
When I was at school there was very little, perhaps even none and bullying was barely spoken about.
There has never been more help and support available to you than there is right now and all you have to do is ask.
Ignoring It Young people are often advised by adults to 'ignore' bullying.
In my experience, I don't believe that ignoring bullying works.
What I think adults are trying to say when they advise this is 'don't believe the things that bullies say, don't allow their words to become your thoughts or don't internalise it.
' I know this advice is well intentioned, but what it actually means is 'protect your self-esteem' by ignoring the vindictive, nasty, snide, threatening, abusive things a bully might say.
You should protect your self-esteem from the words that bullies use and I will show you a simple exercise to begin doing this.
But in terms of bullying incidents themselves, I don't believe that 'ignoring it' works as a long term strategy.
Ignoring something nasty that is said to you just once certainly can work.
But bullying is not about one-off incidents.
Bullying is persistent and repetitive and even if you are pretending to ignore the bully, by walking away, by not looking at them or responding to them, they know that you have heard and have not responded.
The fact that you are ignoring the incident is more likely to encourage them to say the same things to you again and again.
They may even make it their goal to persist in saying things until you eventually crack and give them the emotional response that they want.
Visualisation This strategy is more of a personal one in terms of how I tried to deal with being bullied.
When I was at school, visualisation became an escape.
I would daydream or visualise being elsewhere while at school and in lessons and I would visualise having a different life when I returned home.
I would lie on my bed and visualise bullying situations.
I'd actually close my eyes and imagine or picture them in my head.
If something had happened to me that day, I'd replay it as a film in my head.
Then I'd edit it and change it and replay it with a new ending, I'd see myself making different decisions than the ones I had taken.
So instead of being hit, I'd see myself fighting back.
Instead of taking an insult, I'd watch and hear myself speaking up and see it working.
I'd replay the same scenes repeatedly, sometimes until I actually felt quite ill.
Another thing I did with my visualisations was to project them forward into what I imagined my life would be like in the future, long after I had left school.
I found these visualisation's very helpful at the time.
They were an escape.
I think in some way they allowed me a release, they allowed me to get through what I was experiencing.
But there was a downside.
I didn't realise the effects the visualisation's were having.
What I didn't realise at the time is that visualisation is very powerful and your body reacts to what you are depicting in your mind as if it were real.
When you imagine situations in your head and practice it to the point that you become able to visualise things very clearly, you feel the emotions that correspond to these situations very powerfully too.
You feel the physical effects of the situation you are visualising - if you're seeing a fight, for example, you experience the same bodily reactions as if the situation were real.
Your body releases adrenaline and you feel the same emotions - you feel massive amounts of anger or fear.
When you repeat the visualisation over and over, you end up flooding your body with adrenaline which is not healthy at all.
It would have been far healthier for me to share my problem with someone and attempt to resolve it.
Immersion Immersion is a strategy of distracting your conscious mind from the pain you are in.
People do this in a variety of ways.
You might read a book and really lose yourself in the book - its story, its characters, as a way of temporarily forgetting the bullying situation or putting it out of your mind.
You might also do this with schoolwork, or sports, or favourite activities.
Anything that allows you to concentrate on something other than the pain of the fact you are being bullied.
But behind the distraction is an increasingly painful truth: the situation is still there.
People sometimes bully others.
They immerse themselves in the act of bullying others to try and forget the pain of their own bullying situation.
People immerse themselves in drink and drugs, anti-social behaviour, all to take their conscious mind away [temporarily] from their pain.
But that pain is still there.
Avoidance strategies do not work.
The best thing you can do is confront the situation.
Some young people become 'school phobic.
' They stop attending school or certain lessons or activities where bullying might occur.
You can find yourself avoiding certain people and situations.
But what happens through avoidance is that your world shrinks.
You shrink the potential of your world.
You limit yourself and your potential to be happy.
Every strategy that you use to avoid the problem allows it to remain and the longer it goes on the more it effects and changes you and many of these changes can be very destructive to your life.
We can confront it or we can try to avoid it.
But when we are a 'victim' of bullying, very often the more we try to avoid it, the more bullying follows us everywhere we go.
In my experience the 'Victim State' is the end result of any avoidance strategy.
There are many ways of avoiding a problem with bullying, but avoiding the problem does not take the problem away.
Avoidance strategies do not work because they do not take away the problem and they do not heal the issue.
The problem remains and it continues to affect you.
This applies to all problems.
The more you hide, the bigger the problem gets.
The more you run, the more the problem follows you and the bigger it often becomes in your mind until you feel powerless to resolve it.
Bullying continues until you make it stop or until the people bullying you decide to stop.
They may stop if, or when, someone else - a bystander or an adult [or group of either] tell them to stop.
They may stop of their own accord.
But they may not.
They might feel they have no reason to stop.
They may well have become comfortable in their role.
It may have become normal for them to bully and for you to play the 'victim.
' They might feel you haven't given them any reason to stop.
They might feel they are gaining something from the situation, for any of the reasons listed previously.
You must take charge of the situation and make the bullying stop.
You must make it impossible for the bullies to carry on hurting you.
In order to do this you need to first acknowledge that they are hurting you.
This requires you to take a new attitude towards the problem.
I will tell you how to develop this later on in the book.
Before that I would like to take you through some of the 'Avoidance Strategies' that people typically use in response to bullying.
Denial It's far easier to pretend that the bullying isn't happening than it is to confront it.
People deny the problem to themselves and to others.
They deny because bullying can be very frightening.
To even admit that you are being bullied can be extremely daunting.
I've spoken to thousands of young people in schools since I started my work and I know that this fear is very real.
I also remember a few occasions from my own experiences where adults gave me the opportunity to disclose the problems I was going through and I remember clearly that I did not take those opportunities.
My fear, my shame, my embarrassment, my feeling of powerlessness all held me back.
Instead I made up some excuse because I felt ashamed at feeling scared and didn't want anyone to know the pain I was in.
When people did ask if I was ok, I would smile and say yes.
Sometimes people did speak up for me, but rather than use this as a springboard to change my thinking, I continued to deny the problem to myself and others.
In doing so I cut myself off from the support I could have had to sort the situation out.
Whatever you are going through.
Wherever bullying is taking place, I want you to know that you are extremely fortunate.
There is an enormous amount of help and support available for anyone on the issue of bullying.
When I was at school there was very little, perhaps even none and bullying was barely spoken about.
There has never been more help and support available to you than there is right now and all you have to do is ask.
Ignoring It Young people are often advised by adults to 'ignore' bullying.
In my experience, I don't believe that ignoring bullying works.
What I think adults are trying to say when they advise this is 'don't believe the things that bullies say, don't allow their words to become your thoughts or don't internalise it.
' I know this advice is well intentioned, but what it actually means is 'protect your self-esteem' by ignoring the vindictive, nasty, snide, threatening, abusive things a bully might say.
You should protect your self-esteem from the words that bullies use and I will show you a simple exercise to begin doing this.
But in terms of bullying incidents themselves, I don't believe that 'ignoring it' works as a long term strategy.
Ignoring something nasty that is said to you just once certainly can work.
But bullying is not about one-off incidents.
Bullying is persistent and repetitive and even if you are pretending to ignore the bully, by walking away, by not looking at them or responding to them, they know that you have heard and have not responded.
The fact that you are ignoring the incident is more likely to encourage them to say the same things to you again and again.
They may even make it their goal to persist in saying things until you eventually crack and give them the emotional response that they want.
Visualisation This strategy is more of a personal one in terms of how I tried to deal with being bullied.
When I was at school, visualisation became an escape.
I would daydream or visualise being elsewhere while at school and in lessons and I would visualise having a different life when I returned home.
I would lie on my bed and visualise bullying situations.
I'd actually close my eyes and imagine or picture them in my head.
If something had happened to me that day, I'd replay it as a film in my head.
Then I'd edit it and change it and replay it with a new ending, I'd see myself making different decisions than the ones I had taken.
So instead of being hit, I'd see myself fighting back.
Instead of taking an insult, I'd watch and hear myself speaking up and see it working.
I'd replay the same scenes repeatedly, sometimes until I actually felt quite ill.
Another thing I did with my visualisations was to project them forward into what I imagined my life would be like in the future, long after I had left school.
I found these visualisation's very helpful at the time.
They were an escape.
I think in some way they allowed me a release, they allowed me to get through what I was experiencing.
But there was a downside.
I didn't realise the effects the visualisation's were having.
What I didn't realise at the time is that visualisation is very powerful and your body reacts to what you are depicting in your mind as if it were real.
When you imagine situations in your head and practice it to the point that you become able to visualise things very clearly, you feel the emotions that correspond to these situations very powerfully too.
You feel the physical effects of the situation you are visualising - if you're seeing a fight, for example, you experience the same bodily reactions as if the situation were real.
Your body releases adrenaline and you feel the same emotions - you feel massive amounts of anger or fear.
When you repeat the visualisation over and over, you end up flooding your body with adrenaline which is not healthy at all.
It would have been far healthier for me to share my problem with someone and attempt to resolve it.
Immersion Immersion is a strategy of distracting your conscious mind from the pain you are in.
People do this in a variety of ways.
You might read a book and really lose yourself in the book - its story, its characters, as a way of temporarily forgetting the bullying situation or putting it out of your mind.
You might also do this with schoolwork, or sports, or favourite activities.
Anything that allows you to concentrate on something other than the pain of the fact you are being bullied.
But behind the distraction is an increasingly painful truth: the situation is still there.
People sometimes bully others.
They immerse themselves in the act of bullying others to try and forget the pain of their own bullying situation.
People immerse themselves in drink and drugs, anti-social behaviour, all to take their conscious mind away [temporarily] from their pain.
But that pain is still there.
Avoidance strategies do not work.
The best thing you can do is confront the situation.
Some young people become 'school phobic.
' They stop attending school or certain lessons or activities where bullying might occur.
You can find yourself avoiding certain people and situations.
But what happens through avoidance is that your world shrinks.
You shrink the potential of your world.
You limit yourself and your potential to be happy.
Every strategy that you use to avoid the problem allows it to remain and the longer it goes on the more it effects and changes you and many of these changes can be very destructive to your life.
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